Google I/O 2018 — My Experience

Like every year, Google holds its I/O conference to announce what they’ve been working on. I had the chance to attend it this year at their campus in Mountain View, California.

First day

Transportation

There were shuttles going back and forth to the event’s destination from the recommended hotels. but I chose a more affordable inn to stay in. So my only way of transportation there was with Uber and Lyft and it was pretty different experience coming from a city that has a solid public transportation system as Berlin.

So I ordered a Lyft and I had time to get there before the keynote but the traffic was horrible and the keynote was about to begin.

After being stopped by traffic for nearly 10 mins near Google Campus I decided to get off the car and walk to the Amphitheater. Apparently it was a bad idea cause I discovered that It’s far away from the campus. Then I met with 2 guys on the road that were running late as well but had an idea to get a bike from Google campus. Luckily we found 3 exactly and we rode to there and caught the keynote from the start!

phew!

Picking up the badge, the gift bag and the giveaways

Google provided every attendee with a gift bag and two giveaways. the giveaways were an Android things kit and a Google home mini.

The gift bag included a sunglasses, sunscreen, water bottle and a t-shirt

Sessions

These are the sessions that I found interesting and attended everyday. I’ll be giving a brief introduction about it, but you can always watch it on YouTube for more details.

new burger emoji, looking to listen technology, gmail smart compose and all the new technologies Google introducing for next year

All the latest updates to developer products and platforms

An overview of the latest developer-facing features in the Android platform and other new and exciting developments

New additions to android studio like a faster better emulator, faster building times, new navigation library support and more

Nice insights from John Maeda about his new design in tech report, plus an interview with Hannah Beachler about her production designer role at marvel and the making of Wakanda

Speechless live

Unfortunately this one doesn’t have a video but it was a hilarious sketch done by speakers from I/O about giving a presentation that they’ve never prepared for. Fusing technology with comedy!

After hours parties

There were 2 parties playing pop and rock music, but my favorite one was a nerd party held in a kinda hidden building 🤓

Second day

I started this day early with breakfast. Actually, let’s talk about food!

I had high expectations for food that Google serves in their biggest event. but apparently they were too high 😅

The quality was not that good and it was served cold most of the time but I understand that serving to this big crowd can be challenging.

Breakfast

Breakfast was mostly bagels with cheese and some fruit, pretty basic. They served cereal also for people that enjoy some in the morning.

Lunch

Lunch was served as a lunch box with a variety of choices. along with freshly cold drinks

And between meals there were water carts and snack stands everywhere!

A Social day!

In this day I had lunch with a group of people from India, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. 3 developers and one designer. We talked about various topics in the industry and it was an interesting to hear from their different point of views.

This day also I had a talk in the designer booth with a Google engineer called Vietanh. He has the position of a UX engineer that I’m currently interested in and we had a lovely discussion about his role at Google and the new tools recently introduced for designers/developers

Sessions

This session was about the roadmap for Android Things after releasing version 1.0

This was a very interesting session for me as it introduced what’s added to ARCore library and the new technology Google introduced for cross platform AR shared experience called Cloud Anchors

This also was an interesting session about experiences from Google’s AR team building AR prototypes and how that helped them build useful and delightful AR experiences

Sceneform is a new 3D framework introduced by Google to help developers build better AR experiences

This session was about material design tools and libraries that Google introduced across multiple platforms to help developers implement material design better

Concert at the Amphitheater

Two performances from American Rock band “Phantogram” and the EDM french duo “Justice”. Of course most of us were introverted developers so not much excitement there but everything can loosen up with alcohol 😉

Last day

Last day was a short one, until 3 pm. Early in the morning most of the sessions were not that interesting to me so I took the chance to take some pictures of the event grounds.

Sessions

A fun session about tips and tricks for Kotlin language from the lead designer himself

Session about how UX researchers at Google helped evolve and reshape material design guidelines and how it’s important for product development

Like every year the leads of Android framework gather together to answer questions from the audience and also like each year most of the questions are embarrassing :)

Community Groups Meetup — DACH countries

In this meetup I got the chance to get to know other fellow Berlin developers and developers from other countries in the DACH region as well.

Chat with Jake Wharton

The highlight of the day was talking with Jake Wharton, the famous Android developer who brought us widely used libraries such as OkHttp, Retrofit, Picasso and much more.
We talked about his new role at Google and how he found himself in a responsible position to change the framework to be more community centered.

By the way, he still have the same opinion about Fragments even after he joined Google. I guess it’s that bad 😄

Wandering around

As the day was coming to an end, I used the chance to wander around Google campus with 2 developers I just met at the meetup.

At the center is Kevin Barry who is the creator of Nova Launcher and on the left fellow Berliner Rahul who is working at N26

Google Android Lawn Statues

Then I wanted to have a look at the late Android sculptures at their graveyard, may they rest in peace 😄

I really enjoyed it and wish to come back again, it’s always good to know what’s new from Google from the makers themselves and nice to meet new people that are interested and interesting from all over the world.

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