Making the web faster and more user-friendly
Impressions on the Google I/O Connect 2024 + GDE Forum in Berlin
Google I/O is the annual Google event for developers which takes place in their offices in California, USA. Google I/O Connect is a series of hands-on, in-person developer events held around the world, to help developers apply the technology and announcements from Google I/O through live sessions, demos, codelabs, office hours, and more. As well as last year, I was invited to Google I/O Connect EMEA 2024. And as a Google Developer Expert (GDE), on the next day I also took part to the GDE Forum in Berlin Google offices. Keep reading to find out what these events were like and what I liked most of them.
The community dinner #
On the day before the conference, Google holds a dinner event to mix Google Developer Experts (GDE), Women Tech Makers (WTM), Google Developer Groups (GDG) organizers and people who work at Google (aka Googlers) in the GDE program or as developer relationship (devrel).
The aim of the event is to socialize, getting to know more people, networking with the ones you already know, strengthen the personal and professional connection, all of that while eating, drinking and discussing of the latest news about the industry.
I enjoyed the event, spent most of the time chatting with other web performance GDEs and googlers - particularly Barry Pollard (web performance developer advocate for Google Chrome) and Jocelyn -, hung out briefly with the Italian GDG community, ended up singing karaoke with my former workmate Ines, and when the event was over I took a long walk to the hotel with Paolo Galeone, a Machine Learning GDE who flew in with me from Bologna.
Main Google I/O event #
The main stage was taken from Googlers for the initial keynote, and there was I, sitting in the front row as I like (mostly because I'm short-sighted).
However Google I/O is NOT a replica of Google I/O, so Google require you to watch the videos of what was presented at the main I/O event beforehand. Then, at Google I/O connect, you have the chance to ask questions to Googlers, who sit on stage, about the topics presented.
The event is divided in many stages (Web, AI, Android, Flutter, etc.) so you can attend the ones you're most interested in. For example, I spent most of the time in the Web stage, at events about the new web UI features, about the latest Angular release, etc.
There, I also had the luck to meet Nishu Goel, who did a very nice job in exploring Interaction to Next Paint (INP) last year and gave a talk about it at the Performance Now confernce, so she's a rockstar to me but I never had the chance to meet her in person. So, more networking.
This event was open to all the people invited to the community dinner, plus other people who occasionally joined the event by purchasing a ticket.
GDE Forum #
The GDE forum was restricted to Google Developer Experts, and had a limited number of seats (150), so only the ones who registered first were able to access it. I was amongst the lucky ones, but I know many who just were in the waiting list and still didn't make it.
Here I had the chance to see a preview and give feedback on some of the feature the Google Chrome Developer Tools team are working on, which I can't reveal as they're covered by NDA, and take part to a live INP debugging session with Barry Pollard (the most appreciated event as it resulted from the final poll).
And of course, more networking!
To conclude, it was a very lovely and useful event to take part to, and I hope I will have the chance to take part to it next year.