I am Patrick Boos. I am a developer at CyberAgent, Inc.
Google IO Sessions
It was a great opportunity for me to go to Google IO in San Francisco in May 2013. I have been able to meet great people and learn about the newest trends and technologies. As a Android Developer I was of course interested about everything related to Android. For that reason I mainly followed the Android track and visited many great sessions. Afterwards I will share the points from those sessions that got me interested most. I learned two years ago at my last Google IO, that there is always an empty seat somewhere in the front. I know that by sharing this secret I might risk that this won’t be true anymore next year ;-).
I hope you understand, that I can not share everything said at Google IO here. There is just too much and I do not have the time to write about all of that. But I would like to share a few things that I liked most:
> New Build System for Android
The new build system which uses gradle is very interesting. It is what I have been waiting for for a long time. I have started using Maven because that helped me to accomplish my tasks better. Gradle is not finished yet, but on a very good way to make me switch to it from maven. Gradle seems to be a lot more flexible than maven, but still simpler than maven.
> Android Studio
Since I did the switch to Intellij IDEA last year already, I was very happy to see this change. I recommend everyone to try out the new Android Studio already. You will not regret switching to it. I would never go back to eclipse again.
> Google Play Services update
It is great to see that Google supports us developers by adding new APIs to Google Play Services. This way we can target even old phones without having to wait for them to be updated with a newer Android version.
Those include: Maps v2 (since December), Fused Location Provider, Geofencing, and Activity Recognition (walking, biking, …), Google+ SignIn, GCM updates and lastly APIs for games which includes Game State sync, Leaderboards, Achievements and Multiplayer.
Google IO Sandbox
Besides the sessions there was the Sandbox where many well known companies where present and where one had the chance to talk to many great developers from Google or other companies. Since I could watch the sessions from Japan as well, the Sandbox was a focus for me on the last day of Google IO. I noticed that this was a great decisions because I was able to talk to engineers that were a lot more experienced than I am. So could I learn a lot more about how other engineers approach and solve problems. I was able to talk to gradle developers and learn how I can use it for the tasks that I want to and how to extend or configure it to do the things I want it to do.
Meetups
But there was more than just Google IO. San Francisco offers a lot of great meetups that got me busy in the evenings. Anyone traveling to San Francisco I would recommend to check out meetups and go to as many as possible that are of your interest. I was able to go to 3 meetups and I have really enjoyed them. There were great presentation and especially the people that participated. I meet people that I have worked together over the internet.
Meeting People
You might have noticed already, that wherever I went I was able to meet people. And this is what I would recommend to everyone! If you go to a conference, spend all the free time meeting people! You won’t regret it. Of course you can learn from the presenters of the conference. And you should listen and learn from them. But you can learn a lot from the fellow attendees as well! Don’t miss that chance. If you go to the conference breakfast/lunch for example. Do not search for the empty table. Search for the most crowded table (which has still a seat open) and join it. Get to know the people at that table, ask questions, get to know them.
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Google IO 2013 report part.1
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