Google I/O 2013 | Hacker News Reader

Google I/O 2013

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86 pointspalebluedot56 comments

I/O used to be worthwhile, 2-3 years ago, there were tons of technical talks I was interested in.

Now it's just a dog & pony consumer technology show, and Google has so many irons in the fire that each technology only gets a few, if any, talks.

They should go back to having a true developer conference, and have some other conference for the big wigs to play Steve Jobs.

...but of course I'll try and get a ticket this year.

I have now been to every Google I/O, and I will say that this last year was exceptionally disappointing (by which I mean that I feel like it fell off a cliff as opposed to continuing a gradual decline). It used to be that you could go to the "office hours" areas, which were setup like rooms full of the developers that work on various projects, and kind of "hang out" with developers, talking about use cases and issues you had run into.

Last year, these were replaced with "help desks", and while the people there were very friendly (and while I really appreciated the one guy who went pretty far out of his way to obtain a stock image for a Nexus 7 when it seemed like I might have needed to flash one), all of the people identified themselves as "developer relations", not "developers", and none of the people I had gotten to know as key members of their team from previous I/O events were present.

(I also, like others, find the situation of "it is economically incorrect to not attempt to go to I/O due to handouts" ludicrous, and I wish they would stop doing it, even though I know it would make some of my friends who often attend with me sad. Google has tried to improve the situation by having handouts be given as part of talks and having the timing of central ones staggarred across the days, but it doesn't solve the core problem that there is no entrance cost to attending this conference.)

I would love a Google-operated, tech-talk only conference, without the product announcements, give-aways, etc.

>Last year, these were replaced with "help desks" This was my main problem with IO last year. The informal developer gathering office hours from previous years were the best part of IO.

I convinced some colleagues to go last year on the merits of that alone. Was seriously disappointed with the help desk format it devolved into.

Developer relations are normally engineers also on the product, but with more of a focus on Working with external developers.

That has not been my experience with other companies (such as Amazon), and did not seem to be the case for these people at Google I/O (whom I actually had a conversation with about this). Regardless, there is a big difference between someone working on something somewhere in the product and the people in charge of each of the major subsystems (whichb is the specific experience from previous years).

If they don't want demand to be insane, maybe they should stop giving away so much hardware.

2012 free hardware: Samsung Galaxy Nexus ($300?), Asus Nexus 7 ($200), Nexus Q ($300), Samsung Chromebox ($330)

That's for a ticket price of $900.

They could also raise the ticket price. The demand is high, the supply is limited, and having lots of digits keeps people from flooding the registration page.

Putting the pros and cons of the free hardware aside, I'm not sure getting rid of it would solve the demand problems. Apple charges $700 more for WWDC tickets, give away no hardware, and it still sells out in under two hours.

It's fine to sell out a developer conference if there is high demand by developers. The problem with I/O, is that there are some who go, even though they aren't core Google platform developers.

I consistently hear the key reason to go to WWDC, is that a good portion of the Apple Engineers take the week off, and go there to answer, one-on-one, questions that external developers have regarding APIs and use cases. Quite often, the person answering the question, is the Apple Engineer who wrote that API in the first place.

I agree that you can't do anything if your raw demand is too high. But I think free hardware creates artificial demand, where some people are there just to get the hardware, and other people are there because the hardware makes the financials a bit easier to swallow.

Personally, I don't own an Android device, but I'd probably sign up if I lived in the area. It would be fun and I'd probably break even so why not?

What further exasperates the issue is the free hardware is often be kept by an individual while the ticket price is paid by their employer.

Yes...this was noticeable even though I don't care much about Google I/O. Last year I saw someone I follow on twitter announce that he had a ticket and it became quite obvious to me that he's a swagster. Great guy but not one of the people whom I think would add the most value to a developer conference. :)

I do wonder how many people dependent on corporate / government / educational institution training approval actually can go to these conferences.

I've never been to IO - but have been wondering - does it seem like a significant number of people disappear after collecting the free gear?

Hah, your forgetting about the black ball that never carried a tune.

I really want to see more Go talks this year, the Panel with Rob Pike and Ken Thompson was bad-ass.

Hoping that Google announce support of developing Android app using Go.

Holy crap, that would be AWESOME. I really want to develop for Android, but I hate Java with passion, and Scala doesn't seem like an option.

> and Scala doesn't seem like an option

Care to explain why?

Unfortunate, looks like I won't be going this year like I planned. It's overlapping with BlackBerry Live, that goes from May 14-16 in Orlando. Would've liked to have gone to both, since I love both platforms. Looks like I'll just have to catch the Web casts again.

BlackBerry Live, yeah I'm sure whatever happens there will be relevant in 12-18 months. /s

Yeah! Just like Google Wave is still relevant! And Google TV!

(Keynotes from a few recent Google I/Os.)

Google TV feels fairly relevant to me. Have you shopped for a TV lately?

It's certainly not the best thing ever by any stretch, but it is out there and seems to be getting bigger.

https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ABBRY RIM: $13.18/share

https://www.google.com/finance?q=GOOG Google: $799.71/share

Relevance? Spend your valuable time at the conferences of companies that have a viable future.

Granted, Google's future is much brighter than RIM's at this point, but raw stock price is a pretty bad way to convey that - it contains 0 information beyond what it costs to acquire one share in the company.

Disagree. A company's stock price directly correlates to what the market values the future earnings of the company at.

Company doesn't have a future? Down to zero with you.

Right, but you listed Google and RIM's stock price as though comparing the two prices by themselves is significant. It isn't. RIM could have substantially more shares outstanding than Google.

Comparing their market caps? A little better. Comparing how their prices have changed over time? Probably a lot better. Comparing the two prices by themselves? Useless.

Market caps:

RIM: 6.79B Google: 263.63B

Chart comparing their stock prices: https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1...

I believe the data I've added reinforces my original argument.

What is your original argument? Microsoft is also worth over $200 Billion but that doesn't mean Windows Phone is doing good. Or in other words, Google makes their money by selling ads, largely on desktops. Raw stock prices or market caps mean nothing.

Can someone who has been explain the value of attending?

I've been to I/O the last three years and I've found it to be worth the price of admission, even if you ignore the free stuff they've given out. The sessions are streamed or filmed, but if this stuff is your bread and butter professionally it's well worth it to go in person and talk to fellow humans.

The networking opportunities are great. I have sat down at lunch and realized the guy next to me was a developer of an open source package I was using in an Android app I've published.

They usually have office hours sessions for the various developer platforms they have, where you can bring your questions to their dev-rel people and engineers.

They've also been doing some code labs where you can try out some new part of a platform in a guided manner. There's another networking opportunity there, the way it's laid out means you get to exchange help and get to know the people sitting around you.

Having gone last year I got in on the Glass preorder (which was exclusive to I/O attendees) and I'm looking forward to having an opportunity as a developer to get out ahead of this tech.

And they generally have a pretty fun afterparty lined up, if you're into robots that fly, music, and games.

I have not been. But I would expect a very large part of the value to be in networking - being surrounded by top industry experts, market leaders, etc will go a long way.

Networking is definitely one of the main reasons. It's why I'd encourage anyone who doesn't get tickets (so, given the odds, probably me and most people here!) to stop by one of the local satellite events the Google user groups run. They're good fun, and the larger ones live stream many of the sessions.

I hope no startups that I invested in bother trying to go to Google I/O.

Your comment is very intriguing. Do you mean as attendees or as partners in the Developer Sandbox Showcase Thing that Google always set up? And also, why?

A large part of the value of going to Ivy League schools is schmoozing with other Ivy League schoolers. If nothing else, I think the same applies here.

There's certainly a profitable startup idea somewhere that targets improving ticket sales and purchases for hot items. Google itself is absolutely miserable in this area, and I think most other large sites are as well.

I'm not sure this problem is solvable. The capitalistic response to Google I/O tickets selling out is to increase the price until they don't. But that would be a PR distaster for Google and likely be contrary to what they actually want for their event.

A lottery, maybe?

One way to solve it is to make people pass a quick programming test before they can buy a ticket

They were threatening to do that for last year's meeting, and then backed out on it. There was no test.

http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/11/google-io-2012-extend...

In the meantime, be sure to brush up on your coding skills. They’ll come in handy when the new application process opens in February. That’s all we can tell you for now, but we’d advise against making travel arrangements until then.

CAPTCHA: FizzBuzz edition.

http://codepen.io/icodeforlove/full/eudqF

this sure would make it a lot easier to get a ticket!

The current system is a lottery. If the page loads in the first couple of minutes your in, otherwise your not.

Well, there are a number of areas for potential improvement. I know that the absolute number of tickets sold isn't really going to change, and the price isn't something a startup could fix. I was more thinking about qualities like server load, customer fairness, etc. Google Play went down when the Nexus 4 launched, gave incorrect information to customers, spat out ridiculous errors, etc. And it seems there is no end to the complaints about the lack of notification or timing for very qualified and excited people to purchase tickets to I/O. A method of holding tickets until the purchaser demonstration of value, for example. Or something. I don't know.

Apple has the same problems.

* Increase ticket prices and then corporate people push out indie developers.

* Increase venue size and then each attendee gets less value out of it, and there's an upper limit to venues anyways.

* Add a lottery and now your most loyal customers may not be able to go.

It honestly seems like the best solution is to just throw open the floodgates at an announced time, and assume the people who really want a ticket will be the ones most committed to getting one.

Throwing open the floodgates at a random time might be an even better commitment filter.

I don't understand why they wouldn't do an auction - their entire business relies on auctions for ads, and they even did their IPO as an auction. Seems like it would be a unique solution to the problem of charging for events like this

let people bid for tickets, they see the current lowest bid that got in so they can increase their bid, then charge everyone the lowest bid that got in

Wish they would rent all of Moscone center instead of just Moscone West. I clicked to buy a ticket the second it opened last time and still didn't get one through that means. I was lucky enough to win a coding contest for my ticket the year before and work for an OEM the next year, who seemed to get some pity tickets because they kicked all the OEMs out to make more room for fake living room setups for the Q.

Prediction: Google IO will be heavily focused on Google Glass and they give everyone at the conference a free pair.

Hope they do this because I want to see some amazing Google Glass apps when they launch this year.

I wonder what the odds are for a free Pixel this year.

Doubt it. But they might offer the next-gen ARM one and some other devices.

How does Google verify Academic tickets?

You present a transcript or student id at the door after ordering. You'll be turned away if you show up empty handed, however.

2012 webpage says proof of enrollment which can only be verified with a transcript. Student ID can be old.

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