Recognized by Apple's developer community

During WWDC26, Apple published a Community Recognition page celebrating people around the world who make the Apple developer community a better place — the folks who organize events, teach, mentor, and create spaces for others to grow. I was honored to be one of the names on it, for the work our community has done with CocoaHeads Brasil.

Apple's page might change over time as new people are recognized, so I'm keeping this page as a small archive of the moment.

My entry on Apple's Community Recognition page: photo, name,

What Apple wrote

Mauricio is an iOS lead at Thoughtworks who started his career as a game developer before making the move to Apple platforms. He's spent over 10 years leading CocoaHeads Brasil, organizing monthly — and sometimes more than monthly — events in São Paulo and supporting CocoaHeads chapters all across the country.

What this means to me

The truth is that this recognition isn't really about me — it's about everyone who has shown up. Over more than ten years, CocoaHeads Brasil grew from a handful of people meeting up to talk about Apple platforms into a community that spans the whole country, with chapters in cities that each found their own rhythm: monthly in São Paulo and Campinas, a few times a year elsewhere, always with a full house.

None of that happens alone. It happens because organizers in other cities said yes to the hard work of getting the ball rolling, because speakers — many of them giving their very first talk — trusted us with their ideas, and because companies and universities opened their doors so we'd have somewhere to gather. In 2024 we celebrated ten years of CocoaHeads in Brazil, and looking around that room made it obvious how much a community can build when people simply keep showing up.

I've always believed that developing for Apple platforms is expensive enough already, and that knowledge and community should be free and accessible to everyone. Brazil isn't a rich country, and we want everyone to have a seat at the table. Being recognized by Apple for that is genuinely meaningful — but the real reward has always been watching someone find the help they needed, land a job, ship their first app, and then come back to help the next person.

To everyone who has been part of this: thank you. This one is ours.