Pete LePage

Thoughts on web development, life, and photography.

Google Developer Days - South America

Google Developer Day 2011My leg of the Google Developer Day tour is almost over, and it’s been AWESOME!  Wow!  Not only have I now visited 6 out of 7 continents (anyone know of any conferences or events in Antartica - it’s the only one left I’ve not been to), but I was able to add Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires to the list of cities that I need to come back and visit while on vacation.  I’ve been thoroughly impressed with all of the developers here who showed me some of the really cool stuff that they’re working on.

I presented two sessions in at each of the Google Developer Days (videos are coming shortly and I’ll link to them as soon as they’re posted), and had a small part in the keynote demoing the Chrome stuff.  Our venue in Buenos Aires, a Catholic University, was pretty neat, though as I joked, the last time I was in a university classroom, I was probably at the back of the room trying to stay awake. When we got to the venue on Sunday night to do our rehearsals and tech checks, they hadn’t put the Google Developer Day decorations up yet, which was a little weird because there was a crucifix on one side, and a large photo of the previous Pope on the other side.  We also hit a little snag because they blocked a couple of the websites that we needed!  Thankfully they were really good and got them unblocked pretty quickly.

I think my favorite on stage oops was during the live speech recognition demo.  Any time you do a speech recognition demo on stage in a big venue, the acoustics work against you - but can sometimes lead to comical results.  In Brazil, I tried to say “Hola Brazil”, which Chrome thought was “Fort Lauderdale”.  I did the same demo in Buenos Aires, and got “Call Argentina”.

I’ve listed the demos and slide decks below, and as soon as the videos go online, I’ll get a post out about those!  The slide decks between the two countries are the same, the only thing that changed was the title slide.

Keynote Demos

Sao Paulo, Brazil

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Thanks for a great trip guys - and if you're in Buenos Aires and want to grab a beer (or wine) and chat about web apps, I'd love to meet and see what you're working on!