Google I/O 2019 Experience - Rajat Kumar Gupta
Google I/O 2019 Experience
Let’s say that you are having a bad day since the morning and all of a sudden you get a mail like this
Your day just got better right?! Obviously you can’t say no to this mail. At least, I couldn’t. Let’s leave the document verification, visa application, the long flight to San Francisco and (ahem ahem) the excitement details aside and fast forward to 6th May, 2019.
The Welcome Dinner (6th May evening)
The dinner was scheduled at 6:30p.m in the evening. I arrived at San Francisco airport at around 3:30p.m or so and we(Kavin, Bapusaheb Patil and me) booked a cab to Hotel Wild Palms, Sunnyvale at around 5:00p.m. (Why the one and half hour delay? Long immigration queue!). We checked into our room at around 6:25p.m, threw our luggage into the room and had to rush towards the venue for our Welcome Dinner. Yeah we could not rest but we were so excited!
The welcome dinner party!
After an hour or so of interaction with all the attendees from India, Africa and Indonesia we went back to our hotel to take sufficient rest for the next day.
I/O Day 1 (7th May)
There was a long queue to collect our I/O badges in the morning and we interacted with a few developers around the world while waiting.
The Google I/O badge
Once we collected our badges we took some photos near the I/O Landmark stage and then made our way towards the Amphitheatre. Keynote was gonna start at 10:00 a.m.
The Amphitheatre
The Keynote
After the keynote we went to the sandbox ṭents and met some well known developers. Go ahead and guess their names!
There were various activities that were going on. You just have to keep your eyes and ears open. I earned some schwags by getting involved in the activities and interacting with everyone.
Sneak Peak
I/O Day 2 (8th May)
If I had to mark a favorite day out of the 3 memorable days in I/O this is the one that I will mark. Right in the morning after having our breakfast we were waiting for the bus that gives all I/O attendees a free ride to the I/O venue i.e Shoreline Amphitheatre. As we were waiting one of the I/O attendees booked an Uber ride and asked me to just hop in. A free Uber ride to the I/O event by a total stranger when the only trust is the Google I/O badge?! At that moment I realized that Google I/O is such a special event. Everyone is so friendly.
The third developer from the left booked the Uber ride. Such a friendly gesture!
After reaching the venue I attended almost every ARCore session because I love Augmented Reality. I also got the opportunity to meet the team behind ARCore and talk to them. I showed them some of my projects as well as some of the ideas that I had to improve ARCore further more. They loved my suggestions and invited me to lunch to discuss further more on 10th May. Here is the team —
Check out their session on Youtube
I also attended the office hours and the app review teams to get some of my projects reviewed. After that I went to the Community Lounge. This is one cool place to chill out with GDG members and DSC Leads around the world. Lots of fun!
After that was the India Community Dinner at an Indian Restaurant nearby where we had almost every I/O attendee from India as well as many developers from Google. Eating delicious food, discussions on how to improve the Google Cloud course (with a Google Cloud Instructor having her dinner right beside me!😱) and making strong connections were some of the highlights of this experience.
Once we were full we headed back towards the Shoreline Amphitheatre for the rock concert by The Flaming Lips.
I/O DAY 3 (9th May)
Sigh! Why do all good things come to an end?😢
Well most of my time on Day 3 went into discussing some of the ideas and projects built with ARCore(here are the projects) with the Firebase team and Google Assistant team. I also attended the “AR as a Feature” session (Yes I am obsessed with Augmented Reality. Sad that there were no sessions on Virtual Reality this time), took a few more pictures with the DSC team and collected some swags as well.
Conclusion
The insightful discussions, the urge to attend as many sessions as possible, meeting new developers and knowing their stories, making strong connections, getting involved in fun activities and participating in Codelabs are just some of the memorable things that one can do in Google I/O 2019. Since my return flight was on 12th May I went for sightseeing and I also had lunch with the ARCore team and a Developer Advocate from the Google Assistant team on 10th May at Google Office at 1255 Pear Ave, Mountainview to discuss few ideas that can improve ARCore further more.
Google I/O was a memorable experience for me. I would like to thank Google and Udacity to offer me the Google India Scholarship(Read more about it here) in 2018 for the Android Developer Nanodegree track and also giving me the opportunity to attend Google I/O. Thankyou!
