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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] stephen|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] saurik|13 years ago|reply
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.)
[+] [-] smackfu|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bonzoesc|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] objclxt|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RossM|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stephen_cagle|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dysoco|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jemeshsu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HorizonXP|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eclipxe|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rubyrescue|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ben1040|13 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] cryptoz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diego|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stanleydrew|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stephen_cagle|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cryptoz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] untog|13 years ago|reply
A lottery, maybe?
[+] [-] Vermeulen|13 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] lnanek2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesc|13 years ago|reply
Hope they do this because I want to see some amazing Google Glass apps when they launch this year.
[+] [-] rdl|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] donniezazen|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shank|13 years ago|reply