Google, along with Globe and Ayala Foundation, recently hosted a developer event last June 20, 2009. Not wanting to miss any new stuff that might be discussed during the event, I headed on over there with a box of brownies in hand as well.
I arrived in time for lunch to meet up with Rom Feria, Migs Paraz, Dean Berris, Ruzette (and friend), and Jon Limjap. Lunch was great as we talked about everything from technology to brownies and uh, other stuff. Word of the day: "addicting". No, I won't say more.
The event itself was interesting or boring, depending on who you talk to. Newbies were in awe with the possibilities of what could be done with the APIs provided by Globe and Google. But for our group, we found ourselves listening to topics we've heard before. Stuff that we've already accessed and seen on the web. The only difference being there was an expert in the room who was presenting. Some were expecting samples of Google Wave and the Android API would be presented, even in passing. Unfortunately that didn't happen. I was hoping that they could show a sample of how Globe's API can be meshed with Google's APIs. Maybe I'll try to hack that myself.
I was expecting some hacking to happen, but it never did. While there were a lot of outlets to plug your laptops into, the WiFi wasn't working at all. The few who were able to connect, did so through personal HSDPA modems and phones. This made me wish I had brought along my phone cable so I could use my phone's connection. But I was still able to use the twitter backchannel. (Thank you, Twibble!)
Nevertheless, it wasn't a loss for me. I got to talk with good friends/colleagues and meet new interesting people. I was even surprised to see photographer Anton Sheker and my former Java Boot Camp student Oliever Talusan. They had to leave early after they found out that the topics didn't jive with what they needed at the moment. Perhaps one of these days I'll connect with them to see if there's anything I could contribute to whatever project they had in mind.
In the end, the workshop sparked the birth of new developer meet-ups. In the pipeline are meet-ups for local mobile developers and "coffee and code". The first meeting for Philippine mobile developers might happen in the next few weeks. For more information, follow the twitter stream #phmodev.
Comments
Post new comment