Google I/O 2016 — Views from a 3rd world country first time attendee.

What I learnt during my time at Google I/O.

It’s not every day you wake up to find an invitation to attend an event from Google Inc. in your email inbox. However on April 18 at approximately 0800 hrs I saw one email that was way too good to be true. I had been invited to attend Google I/O, the largest developer conference (in my eyes) worldwide.

I landed, late evening in the charming city of San Francisco which happens to be within the sunny state of California, USA on the 16th of May. Honestly I couldn’t believe I was even there at the time. I got the chance to visit the Google San Francisco Offices for the Google Developers Group (GDG) Dinner Party which was held to get us, GDG leads and Google Developer Experts (GDEs) well acquainted. So many cultures in one room, talk about diversity right!

The summit was fabulous

On May 17th the GDG Global Community Summit kicked off with talks about the Google Developers Groups’ history and how far they had come. We got introduced to an open source machine learning API called Tensor Flow and Google’s Firebase (a unified app platform), which works with Android, iOS and the Web. I personally fell in love with Tensor Flow, too bad it was one day too short to make it my Woman Crush Wednesday lol! The thing with Tensor Flow being that it has so much potential, so many use cases and nobody knows where it’ll be in 20 years to come. The day ended up with a trip down to Mountain View, Shoreline Amphitheater where the Google I/O developer conference was to be held.

A lucid dream, was I having?

A lucid dream, was I having? *Yoda voice* I really couldn’t believe I was finally here. The Shoreline Amphitheater was massive. It looked amazing and there were Googlers all around. I went to collect my badge and the ‘festival survival kit’ which included a Google Cardboard VR headset, an I/O branded bottle, a T-shirt and some sunscreen in case the sun got a little too excited like I could ever get sun burned :D.

Let the festivities begin!

Okay 5…4…3…2…1… Keynote! The event kicked off with the traditional keynote, GDGs and GDEs had been offered VIP seats and it was quite the view. Mr. Sundar Pichai, the Google CEO started off by talking about ‘Search’, the soul of Google and it wasn’t long before he dwelt straight into Tensor Flow, the Google Assistant, Google Home, Firebase and Android. Keynote was one of my most exciting experience, it’s like the nerds are the rock stars here and the rock stars are the nerds as crazy as that may sound. It was clear from the first event of the conference that the future was Artificial Intelligence, machine learning and Firebase. The keynote alone prompted me to change my I/O schedule from mostly Android content to mostly Firebase content. It felt as if I had been living under a rock all this time, the new revamped firebase looked awesome.

Throughout the conference, I took tons of pictures and attended quite a few sessions and talks. The more I learnt about Firebase the more I got hooked. You could actually do a 3 month job in 3 weeks or even less. It’s one of those moments were you realize you may have been a masochist all along.

A web based native app usually has me writing the server side code, usually a REST JSON web service then the android and web clients. Lots of work right!?

The beauty with Firebase is the callback methods used to refresh your Android UI — Goodbye swipe to refresh. Besides Firebase sessions I attended a few Android sessions to help advance my android development career. I was fascinated by the Virtual Reality displays around. If you haven’t tried VR, I suggest buy a Google Cardboard VR headset and immerse yourself within it by downloading the selection of VR apps on Google Play Store. Trust me.

I had the opportunity to develop an app for Cardboard VR, during the code lab sessions held onsite at the conference and even though I can’t do a demo on that yet (I don’t have a VR capable smartphone yet). I do suggest looking into it if you’re a developer or have a keen crazy imagination and some passion at coding.

All said and done, I picked up a ton of new skills, networked with a few professionals and made a lot of new friends. I also met the CEO of Google Inc. Sundar Pichai!

The Google I/O experience is everything you’d expect it to be and even more. Looking forward, I plan to blog about Google Technologies and how to implement them by preparing demos for the hungry young learner developer. I will upload all demos to my Github page, be sure to join Github and follow me. I will use this platform to blog for now until I can get my own personal space. Follow me and stay tuned for updates.

I’d like to thank Google Inc. for the opportunity and the experience. A special mention to Andrew Sithole who began the GDG chapter at Harare Institute of Technology which then allowed me to get this invite.

To everyone else let’s stop stopping and do cool things that matter!