4️ Top Talks from Google I/O Connect 2023 Amsterdam
I had the chance to attend Google I/O Connect 2023 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. This article aims to share the major announcements and the atmosphere of this conference.
After the Google I/O in May in Mountain View (find all the announcements here), Google has set up everything to bring near you this Developer Festival by creating Google I/O Connect in several cities:
- 🇺🇸 Miami, USA
- 🇳🇱 Amsterdam, Netherlands
- 🇮🇳 Bangalore, India
- 🇨🇳 Shanghai, China
All videos from I/O 2023 are already on YouTube on this channel. There is also a dedicated website.
Here is my feedback about 4️⃣ top talks on Web, GenAI and Cloud.
1. “What’s new in Web?” by Paul Kinlan
During the conference, Paul discussed the latest web innovations. It was very interesting to see new APIs like the View Transitions API and the WebGPU ecosystem, or a new measure of Core Web Vitals: INP (for “Interaction to Next Paint”).
Google continues to open up to the web ecosystem with the support in Chrome for several technologies like next.js, nuxt, and Angular.
More information here: https://io.google/2023/program/cafbe05a-c19e-4fe5-9e25-61c5c0c2f6cf/intl/fr/
2. GenAI Codelab “Generative AI Explorer — Vertex AI”
We have to know that Google offer different levels to use its AI:
- Bard: for the general public, like ChatGPT, with a prompt to start a conversation.
- PaLM 2: state-of-the-art LLM (Large Language Model) models to work on AI, with the possibility of extending them to specific domains such as medical with Med-PaLM2.
- Vertex AI: a platform to create your own models from the basic models using the power of Google Cloud.
The GenAI codelab is a great introduction and aims to provide first-hand experience with the PaLM 2 models available on Google Cloud.
Using a Jupyter notebook in Vertex AI Workbench, we were able to run different models (bison, gecko) and their parameters including the “temperature” (lower is more deterministic).
More information here on CloudSkillsBoost.
3. “Cloud Workstations and modern IDEs” by Alexis Moussine-Pouchkine
Workstations was announced at the last Cloud Next. The idea is to be able to work in a developer environment in the cloud.
The interest is to be able to easily configure, duplicate, and instantiate developer environments and improve the DX (Developer Experience)
Alexis showed that several options are available to interact with Workstations: the gcloud SDK, the APIs, the cloud console, and now with Terraform code.
A demo was done using Jetbrains Gateway.
More information here: https://cloud.google.com/workstations/docs/develop-code-using-local-jetbrains-ides
4. “Duet AI with Google Cloud” by Joe Shirey & Turan Bulmus
“Duet AI for Google Cloud” is a new tool powered by GenAI that allows you to have a companion on Google Cloud. The idea is to be able to ask it specific commands, ask it about best practices whether you are a developer, DevOps, or SRE.
I really like the philosophy! With serverless, the goal is to spend less time on server management tasks and focus on product features. With the Cloud and this Duet assistant, the goal is similar: spend less time on cloud management tasks.
More information here: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/application-modernization/introducing-duet-ai-for-google-cloud?hl=en
Conclusion
Google I/O Connect 2023 in Amsterdam was a wonderful experience, highlighting the latest technological advances and Google’s commitment to AI and innovation. This event demonstrated Google’s desire to make AI accessible to everyone, by offering powerful generative solutions while focusing on trust and ethics.
It is really good to experience a live event of this magnitude organized by Google again, with more than 1000 people in a pleasant developer-friendly environment. The I/O Connect Amsterdam brought together experts, developers and enthusiasts from all over the world within the Google community, promoting sharing with networking moments.
Excited to be part of the future conference: I will be at Google Cloud Next at the end of August. Feel free to ping me. 👋
