At Google Play, we are committed to helping developers of all sizes reach their full potential, and go further, faster. To continue supporting indies as they bring some of the most innovative titles to players worldwide, today we’re opening submissions to the 2022 edition of our two annual programs – the Indie Games Accelerator and Festival.
Through these programs, independent game developers and small studios can boost their game’s visibility, get training, and tap into a network of gaming experts:
If you are a small games studio looking for help to launch or grow a new title, enter the Accelerator to get exclusive training by mentors and industry experts;
Or, if you have already created and launched a high quality game that is ready for the spotlight, enter the Festival in Japan, South Korea or Europe for a chance to win promotions and reach new players.
Submissions for both Indie Games programs are open from June 1st to July 1st, 2022.
Noto emoji, a new black and white emoji font with less color, may gain us more in the long run
Posted by Jennifer Daniel, Creative Director – Emoji & Expression
In 1999 — back when Snake 🐍 was the best thing about your phone 📱 — there were three phone carriers in Japan 🗾 . On these phones were tiny, beautiful pictures called emoji (meaning “picture” and “character” in Japanese 🥰). These 176 images were very simple — think 8-bit tech — and as a result were exquisitely abstract and tremendously useful when texting ✨ Twenty years later 👶🕛🕐🕑🕒🕓🕔🕕🕖🕗🕘🕙🕚🧓, emoji are a global phenomenon 🌎. Now, our phones have fancy retina screens and somewhere along the way an important part of what made emoji so handy was left by the wayside: their simplicity. That’s why we’ve created a new emoji font: a monochrome Noto Emoji (a black and white companion to Noto Emoji Color).
Noto Emoji works like any other font you might use: You can change any character’s color, size and weight. Download it and give it a whirl.
What’s old is new again 🔙
Over time, emoji have become more detailed. Instead of representing broad concepts there has been a trend to design emoji to be hyper realistic. This wouldn’t be a problem except skeuomorphism’s specificity has resulted in the exclusion of other similar concepts in your keyboard. Today we have “💃” … but what about other types of dance? Hula dancing? Belly dancing? Salsa dancing? Boogie woogie? By removing as much detail as possible, emoji could be more flexible, representing the idea of something instead of specifically what is in front of you (that … is what your camera is for 😂).
We also want to make sure emoji keep up with platform technology. We’ve got dark mode … we’ve got light mode … and now you can change the color of your emoji font so it can operate with the same dynamism as your operating system. Noto Emoji is also a variable font — opt for a “light” grade if it appears small 💪 or “bold” if you want them to have some weight. 💪 .
New designs, fewer details
To design something simple seems like it would be … well, simple … but it’s deceptively complex 😅
At first the approach seemed obvious — simply redraw the Noto Emoji Color designs in black and white. They are iconic, they will be legible. Done deal. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Not so fast. The removal of color is no trivial task. Take for example: Flags.
You can’t simply convert flags into black and white. You wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between Finland and Sweden. You could redraw the flags but that puts them at risk of being incorrect. Instead, we leveraged the ISO’s country codes. These sequences of letters are unique and represent each country. As a result, black and white flags have a much more contemporary aesthetic — kind of like bumper stickers 😜.
Let’s also take a look at the process involved to redesign the people emoji. For some characters, color is baked into the concept (like skin tone or hair color). It simply didn’t look right to replace color with hash marks or polka dots. And that my dear is how the blobs came back. Say hello (again) to our little friends.
Likable. Nostalgic. Relatable without maintaining a distinction between genders. Google’s blob emoji were really something special. Cute, squishy, and remarkably friendly. We were able to bring back a little bit of what made them special while simultaneously discarding the parts that weren’t working. Most notably, the blobs’ facial expressions were wildly inconsistent but that was very easily fixed in black and white mode. It’s important emoji work cross-platform. The real world is not black and white but in emoji land we can finally have our favorite little dancer back 💃.
So here we are today, dancing into the future with our favorite new emoji font. We can’t wait to see how you use it. Visit Google Fonts to download or embed onto your website. Happy emoji-ing! 🐒🐒🎉🐬
Posted by Janelle Kuhlman, Developer Relations Program Manager
For Women’s History Month, we’re celebrating a few of our Google Developer Experts. Meet Maryam Alhutayfi, Android GDE. The GDE program team encourages qualified candidates that identify as women or non-binary to express interest in joining the community by completing this form.
Android GDE Maryam Alhuthayfi has loved programming since high school, when she learned programming in Visual Studio and basic website development.
“We didn’t get much beyond that because there weren’t many Arabic resources,” she says. “That experience got me excited to dig deeper into technology. I wanted to know how the web functions, how software is made, and more about programming languages.”
Maryam studied computer science at university and majored in information systems. For her senior year graduation project, she and her team decided to build an Android application, her first experience with Android. She graduated with honors and landed a job as a web developer, but she kept thinking about getting back to being an Android developer.
She joined Women Techmakers in Saudi Arabia in 2019, when the group launched, to connect with other women in tech to help and support. She got a job as an Android robotics developer and became a co-organizer of GDG Cloud Saudi, her local Google Developer Group. Now Maryam is a senior Android development specialist at Zain KSA, one of Saudi Arabia’s largest telecommunications companies, which she describes as “a dream come true,” and in January 2022, she became an Android GDE.
Maryam is the first Android GDE in the Middle East and the second in North Africa. She contributes to the Android community by speaking about Android and Kotlin development in detail, and software development more generally. She maintains a blog and GitHub repository and gives numerous talks about Android development. She encourages Android developers to use Kotlin and Jetpack Compose, and she describes both as causing a major shift in her Android development path. She started the Kotlin Saudi User Group in 2020.
Maryam regularly mentors new Android developers and gives talks on Android for Women Techmakers and Women Who Code. She encourages Android developers at big companies like Accenture and Careem to join and contribute to the Android community.
Remembering how few Arabic resources she had as a high school student, Maryam creates both Arabic and English content to enrich Android learning resources. “I made sure those resources would be available to anyone who wants to learn Android development,” she says. “Locally, in collaboration with GDGs in Saudi Arabia, we host sessions throughout each month that cover Android, Flutter, and software development in general, and other exciting topics, like data analytics, cyber security, and machine learning.”
She regularly attends the Android developer hangouts led by Android GDE Madona Wambua and Android developer Matt McKenna to learn more and get inspired by other Android developers in the community.
In her full-time job, Maryam is immersed in her work on the official Zain KSA app.
“It’s my job and my team’s job to give our millions of customers the best experience they can have, and I’m pushing myself to the limit to achieve that” she says. “I hope they like it.”
Maryam encourages other new developers, especially women, to share their knowledge.
“Communicate your knowledge–that makes you an expert because people will ask you follow-up questions that might give you different perspectives on certain things and shift your focus on learning new things constantly ” she says. “You serve others by sharing your knowledge.”
Follow Maryam on Twitter at @Mal7othify | Learn more about Maryam on LinkedIn.
The Google Developers Experts program is a global network of highly experienced technology experts, influencers, and thought leaders who actively support developers, companies, and tech communities by speaking at events and publishing content.
The GDE program team encourages qualified candidates that identify as women or non-binary to express interest in joining the community by completing this form.
For Women’s History Month, we’re celebrating a few of our Google Developer Experts. Meet Zarah Dominguez, Android GDE. If you identify as a woman or non-binary and are interested in joining this community please complete this form.
Zarah Dominguez started Android development in 2009 and hasn’t looked back. “When I first discovered Android, I thought it was super cool seeing what I have coded come to life on a device within just a few clicks,” she says.
Learning Android on her own, Zarah began documenting what she learned, to remember it herself and to help others. “Sometimes, I’d see answers on StackOverflow that said, ‘It’s simple,’ or ‘It’s straightforward,’ but it wasn’t simple or straightforward for me, so I kept on writing, and more people, all over the world, started reading my posts. I was very surprised when I met another Android dev at Google I/O, and she told me that one of my posts helped her get unstuck. Being able to help even one person is a reward in itself, and hearing that from a fellow developer made me happy.”
Zarah got involved in the local Android community by speaking at conferences and organizing meetups, and a community manager nominated her to apply for the GDE program. She has run monthly Android meetups in Sydney and organized DevFests, and she speaks at community events and conferences in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand.
Android development is exciting and challenging because of the dynamic nature of the technology, Zarah says, with new features being released frequently and a vibrant developer community engaged with the platform. “The community around Android development is amazing–everyone is generous with their time and knowledge, which helps me improve my apps’ stability and performance,” she says. “The guidance and tools the Android team provides help me make better choices as a developer, influencing how I approach problems and propose solutions.”
Zarah says Android broadens the reach of any project. “I am very lucky to get a new device every so often, but not everyone has that privilege, and a huge chunk of our user base may have phones that are a few years old or without a lot of processing power,” she says. “That’s part of the beauty of Android! A wide range of devices fit all sorts of budgets. The more devices we support, the more people we reach; the more people we reach, the more people we can help.”
Helping others is Zarah’s priority, as she believes accessibility should be first and foremost in the minds of app developers. “Technology, when used properly, has a huge potential of improving the lives of so many people,” she says. “I like building apps that have a positive social impact. From apps that help phlebotomists and nurses record and organize blood samples, to real estate apps that help people find their perfect home, to supermarket apps that help Australians get their weekly shop sorted, Android has allowed me to reach thousands of people and make their day-to-day tasks a little bit easier.”
She encourages other women developers to be confident and join the community. “@AndroidFeminati on Twitter is a good place to start,” she says. “It’s an inclusive and supportive group of women in Android. It’s also good to seek out local meetups like Women Who Code or Girl Geek Dinners to meet other women in tech in your local area. There’s nothing like having a group of strong women who are behind you no matter what and will support you 100%.”
She advises taking mistakes in stride and staying upbeat. “You will learn from it, and you will be better for it,” she says. “Perhaps most important of all is to always remember that you are capable, you are strong, you are extraordinary, and do not let anyone tell you otherwise!”
Follow Zarah on Twitter at @zarahjutz | Learn more about Zarah on LinkedIn.
The Google Developers Experts program is a global network of highly experienced technology experts, influencers, and thought leaders who actively support developers, companies, and tech communities by speaking at events and publishing content.
The program team is currently looking for interested candidates that identify as women or non-binary to join the global community. If you would like to be considered for the Experts program please complete this form.
For Women’s History Month, we’re celebrating a few of our Google Developer Experts. Meet Annyce Davis, Android GDE and Vice President of Engineering at Meetup.
When Annyce Davis first started learning about Android development, she was fascinated by the ability to create applications for a device that she carried around in her purse. “The ecosystem was young, and it was full of opportunities and challenges,” she says. “I could finally show my friends and family what I worked on every day!”
She says the fact that Android developers support multiple form factors and devices makes Android development fun and challenging. “Something that works on one type of Android device doesn’t necessarily work on another,” she says. “Being able to have the patience to work through the nuances makes it a challenging career.”
In the course of her career, Annyce has had the opportunity to develop Android applications across multiple form factors and in various contexts. She has designed applications for Android TV and tablets focused on video streaming. At another point in her career, she was designing for low-end devices with limited internet connectivity. “In each of the circumstances, I’m able to use specific aspects of the Android platform to get the job done,” she says. “I love that I get to develop applications used by millions of people around the world. I also appreciate being a part of the constant evolution of the Android ecosystem.”
She has taught thousands of people about Android development through blog posts, Meetup events, and conference talks. In her current professional role as the Vice President of Engineering at Meetup, Annyce says Android gives organizations flexibility, numerous resources, and community support. “As Android has evolved, it’s becoming easier to learn and develop for,” she says. “Additionally, the community support is unmatched. You have numerous resources that you can avail yourself of to get help when needed.”
When Annyce reflects upon her career, she says she wishes she had been braver about asking questions. She advises other women developers to be confident about asking for help or information and to be unafraid to make mistakes. “I experienced the most growth in my career when I was willing to put myself out there and just ask,” she says. “Being vulnerable and reaching out to others helped me to accelerate my growth. Grow your network and don’t be afraid to ask for help.”
Follow Annyce on Twitter at @brwngrldev | Learn more about Annyce on LinkedIn.
The Google Developers Experts program is a global network of highly experienced technology experts, influencers, and thought leaders who actively support developers, companies, and tech communities by speaking at events and publishing content.
Developers: it’s time to start marking your calendars, we’re hard at work on a busy slate of summits coming your way in just a few weeks. Here’s a quick rundown of three summits we just announced this week:
Android Dev Summit: October 27-28
Chrome Dev Summit: November 3
Firebase Summit: November 10
Android Dev Summit is back, October 27-28
Directly from the team who builds Android, the Android Dev Summit returns this year on October 27-28. Join us to hear about the latest updates in Android development, centered on this year’s theme: excellent apps, across devices. We have over 30 sessions on a range of technical Android development topics. Plus, we’ve assembled the team that builds Android to get your burning #AskAndroid questions answered live. Interested in learning more? Be sure to sign up for updates through our Android newsletter here.
Discover, Connect, Inspire at Chrome Dev Summit 2021
The countdown to Chrome Dev Summit 2021 is on — and we can’t wait to share what we have in store. We’ll kick things off on November 3 by sharing the latest product updates in our keynote and hosting a live ask me anything (AMA) with Chrome leaders. You’ll also have the chance to chat live with Googlers and developers around the world, participate in workshops with industry experts, attend interactive learning lounges to consult with engineers in a group setting, and receive personalized support during one-on-one office hours. Everyone can tune into the keynote and AMA, but space is limited for the workshops, office hours, and learning lounges. Request an invite to secure your spot — we’ll see you on November 3!
And follow the Firebase Twitter channel for more updates on Firebase Summit, which will be coming to you on November 10!
Cross-posted on the Android Developers blog by Karen Ng, Director, Product Management & Jacob Lehrbaum, Director of Developer Relations, Android & Play
As Android developers, we are all driven by building experiences that delight people around the world. And with people depending on your apps more than ever, expectations are higher and your jobs as developers aren’t getting easier. Today, at Google I/O, we covered a few ways that we’re trying to help out, whether it be through Android 12 – one of the biggest design changes ever, Jetpack, Jetpack Compose, Android Studio, and Kotlin to help you build beautiful high quality apps. We’re also helping when it comes to extending your apps wherever your users go, like through wearables and larger-screened devices. You can watch the full Developer Keynote, but here are a few highlights:
Android 12: one of the biggest design updates ever.
The first Beta of Android 12 just started rolling out, and it’s packed with lots of cool stuff. From new user safety features like permissions for bluetooth and approximate location, enhancements to performance like expedited jobs and start up animations, to delightful experiences with more interactive widgets and stretch overscrolling, this release is one of the biggest design updates to Android ever. You can read more about what’s in Android 12 Beta 1 here, so you can start preparing your apps for the consumer release coming out later this year. Download the Beta and try it with your apps today!
Jetpack Compose: get ready for 1.0 in July!
For the last few years, we’ve been hard at work modernizing the Android development experience, listening to your feedback to keep the openness–a hallmark of Android, but becoming more opinionated about the right way to do things. You can see this throughout, from Android Studio, a performant IDE that can keep up with you, to Kotlin, a programming language that enables you to do more with less code, to Jetpack libraries that solve the hardest problems on mobile with backward compatibility.
The next step in this offering is Jetpack Compose – our modern UI toolkit to easily build beautiful apps for all Android devices. We announced Compose here at Google I/O two years ago and since then have been building it in the open, listening to your feedback to make sure we got it right. With the Compose Beta earlier this year, developers around the world have created some truly beautiful, innovative experiences in half the time, and the response to the #AndroidDevChallenge blew our socks off!
With the forthcoming update of Material You (which you can read more about here), we’ll be adding new Material components as well as further support for building for large screens, making it fast and easy to build a gorgeous UI. We’re pressure testing the final bits in Compose and will release 1.0 Stable in July—so get ready!
Android Studio Arctic Fox: Design, Devices, & Developer Productivity!
Android Studio Arctic Fox (2020.3.1) Beta, the latest release of the official powerful Android IDE, is out today to help you build quality apps easier and faster. We have delivered and updated the suite of tools to empower three major themes: accelerate your UI design, extend your app to new devices, and boost your developer productivity. With this latest release you can create modern UIs with Compose tooling, see test results across multiple devices, and optimize debugging databases and background tasks with the App Inspector. We’re also making your apps more accessible with the Accessibility Scanner and more performant with Memory Profiler. And for faster build speeds, we have the Android Gradle plugin 7.0, new DSL, and variant APIs. You can learn more about the Android Studio updates here.
Kotlin: the most used language by professional Android devs
Kotlin is now the most used primary language by professional Android developers according to our recent surveys; in fact, over 1.2M apps in the Play Store use Kotlin, including 80% of the top 1000 apps. And here at Google, we love it too: 70+ Google apps like Drive, Home, Maps and Play use Kotlin. And with a brand-new native solution to annotation processing for Kotlin built from the ground up, Kotlin Symbol Processing is available today, a powerful and yet simple API for parsing Kotlin code directly, showing speeds up to 2x faster with libraries like Room.
Android Jetpack: write features, not boilerplate
With Android Jetpack, we built a suite of libraries to help reduce boilerplate code so you can focus on the code you care about. Over 84% of the top 10,000 apps are now using a Jetpack library. And today, we’re unpacking some new releases for Jetpack, including Jetpack Macrobenchmark (Alpha) to capture large interactions that affect your app startup and jank before your app is released, as well as a new Kotlin Coroutines API for persisting data more efficiently via Jetpack DataStore (Beta). You can read about all the updates in Android Jetpack here.
Now is the time: a big step for Wear
The best thing about modern Android development is that these tools have been purpose built to help make it easy for you to build for the next era of Android, which is all about enabling devices connected to your phone–TVs, cars, watches, tablets–to work better together.
Starting today, we take a huge step forward with wearables. First, we introduced a unified platform built jointly with Samsung, combining the best of Wear and Tizen. Second, we shared a new consumer experience with revamped Google apps. And third, a world-class health and fitness service from Fitbit is coming to the platform. As an Android developer, it means you’ll have more reach, and you’ll be able to use all of your existing skills, tools, and APIs that make your mobile apps great, to build for a single wearables platform used by people all over the world.
Whether it’s new Jetpack APIs for Wear tailored for small screens and designed to optimize battery life, to the Jetpack Tiles API, so you can create a custom Tile for all the devices in the Wear ecosystem, there are a number of new features to help you build on Wear. And with a new set of APIs for Health and Fitness, created in collaboration with Samsung, data collection from sensors and metrics computation is streamlined, consistent, and accurate–like heart rate to calories to daily distance–from one trusted source. All this comes together in new tooling, with the release of Android Studio Arctic Fox Beta, like easier pairing to test apps, and even a virtual heart rate sensor in the emulator. And when your app is ready, users will have a much easier time discovering the world of Wear apps on Google Play, with some big updates to discoverability. You can read more about all of the Wear updates here.
Tapping the momentum of larger screens, like tablets, Chrome OS and foldables
When it comes to larger screens — tablets, foldables, and Chrome OS laptops– there is huge momentum. People are increasingly relying on large screen devices to stay connected with family and friends, go to school, or work remotely. In fact, there are over 250 million active large screen Android devices. Last year, Chrome OS grew +92% year over year–5 times the rate of the PC market, making Chrome OS the fastest growing and the second-most popular desktop OS. To help you take advantage of this momentum, we’re giving you APIs and tools to make optimizing that experience easier: like having your content resize automatically to more space by using SlidingpaneLayout 1.2.0 and a new vertical navigation rail component, Max widths on components to avoid stretched UIs, as well as updates to the platform, Chrome OS, and Jetpack windowmanager, so apps work better by default. You can learn more here.
Google Duo’s optimized experience for foldable devices
This is just a taste of some of the new ways we’re making it easier for you to build high quality Android apps. Later today, we’ll be releasing more than 20 technical sessions on Android and Play, covering a wide range of topics such as background tasks, privacy, and Machine Learning on Android, or the top 12 tips to get you ready for Android 12. If building for cars, TVs, and wearables is your thing, we got that covered, too. You can find all these sessions – and more – on the I/O website. Beyond the sessions and news, there’s a number of fun ways to virtually connect with Googlers and other developers at this year’s Google I/O. You can check out the Android dome in I/O Adventure, where you can see new blog posts, videos, codelabs, and more. Maybe even test out your Jetpack Compose skills or take a virtual tour of the cars inside our dome!
Posted by Erica Hanson, Global Program Manager, Google Developer Student Clubs
Hey, student developers! If you’re passionate about programming and are ready to use your technology skills to help your community, then you should become a Google Developer Student Clubs Lead!
Application forms for the upcoming 2021-2022 academic year are NOW OPEN. Get started at goo.gle/gdsc-leads.
Want to know more? Learn more about the program below.
What are Google Developer Student Clubs?
Google Developer Student Clubs are university based community groups for students interested in Google developer technologies. With clubs hosted in 106 countries around the world, students from undergraduate and graduate programs with an interest in leading a community are welcome. Together, students learn the latest in Android App Development, Google Cloud Platform, Flutter, and so much more.
By joining a GDSC, students grow their knowledge in a peer-to-peer learning environment and put theory to practice by building solutions for local businesses and their community.
How will I improve my skills?
As a Google Developer Student Club Lead you will have the chance to…
Gain mentorship from Google.
Join a global community of leaders.
Practice by sharing your skills.
Help students grow.
Build solutions for real life problems.
How can I find a Google Developer Student Club near me?
Google Developer Student Clubs are now in 106 countries with 1250+ groups. Find a club near you or learn how to start your own, here.
When do I need to submit the Application form?
We encourage students to submit their forms as soon as possible. You can learn more about your region’s application deadline, here. Make sure to learn more about our program criteria.
“The secret to our club’s success was that we were able to cultivate a heart of service and a culture of open mentorship.”
We can’t wait to see what our next group of Google Developer Student Club leads will accomplish this year. Join the fun and get started, here.
*Google Developer Student Clubs are student-led independent organizations, and their presence does not indicate a relationship between Google and the students’ universities.
Posted by Erica Hanson, Global Program Manager, Google Developer Student Clubs
Recently young developers in Saudi Arabia fromGoogle Developer Student Clubs, a program of university based community groups for students interested in Google technologies, came together to help local small businesses. As more companies across the globe rely on online sales, these students noticed that many of their favorite local stores did not have a presence on the web.
So to help these local shops compete, these up-and-coming developers went into the community and began running workshops to teach local store owners the basics of building a website. Inspired by Google’s fundamentals of digital marketing course, these learning sessions focused on giving small business owners basic front-end skills, while introducing them to easy to use coding tools.
The first goal of these student-run workshops was to teach local store owners the basics of building web interfaces. In particular, they focused on websites that made it easy for customers to make purchases. To do this, the students first taught store owners the basics of HTML, CSS, and JS code. Then, they showed them how to deploy Chrome DevTools, a collection of web developer tools built directly into the Google Chrome browser that allows programmers to inspect and edit HTML, CSS, and JS code to optimize user experience.
Next, the students challenged participants to put their knowledge to use by creating demos of their businesses’ new websites. The young developers again used Chrome DevTools to highlight the best practices for testing the demo sites on different devices and screen sizes.
Introduction to coding toolkits
Image of demo created and maintained in workshop.
With the basics of HTML, CSS, JS code, and Chrome DevTools covered, the students also wanted to give the store owners tools to help maintain their new websites. To do this, they introduced the small businesses to three toolkits:
Bootstrap, to help templatize future workflow for the websites.
Codepen, to make testing new features and aspects of the websites easier.
Figma, to assist in the development of initial mockups.
With these basic coding skills, access to intuitive toolkits, and completed website demos, the local businesses owners now had everything they needed to launch their sites to the public – all thanks to a few dedicated students.
Ready to join a Google Developer Student Club near you?
All over the world, students are coming together to learn programming and make a difference in their community as members of local Google Developer Student Clubs. Learn more on how to get involved in projects like this one, here.
Posted by Biswajeet Mallik, Program Manager, Google Developers India.
Image from Cloud Community Days India
Earlier this year, ten Google Developer Groups in India came together to host Google Cloud Community Days India, a two day event helping developers study for their upcoming Cloud Certification exams. To address the rising demand for professional certifications, the virtual event hosted over 63,000 developers, covered four main exam areas, and welcomed nine speakers. This was the second edition to the event series which started in 2019 in India.
By providing expert learning materials and mentorship, the event uniquely prepared developers for the Associate Cloud Engineer, Professional Data Engineer, Professional Cloud Machine Learning Engineer, and Professional Cloud Architect exams. Learn more below.
Acing the four key certifications
The Cloud Community Days event focused on helping developers study for four milestone certifications, tailored to engineers at four different stages of their career. The goal: help Google Developer Group members obtain the right credentials to improve their job prospects.
The event broke participants into breakout sessions based on which exam they were preparing to take. Since the certifications targeted professionals of all skill levels, study groups ranged from early career associates to late career executives. The learning groups were organized around the following certifications:
Associate Cloud Engineer:
This learning session was created to help early career developers complete the first stepping stone exam. In particular, learning materials and speakers were curated to guide participants who had no prior experience, or very little, working on the Google Cloud Platform.
Workshops were mainly dedicated to assisting programmers who were familiar with building different applications but wished to show employers that they could deploy them on Google Cloud Platform.
The next group brought together were data practitioners with special interests in data visualization and decision making. Workshops and learning activities helped these developers hone their large scale data and data driven decision making abilities.
Improving these skills are essential for passing the Professional Data Engineers certification and growing a programmer’s early career.
For these sessions, the Google Developer Group Cloud community paired experienced programmers with a significant interest in ML to form their study groups. The main driver in these learning activities was to help seasoned developers gain a deeper understanding of how to utilize Google Cloud ML services.
With significant emphasis being placed on machine learning in the ecosystem right now, Google Developer Group community leaders felt this certification could help developers make the leap into new leadership roles.
Lastly, this event paired experienced Cloud executives and professionals working in leading capacities for their organizations. For these sessions, speakers and activities had a specific scope: help high level professions be at the forefront of Google Cloud Platforms innovative capabilities.
Specifically, the Professional Cloud Architect Certification was created to help senior software engineers better design, scale and develop highly secure and robust applications.
Overall, the community put together these resources to help developers feel more confident in their abilities, obtain tangible credentials, and in turn increase access to better job opportunities. As two participants recalled the event,
“The session on Qwiklabs was so helpful, and taught me how to anticipate problems and then solve them. Cloud Community Days inspired me to take the next step with DevOps and Google Cloud.”
“This was the first time I attended the Google Developer Group event! It is an awesome package for learning in one place. All the fun activities were engaging and the panelist discussion was also very insightful. I feel proud to be a part of this grand GDG event.”
Start learning with Google Developer Groups
With Google Developer Groups, find a space to learn alongside a group of curious developers, all coming together to advance their careers from withinside a caring community of peers.
Want to know more about what Cloud Community days were like? Then watch their live recording below.
Ready to find a community event near you? Then get started at gdg.community.dev
Posted by Leslie Garcia-Amaya, Global Product Partnerships Lead, Google Assistant Ashwin Karuhatty, Head of Global Product Partnerships, Google Assistant
The interest and adoption of voice technology reached an important inflection point last year with the pandemic, as we immediately saw Google Assistant play a bigger role in helping people manage more of their time at home, from juggling family activities to controlling their smart home devices.
To help brands and developers stay ahead of these trends and identify potential opportunities to create impactful voice experiences for their users, we spun up a series of virtual events to stay engaged with the community when many in-person industry events were cancelled. For example, we introduced VOICE Talks last April in partnership with Modev as a monthly series of digital events that connected Google business, engineering and product leaders directly with the voice-tech ecosystem and developer community. VOICE Talks also provided a platform to companies, like Sony, Bamboo Learning, American Express, Verizon, Headspace, Vizio, iRobot, Nike, Dunkin, to share best practices on how they integrated voice technology into their products. You can watch past episodes here.
The ecosystem support and participation has been incredible with over 110,000 subscribers for VOICE Talks, over 40,000 hours of content consumed and active ongoing viewership on YouTube. In addition, we saw a huge demand for country/region-specific content in India, and started the VOICE Talks India series, which has also been received very well.
Thanks to all the positive feedback from the community, we’re looking to double down on those efforts this year. In addition to hosting more VOICE Talks events, we’re expanding our collaboration with industry-recognized influencers through podcasts, livestreams and more to continue growing the community, such as:
Michal Stanislawek and Karol Stryja of VoiceLunch Foundation
Additionally, we’re excited to announce that Google Assistant is the first corporate sponsor of Women In Voice, a global non-profit with a mission to amplify women and diverse people in the voice technology field that has grown to 20 chapters in 15 countries since they launched in 2018. This sponsorship builds on the momentum Women In Voice established with Google Assistant at CES 2020, where they collaborated on a “Women In Tech & Allies” event. Tune in to womeninvoice.org to stay up to date on upcoming events and collaborations between Google Assistant and Women In Voice.
There’s now more ways to hear from us, share your feedback and learn about the latest trends in the space.
Who do you think of when you hear the words sister, daughter, mother? How about when the words are leader, founder, CEO? As a mom of three, I want my kids to grow up in a world where the second set of words is as likely as the first to bring a woman to mind. Which is why we’re elevating the voices of women and making sure their stories are heard in today’s #MyDomain series. On this International Women’s Day, Google Registry is sharing eight new videos — all featuring female leaders who are taking care of business on their .app and .dev domains.
Alice Truswell
Alice Truswell is co-founder of Snoop.app, a money-saving app. “Fear being forgettable more than fearing not fitting in,” she says, “because the earlier you get comfortable with your voice, the earlier you can start refining results.”
Annie Hwang
Annie Hwang is co-founder of Jemi.app, a company that helps creators and public figures interact with their audiences and make money. “Don’t let imposter syndrome ever stop you,” she advises.“We’ve grown up in a society where we are constantly told that we should be a follower. Don’t be a follower anymore; be a leader!”
Elena Czubiak
Elena Czubiak is the developer and designer behind saturdaydesign.dev and co-founder of imaginarie.app. She quit her day job in 2018 to start her own business and hasn’t looked back since. Elena says, “Remember that although it might feel like starting over, you’ll quickly see that your unique experiences will help you solve problems and make connections that nobody else could.”
Ifrah Khan
Ifrah Khan is co-founder of Clubba.app, a platform that provides virtual creative extracurricular clubs (led by college students) for kids ages 6 to 12. Ifrah encourages entrepreneurial women to find and connect with other women who are also working on their own ventures. “Really talk to them and get to know their journey,” she says. “If they fundraised, how did they fundraise? Fundraising is so hard when you start your own business in general, but as a woman it’s even harder.”
Rita Kozlov
Rita Kozlov is a product manager who leads the Cloudflare Workers product, which uses the workers.dev domain. Rita’s advice for women who want to become a product manager is, “Don’t be afraid to ask lots of questions. In product management that’s definitely 100% a strength and never a weakness.”
Romina Arrigoni Samsó
Romina Arrigoni Samsó is founder and CEO of ADDSKIN.app, a social marketplace for skincare, where community recommendations help customers choose the best products. Romina says, “La gracia de la tecnología es que como dice el dicho, el avión se construye en el aire. Lo importante es lanzarse,” which translates to, “The grace of technology is that, as the saying goes, the plane is built in the air. The important thing is to launch.”
Soraya Jaber
Soraya Jaber is co-founder and CEO of Minsar.app, a no-code AR-VR creative and publishing platform. “We don’t care about your age, your gender, your race, or sexual orientation — there is no space where you are not allowed,” Soraya says.“Don’t hinder yourself, jump into entrepreneurship. I can assure you that’s a hell of a great adventure!”
Stefania Olafsdóttir
Stefania Olafsdóttir is the co-founder and CEO of Avo.app, a next-generation analytics governance company. Her advice? “It’s way more important to be brave than to be perfect.”
To see a special video featuring all these amazing women, check out goo.gle/mydomain. If you have a unique story to share about a .app, .dev, or .page domain and would like to be considered for our series, please fill out this short application form. Here’s to helping tell the stories of women everywhere so that we may inspire generations to come.
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