I was fortunate to get an invitation to attend the first ever Google Developer Days event in India. We need to register on the google Developers site.I was surprised and excited when I received an email confirming my participation. Travel plans and stay arrangements were made and the long wait to Dec started.
The event was hosted at the Bangalore International Convention Centre on Dec 1 and 2. There were thousands of attendees, mostly comprised of students, entrepreneurs and people working in the tech industry. I got to meet a few people from outside India who came just to attend this event. And of course there were Googlers who work on many of Google products we use in our day to day life.
The main theme for the event was “Develop for the next Billion users” who are going to use technology. I think Google needs
developers from India and other developing countries who understand third world problems to make apps that solve those very issues. I cannot think of any other explanation for them to host this huge event, provide food for all the attendees, fly in all the Googlers and goodies. Definetley the next billion users would be using an Android device of some make in the future!
There were sessions on Android, Firebase, Progressive Web Apps, Design, Tensor Flow etc. Most of the sessions were overlapping, so I had
to pick and choose to attend them. Most of the sessions were recorded and are available in YouTube as a playlist.
There was a 36% representation of women among the attendees which is a good sign of women contribution to technology.
Day 1 ended with an After party with a show by a Bangalore Rock Band, a DJ and dinner. Since accommodation arrangements were not provided,
I had to travel around 1 hour to my friend’s house to spend the night.
I was able to better plan Day 2 with experiences from Day 1, attending sessions that were not recorded as well as the community area
where Googlers were doing some talks. I also visited the office hours booth of Google Play Console and met the nice people from
Google’s London office who were working on it.
Surprisingly I got a Laptop bag with Google logo and an IOT device to add to the Google Developer Days T Shirt I got on day 1 after the registration.
Over all, it was a fun experience and looking forward to more such events.