Around the world with Google Developer Day 2011

By Monica Tran, Google Developer Day Team

This year's Google Developer Day events just finished after a worldwide tour across nine cities and four continents. We'd like to thank the thousands of developers who contributed to making Google Developer Day a success. If we didn’t make it to your city, you can continue to get regular updates on all things developer at our Google Developers page on Google+. And for those of you looking for a community to join, get in touch with one of our local Google Technology User Groups (GTUGs) or if you’re feeling bold, start your own chapter!

Please read the recaps below, and visit our website to get the highlights, videos and photos from Google Developer Day 2011. See you in 2012!

Sao Paulo, Brazil: The countdown to Google Developer Day ended with the first of our events in Sao Paulo, where we welcomed over 1,600 developers. Brazilian developers showed up in full force for the event, celebrating the latest Chrome Webstore launch, showing us the most crazy code they’ve ever written and interacting with developers’ creations in the Android ADK showcase.

Buenos Aires, Argentina: Continuing our Latin America tour, James Whittaker, Director of Engineering, delivered a keynote featuring the latest from Android, Chrome, and Google+. The keynote presentations were built in HTML5 and featured a 3D demo of the latest Ice Age trailer. The Google+ game was a hit among attendees, who used the pin exchange as a conversation starter to meet other developers. Those who found all five, including the elusive black Circles pin, took home one of these guys.

Moscow, Russia: Russia is home to the 4th largest developer population in the world, accounting for 12% of EMEA’s developers. On October 10, more than 1,800 of those developers joined us in Moscow, where we hosted five simultaneous tracks featuring 19 speakers and 25 sessions. With the help of Russian GTUGs, we featured 16 projects, including ADK-powered robots from our Open Call challenges. Check out photos of our speakers in Russian national shirts and other photos of the event here.

Prague, Czech Republic: This year’s Google Developer Day focused on bringing nearly 1,000 members of the developer community together in creative and fun ways. Our very first Developer Sandbox featured 12 companies, in addition to four projects from ADK Challenge and a showcase of the 20 latest Android devices. At the end of the day--after 27 sessions by 25 speakers--Ignite stole the show with eight Czech influencers presenting on topics from happiness at work to 3D printing. Additionally, check out our HTML5 developer competition, Mam Padla, as well as videos and photos from the event.

Beijing, China: Despite being a late addition, China showed up in a big way with a 3-city Google Developer Day tour that attracted 2,240 attendees. In addition to the keynote, 36 breakout sessions, 21 partner booths and 6 product demos were offered, and over 60 developer applications showcased. New to Beijing this year was the live audience instant message display, which was shown during the keynote. Seven GTUGs across China sent in greeting videos and nearly a dozen developers came on stage to share their experiences developing innovative business solutions using Google technologies.

Tokyo, Japan: With over 1,700 developers in attendance after being selected via DevQuiz from 5,000 registrations, and with over 100 volunteer developers and Googlers collaborating to organize, this year’s Google Developer Day embraced the spirit of open source with 40 developers in the Developer Sandbox, 17 Open Call (Android and HTML5) exhibits, a Mini Theater for developers to stage informal presentations, and an appearance from Bar Android. Ignite closed the event with lightning talks from 6 developers and our DevQuiz team, GoogleFes!, and a special dance performance from the GDD48. Check out our highlights video and photos for the full picture.

Sydney, Australia: We hosted our largest developer audience in Australia at our third Google Developer Day event. Our Sydney-based engineers and Developer Relations speakers put on 32 sessions, including a VC panel that featured interviews from experts at Posse, Pollenizer and Atlassian. To quench their thirst, developers turned to iZac, our Android ADK-powered bartender. For more highlights and photos, visit our homepage.

Tel Aviv, Israel: Israel has one of the highest numbers of startups per capita, leading us to deem it the “Startup Nation” amongst our Google Developer Day countries. 1,450 developers joined us for this year’s event, where we hosted 27 sessions, as well as lots of fun activities at the innovation lounge. To showcase the rich innovation coming from the country, local developers Paradroid, The Sign Language Glove, Xtendi and iOnRoad (among many others) were on-hand to demo their creations; while Tmura (the Israeli Public Service Venture Fund) and the Israeli Accessibility Association helped raise awareness for causes relevant to developers. Check out the highlights video and photos.

Berlin, Germany: With over 2,100 developers in attendance at this year’s event, the grande finale of our world tour, Google Developer Day in Berlin, was also our largest single GDD in 2011. Partnering with two of the most innovative universities in Germany, Technische Universität Berlin (TU) and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU), we hosted 37 sessions in 5 parallel tracks. We had a great presentation of the winners of the German ADK- and HTML5-Open Call, university students showcased 31 projects with innovative technologies mostly related to Google products and GDD themes, and we had a great after-GDD get together at the famous Berlin underground space station c-base. Our German GTUG community, with 16 local GTUGs the most active in Europe, organized an amazing 4-day Developer Weekend, which included Bootcamp, Hack-and-Tell and Ignite sessions. Don’t miss our highlights video (featuring beatboxing at its best) and our photo gallery.


You might remember Monica Tran from I/O Live or one of our eight Google Developer Days around the world. Now Monica is back to lead the charge on Google I/O 2012.

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor