Google Developer Day

This was a pretty interesting opportunity for some small group time with some Google people to talk about their current product offering.  First off, their office on 20 W. Kinzie is pretty freakin' awesome.  It fits into any other office tower layout, but they've done some inventive things with the space.

The 'Keynote' was just that, a kinda state of the union for Google product offerings, breaking them down into Client (Chrome), Cloud (Data APIs, App Engine, Google Docs, Apps, etc.), and Connectivity (Andriod, GWT, OpenSocial).

Breakout 1: Google App Engine

Don Schwartz, an App Engine engineer, went through a demo/tutorial about how to create a messageboard.  It took only 45 minutes, granted he's an expert with notes, but it really showed the power of being able to deploy an application to the cloud.  This is he app he built.  He also talked  about how the question and voting part of Obama's digital townhall was built on App Engine.

Breakout 2: Geo APIs

Delson Ting presented the Geo APIs.  The presentation was basically a breakdown of a demo he had prepared beforehand which showed how to gracefully degrade an app based on what plug-ins the client machine has.  The mapping points are pulled from a Google Docs spreadsheet feed, but could work with any xml feed.  Check out all the code here.

Breakout 3: Google Data APIs

Sarah Graham presented a use case for the Data APIs and data aggregation.  Most things are based on AtomPub and REST-ful communication.  She showed a handy JSON inspector and explained how a MLB Calendar/Map mashup works.  I was surprised that so many people use Google Docs or Calendar as a reliable datasource, but I guess it makes sense in some cases.

All in all it was a good experience.  There could have been fewer code demos and more about how large brands or enterprise companies are using Google's products.  I think the tipping point will occur when those entities begin using Google products.  It could occur when a critical mass of one-off developers use the products, but I'm more interested in seeing how enterprise level companies are using Google's product offerings.  You can find a review of the day here.