Around the world with Google Developer Day 2011
By Monica Tran, Google Developer Day TeamThis year's Google Developer Day events just finished after a worldwide tour across nine
cities and four continents. We'd like to thank the thousands of developers who contributed to
making Google Developer Day a success. If we didn’t make it to your city, you can continue to
get regular updates on all things developer at our
Google Developers page on
Google+. And for those of you looking for a community to join, get in touch with one of our
local
Google Technology User Groups
(GTUGs) or if you’re feeling bold,
start your own
chapter!
Please read the recaps below, and visit our
website to get the
highlights, videos and photos from Google Developer Day 2011. See you in 2012!
Sao
Paulo, Brazil: The
countdown to Google Developer Day
ended with the first of our events in Sao Paulo, where we welcomed over 1,600 developers.
Brazilian developers showed up in full force for the event, celebrating the latest
Chrome
Webstore launch, showing us the most crazy
code
they’ve ever written and interacting with developers’ creations in the
Android
ADK showcase.
Buenos Aires, Argentina:
Continuing our Latin America tour, James Whittaker, Director of Engineering, delivered a
keynote
featuring the latest from Android, Chrome, and Google+. The keynote
presentations
were built in HTML5 and featured a 3D demo of the latest
Ice Age trailer. The Google+
game was a hit among attendees, who used the pin exchange as a conversation starter to meet
other developers. Those who found all five, including the elusive black Circles pin, took home
one of
these
guys.
Moscow, Russia: Russia is home to
the 4th largest developer population in the world, accounting for 12% of EMEA’s developers. On
October 10, more than 1,800 of those
developers
joined us in Moscow, where we hosted five simultaneous tracks featuring 19 speakers and 25
sessions. With the help of Russian
GTUGs,
we featured 16 projects, including
ADK-powered
robots from our Open Call challenges. Check out photos of our speakers in
Russian
national shirts and other photos of the event
here.
Prague, Czech Republic: This year’s Google Developer Day
focused on bringing nearly 1,000 members of the developer community together in creative and
fun ways. Our very first Developer Sandbox featured 12 companies, in addition to four projects
from ADK Challenge and a showcase of the 20 latest Android devices. At the end of the
day--after 27 sessions by 25 speakers--Ignite stole the show with eight Czech influencers
presenting on topics from happiness at work to 3D printing. Additionally, check out our HTML5
developer competition,
Mam
Padla, as well as
videos and
photos from the
event.
Beijing, China: Despite being a late
addition, China showed up in a big way with a 3-city Google Developer Day tour that attracted
2,240 attendees. In addition to the
keynote,
36
breakout
sessions, 21
partner
booths and 6
product
demos were offered, and over 60 developer applications
showcased.
New to Beijing this year was the live audience
instant
message display, which was shown during the keynote. Seven
GTUGs
across China sent in greeting videos and nearly a dozen developers came on stage to
share
their experiences developing innovative business solutions using Google
technologies.
Tokyo, Japan: With over 1,700
developers in attendance after being selected via DevQuiz from 5,000 registrations, and with
over 100 volunteer developers and Googlers collaborating to organize, this year’s Google
Developer Day embraced the spirit of open source with 40 developers in the
Developer
Sandbox, 17
Open
Call (Android and HTML5) exhibits, a
Mini
Theater for developers to stage informal presentations, and an appearance from
Bar
Android.
Ignite
closed the event with lightning talks from 6 developers and our DevQuiz team, GoogleFes!, and
a special dance performance from the
GDD48. Check
out our
highlights
video and
photos for the
full picture.
Sydney, Australia: We hosted our
largest developer audience in Australia at our third Google Developer Day event. Our
Sydney-based engineers and Developer Relations speakers put on 32 sessions, including a
VC
panel that featured interviews from experts at Posse, Pollenizer and Atlassian. To
quench their thirst, developers turned to
iZac,
our Android ADK-powered bartender. For more highlights and photos, visit our
homepage.
Tel Aviv, Israel: Israel has one of the highest numbers of
startups per capita, leading us to deem it the “
Startup Nation”
amongst our Google Developer Day countries. 1,450 developers joined us for this year’s event,
where we hosted 27 sessions, as well as lots of fun activities at the
innovation
lounge. To showcase the rich innovation coming from the country, local developers
Paradroid,
The Sign Language Glove,
Xtendi and
iOnRoad
(among many others) were on-hand to demo their creations; while Tmura (the Israeli Public
Service Venture Fund) and the
Israeli
Accessibility Association helped raise awareness for causes relevant to developers.
Check out the highlights
video and
photos.
Berlin, Germany: With over 2,100 developers in attendance
at this year’s event, the grande finale of our world tour,
Google Developer Day in
Berlin, was also our largest single GDD in 2011. Partnering with two of the most
innovative universities in Germany,
Technische
Universität Berlin (TU) and
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU), we hosted 37
sessions in 5 parallel tracks. We had a great presentation of the winners of the German
ADK- and HTML5-Open Call,
university students showcased 31
projects
with innovative technologies mostly related to Google products and GDD themes, and
we had a great after-GDD get together at the famous Berlin underground space station
c-base. Our German GTUG community, with 16 local GTUGs
the most active in Europe, organized an amazing 4-day
Developer Weekend, which included Bootcamp,
Hack-and-Tell and Ignite sessions. Don’t miss our
highlights
video (featuring beatboxing at its best) and our
photo
gallery.
You might remember Monica Tran from I/O Live or one of our
eight Google Developer Days around the world. Now Monica is back to lead the charge on Google
I/O 2012.Posted by Scott Knaster,
Editor
