On Google Developer Day (or, How I broke GoogleMail)

Well, the Developer Day sessions have come to a close and it was a fun, code-packed and, at times, manic day. It was great to see so many people come together from so many different places, but even better to see how much they had to talk about. Just observing casual conversations in the halls and igloos as well as over the long lunch, it was really inspiring to see what can happen when you get so many great minds in a room together.

There were some great apps started in the code labs, the winners of which got Chrome comic books. We really look forward to seeing the development thereof. It was also cool to hear from Hyves and Netlog that the OpenSocial family has now grown by 10% (40M new users!) with the addition of their social networks as container sites. Thanks to Viadeo and MySpace for their great presence as well in the OpenSocial sessions, as well as the Met Office for sharing their maps experience. Lastminute.com, Rummble and ITN really provided some colour to the OpenSocial and Gears for Mobile talk as well. And last to Carl-Gustaf Harroch, who provided the real Android developer perspective. So thank you to our partners!

The road to get here was not perfect, though, and I thought I would share a few of the fun potholes we hit. My favourite was when Google Mail thought I was spamming our attendees by sending too many confirmation emails in one day. While I was reassured of the strength of the product as a Google Mail user myself, there was still a short-lived panic when questions were flooding in and the send function was disabled!

We also had a hiccough with UK customs and our customised Lego USB men loaded with code labs masterials. We planned every delivery for the day from the stages and video equipment right down to bags of crisps and the Guitar Hero. We just never factored in the 30-day customs holding period. Fortunately the little men made it in about 17 hours before the start of the event!

We made a short video to recap the day, which will be up shortly, alongside the keynote and the rest of the content on the Google UK YouTube Channel. There are loads of photos in these picasa web albums. For all those who could not make it, stay tuned to see all the session content - presentations and videos - in the next couple of days on the code site. But for now, I'll leave you with GDD in numbers. Up next will be some of Tom Stocky's thoughts.

• 1800 candy bars eaten (inspiring Twitter conspiracies about why we had so much chocolate.)
  
• 550 developers in attendance
• 60 Megabytes of internet (that never crashed!)
• 24 Google speakers
• 24 Google volunteers
• 20 partner speakers (Hyves, Netlog, Rummble, Lastminute.com, ITN, the Met Office & the head of the Android User Group.)
• 6 feet worth of stacked giant Jenga pieces
  
• 2 giant screens that had powerpoint & code throughout the day, then Wii and Guitar Hero for the party.
• 1 great day by had by us and, we hope, by you.

Liz Ericson
Product Marketing Manager - Developer Programmes