I was there, after having worked on parts of the program, I took pictures, and I guess I should share some of that. It seems years ago already.
Outside · Google I/O, it’s an event. The preparations are sort of heroic in scale.
On The Morning Of, the satellite trucks were parked end-to-end outside the venue, and the anchorguys were uplinking like crazy, and if it’s on TV it must real, right?
Inside · People; lots and lots of people. Mostly male, mostly smart, mostly well-paid, mostly geeky.
I was actually irritated about the sellout-in-seconds, and had lobbied for a more intelligent admission procedure. But in fact, the effect seemed usefully randomizing; the people I met all seemed like the right people. A lot of ’em were foot-soldiers, not Bay-Aryan industry hacks. I’d like us to try for some more gender/geography diversity, but I acknowledge it’s a tough problem.
Payload · I am not gonna rehash the skydiving and giveaways and momentum numbers and all that stuff; it’s been done. My personal concern was what was coming off the stage during the Android tech sessions, If you’ve got 28 hours or so to spare, you can be the judge.
I had worked myself into such an obsessive corner that whenever I walked into an Android session all I could think about was how it could have been made better with just a couple more rehearsals. Having said that, if any of the speakers are listening, my apologies for going all hard-edged on most of the early rehearsals. Those don’t count, it’s what happens on the day that does, and near as I can tell, the audience went away happy.
Pure Fun · My favorite part of the show was just talking to random geeks. They’re mostly interesting people doing interesting things. They like photographing toys.
· · ·
Most of my time, and most of the best conversation, was at the Android Office Hours stand. A few people walked up to give us a hard time, and a lot more walked up with friendly faces and hard questions, but a lot just wanted to share stories of life in the software-builders’ world.
It’s a good life.
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: Tom Weir (Jul 19 2012, at 21:20)
I'd imagine that giving away toys doesn't really help with the "selling out in seconds" problem.
Might want to consider requiring some token amount of engagement prior to getting swag. I.e. do something trivial with the new API, prove it to a human, and you earn your swag voucher. Open it up to the live internet audience, and you might have something compelling.
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