Google Developers Down Under: Hackathons, Workshops, & More!

As the support engineer for the Google Maps API, part of my role is to participate in developer events - either by speaking, organising or just listening. After three months in Sydney, I've had the opportunity to become fully immersed in the developer culture in Australia, and it's been so much fun that I'm tempted to stay in this beautiful city forever.

Here's a roundup of some of the recent events:

• BarCamp Sydney: BarCamps are "unconferences", which means there's no set agenda - attendees scribble what they want to present on paper on the wall, and go to whatever looks most interesting (or just have debates in the halls). BarCamp Sydney was the epitome of an unconference, with sessions ranging from learning Drupal to being hypnotised (I failed - too giggly). I gave talks about HTML 5 and Google App Engine.
  

• OSDC: The Open Source Developers Conference is a week-long conference with hundreds of developers from all over Australia (and some from the US, too). Google ran a hackathon the day before the conference, covering OpenSocial/Orkut, Open Mapping APIs, and Google App Engine. My favourite app to come out of it was "Bean There", an Orkut app that mapped all your favorite coffee stops.
  

• iGoogle Hackathon: On a sunny Saturday, 12 developers sacrificed precious beach time and came to the Google Sydney office to hack in the iGoogle OpenSocial developer sandbox. The attendees ranged from freelance contractors to employees of Australian startups like Atlassian, Momentville and Wotif. Most attendees had heard of iGoogle and OpenSocial but hadn't used either platform. We started off with a presentation on using the OpenSocial APIs and socialising existing apps. Then, after five hours of hacking, the developers presented their creations over ice-cream and beer. The applications covered a variety of concepts, like displaying Flickr albums, intersections of friends and upcoming concerts in the area.
  

• StartupCamp Sydney: At this event, developers, marketers and designers came together for a weekend of coding and pitching a startup - from scratch! The weekend produced six websites, and 36 completely exhausted but satisfied individuals (including myself). A number of the startups used Google developer tools: Activity Horizon and MyPetNeedsLove used the Google Maps API to plot events and love-hungry pets, respectively, whereas ThreeFeeds used the Google AJAX Search & Feeds API both on the client and server sides.
  

And there's more to come in the next few months:

• Google Developer Workshops: Over six weeks, we'll have four talks/codelabs at the Google Sydney office, each covering a different Google developer product. The series kicked off this week with a session on the Google Maps API for Flash, and continues next week with a session on Gears (the technology powering GMail offline!). For more information and registration, visit this website.
  

• JAOO Sydney/Brisbane: At this dual-city developer conference, there'll be two talks from Googlers: "API Design" by Joshua Bloch, and "Google App Engine: Building an App the Googley Way" by Pamela Fox. Pending enough interest, there may also be a half-day workshop on using the Google Maps APIs. (So if you're attending, make sure to sign up!)
  

Thanks to all the Sydney developers for welcoming me and teaching me the Aussie way (tweetups, wedges and, of course, beer). For more information about what's going on in this side of the world, subscribe to the APAC Developer Blog.

BarCamp Sydney

Brain storming at Startup Camp

Posted by Pamela Fox, Developer Programs Engineer