Tag Archives: devfest

Machine Learning Communities: Q1 ‘23 highlights and achievements

Posted by Nari Yoon, Bitnoori Keum, Hee Jung, DevRel Community Manager / Soonson Kwon, DevRel Program Manager

Let’s explore highlights and accomplishments of vast Google Machine Learning communities over the first quarter of 2023. We are enthusiastic and grateful about all the activities by the global network of ML communities. Here are the highlights!



ML Campaigns



ML Community Sprint

ML Community Sprint is a campaign, a collaborative attempt bridging ML GDEs with Googlers to produce relevant content for the broader ML community. Throughout Feb and Mar, MediaPipe/TF Recommendation Sprint was carried out and 5 projects were completed.


ML Olympiad 2023

I'm hosting a competiton ML Olympiad 2023 #MLOlympiad

ML Olympiad is an associated Kaggle Community Competitions hosted by ML GDE, TFUG, 3rd-party ML communities, supported by Google Developers. The second, ML Olympiad 2023 has wrapped up successfully with 17 competitions and 300+ participants addressing important issues of our time - diversity, environments, etc. Competition highlights include Breast Cancer Diagnosis, Water Quality Prediction, Detect ChatGpt answers, Ensure healthy lives, etc. Thank you all for participating in ML Olympiad 2023!

Also, “ML Paper Reading Clubs” (GalsenAI and TFUG Dhaka), “ML Math Clubs” (TFUG Hajipur and TFUG Dhaka) and “ML Study Jams” (TFUG Bauchi) were hosted by ML communities around the world.


Community Highlights



Keras


Screen shot of Fine-tuning Stable Diffusion using Keras

Various ways of serving Stable Diffusion by ML GDE Chansung Park (Korea) and ML GDE Sayak Paul (India) shares how to deploy Stable Diffusion with TF Serving, Hugging Face Endpoint, and FastAPI. Their other project Fine-tuning Stable Diffusion using Keras provides how to fine-tune the image encoder of Stable Diffusion on a custom dataset consisting of image-caption pairs.

Serving TensorFlow models with TFServing by ML GDE Dimitre Oliveira (Brazil) is a tutorial explaining how to create a simple MobileNet using the Keras API and how to serve it with TF Serving.

Fine-tuning the multilingual T5 model from Huggingface with Keras by ML GDE Radostin Cholakov (Bulgaria) shows a minimalistic approach for training text generation architectures from Hugging Face with TensorFlow and Keras as the backend.


Image showing a range of low-lit pictures enhanced incljuding inference time and ther metrics

Lighting up Images in the Deep Learning Era by ML GDE Soumik Rakshit (India), ML GDE Saurav Maheshkar (UK), ML GDE Aritra Roy Gosthipaty (India), and Samarendra Dash explores deep learning techniques for low-light image enhancement. The article also talks about a library, Restorers, providing TensorFlow and Keras implementations of SoTA image and video restoration models for tasks such as low-light enhancement, denoising, deblurring, super-resolution, etc.

How to Use Cosine Decay Learning Rate Scheduler in Keras? by ML GDE Ayush Thakur (India) introduces how to correctly use the cosine-decay learning rate scheduler using Keras API.


Screen shot of Implementation of DreamBooth using KerasCV and TensorFlow

Implementation of DreamBooth using KerasCV and TensorFlow (Keras.io tutorial) by ML GDE Sayak Paul (India) and ML GDE Chansung Park (Korea) demonstrates DreamBooth technique to fine-tune Stable Diffusion in KerasCV and TensorFlow. Training code, inference notebooks, a Keras.io tutorial, and more are in the repository. Sayak also shared his story, [ML Story] DreamBoothing Your Way into Greatness on the GDE blog.

Focal Modulation: A replacement for Self-Attention by ML GDE Aritra Roy Gosthipaty (India) shares a Keras implementation of the paper. Usha Rengaraju (India) shared Keras Implementation of NeurIPS 2021 paper, Augmented Shortcuts for Vision Transformers.

Images classification with TensorFlow & Keras (video) by TFUG Abidjan explained how to define an ML model that can classify images according to the category using a CNN.

Hands-on Workshop on KerasNLP by GDG NYC, GDG Hoboken, and Stevens Institute of Technology shared how to use pre-trained Transformers (including BERT) to classify text, fine-tune it on custom data, and build a Transformer from scratch.


On-device ML

Stable diffusion example in an android application — Part 1 & Part 2 by ML GDE George Soloupis (Greece) demonstrates how to deploy a Stable Diffusion pipeline inside an Android app.

AI for Art and Design by ML GDE Margaret Maynard-Reid (United States) delivered a brief overview of how AI can be used to assist and inspire artists & designers in their creative space. She also shared a few use cases of on-device ML for creating artistic Android apps.


ML Engineering (MLOps)


Overall system architecture of End-to-End Pipeline for Segmentation with TFX, Google Cloud, and Hugging Face

End-to-End Pipeline for Segmentation with TFX, Google Cloud, and Hugging Face by ML GDE Sayak Paul (India) and ML GDE Chansung Park (Korea) discussed the crucial details of building an end-to-end ML pipeline for Semantic Segmentation tasks with TFX and various Google Cloud services such as Dataflow, Vertex Pipelines, Vertex Training, and Vertex Endpoint. The pipeline uses a custom TFX component that is integrated with Hugging Face Hub - HFPusher.

Extend your TFX pipeline with TFX-Addons by ML GDE Hannes Hapke (United States) explains how you can use the TFX-Addons components or examples.



Textual Inversion Pipeline architecture

Textual Inversion Pipeline for Stable Diffusion by ML GDE Chansung Park (Korea) demonstrates how to manage multiple models and their prototype applications of fine-tuned Stable Diffusion on new concepts by Textual Inversion.

Running a Stable Diffusion Cluster on GCP with tensorflow-serving (Part 1 | Part 2) by ML GDE Thushan Ganegedara (Australia) explains how to set up a GKE cluster, how to use Terraform to set up and manage infrastructure on GCP, and how to deploy a model on GKE using TF Serving.


Photo of Googler Joinal Ahmed giving a talk at TFUG Bangalore

Scalability of ML Applications by TFUG Bangalore focused on the challenges and solutions related to building and deploying ML applications at scale. Googler Joinal Ahmed gave a talk entitled Scaling Large Language Model training and deployments.

Discovering and Building Applications with Stable Diffusion by TFUG São Paulo was for people who are interested in Stable Diffusion. They shared how Stable Diffusion works and showed a complete version created using Google Colab and Vertex AI in production.


Responsible AI


Thumbnail image for Between the Brackets Fairness & Ethics in AI: Perspectives from Journalism, Medicine and Translation

In Fairness & Ethics In AI: From Journalism, Medicine and Translation, ML GDE Samuel Marks (United States) discussed responsible AI.

In The new age of AI: A Convo with Google Brain, ML GDE Vikram Tiwari (United States) discussed responsible AI, open-source vs. closed-source, and the future of LLMs.

Responsible IA Toolkit (video) by ML GDE Lesly Zerna (Bolivia) and Google DSC UNI was a meetup to discuss ethical and sustainable approaches to AI development. Lesly shared about the “ethic” side of building AI products as well as learning about “Responsible AI from Google”, PAIR guidebook, and other experiences to build AI.

Women in AI/ML at Google NYC by GDG NYC discussed hot topics, including LLMs and generative AI. Googler Priya Chakraborty gave a talk entitled Privacy Protections for ML Models.


ML Research

Efficient Task-Oriented Dialogue Systems with Response Selection as an Auxiliary Task by ML GDE Radostin Cholakov (Bulgaria) showcases how, in a task-oriented setting, the T5-small language model can perform on par with existing systems relying on T5-base or even bigger models.

Learning JAX in 2023: Part 1 / Part 2 / Livestream video by ML GDE Aritra Roy Gosthipaty (India) and ML GDE Ritwik Raha (India) covered the power tools of JAX, namely grad, jit, vmap, pmap, and also discussed the nitty-gritty of randomness in JAX.


Screen grab from JAX Streams: Parallelism with Flax | Ep4 with David Cardozo and Cristian Garcia

In Deep Learning Mentoring MILA Quebec, ML GDE David Cardozo (Canada) did mentoring for M.Sc and Ph.D. students who have interests in JAX and MLOps. JAX Streams: Parallelism with Flax | EP4 by David and ML GDE Cristian Garcia (Columbia) explored Flax’s new APIs to support parallelism.

March Machine Learning Meetup hosted by TFUG Kolkata. Two sessions were delivered: 1) You don't know TensorFlow by ML GDE Sayak Paul (India) presented some under-appreciated and under-used features of TensorFlow. 2) A Guide to ML Workflows with JAX by ML GDE Aritra Roy Gosthipaty (India), ML GDE Soumik Rakshit (India), and ML GDE Ritwik Raha (India) delivered on how one could think of using JAX functional transformations for their ML workflows.

A paper review of PaLM-E: An Embodied Multimodal Language Model by ML GDE Grigory Sapunov (UK) explained the details of the model. He also shared his slide deck about NLP in 2022.

An annotated paper of On the importance of noise scheduling in Diffusion Models by ML GDE Aakash Nain (India) outlined the effects of noise schedule on the performance of diffusion models and strategies to get a better schedule for optimal performance.


TensorFlow

Three projects were awarded as TF Community Spotlight winners: 1) Semantic Segmentation model within ML pipeline by ML GDE Chansung Park (Korea), ML GDE Sayak Paul (India), and ML GDE Merve Noyan (France), 2) GatedTabTransformer in TensorFlow + TPU / in Flax by Usha Rengaraju, and 3) Real-time Object Detection in the browser with YOLOv7 and TF.JS by ML GDE Hugo Zanini (Brazil).

Building ranking models powered by multi-task learning with Merlin and TensorFlow by ML GDE Gabriel Moreira (Brazil) describes how to build TensorFlow models with Merlin for recommender systems using multi-task learning.


Transform your Web Apps with Machine Learning: Unleashing the Power of Open-Source Python Libraries like TensorFlow Hub & Gradio Bhjavesh Bhatt @_bhaveshbhatt

Building ML Powered Web Applications using TensorFlow Hub & Gradio (slide) by ML GDE Bhavesh Bhatt (India) demonstrated how to use TF Hub & Gradio to create a fully functional ML-powered web application. The presentation was held as part of an event called AI Evolution with TensorFlow, covering the fundamentals of ML & TF, hosted by TFUG Nashik.

create-tf-app (repository) by ML GDE Radostin Cholakov (Bulgaria) shows how to set up and maintain an ML project in Tensorflow with a single script.


Cloud

Creating scalable ML solutions to support big techs evolution (slide) by ML GDE Mikaeri Ohana (Brazil) shared how Google can help big techs to generate impact through ML with scalable solutions.

Search of Brazilian Laws using Dialogflow CX and Matching Engine by ML GDE Rubens Zimbres (Brazil) shows how to build a chatbot with Dialogflow CX and query a database of Brazilian laws by calling an endpoint in Cloud Run.


4x4 grid of sample results from Vintedois Diffusion model

Stable Diffusion Finetuning by ML GDE Pedro Gengo (Brazil) and ML GDE Piero Esposito (Brazil) is a fine-tuned Stable Diffusion 1.5 with more aesthetic images. They used Vertex AI with multiple GPUs to fine-tune it. It reached Hugging Face top 3 and more than 150K people downloaded and tested it.

Machine Learning Communities: Q4 ‘22 highlights and achievements

Posted by Nari Yoon, Hee Jung, DevRel Community Manager / Soonson Kwon, DevRel Program Manager

Let’s explore highlights and accomplishments of vast Google Machine Learning communities over the last quarter of 2022. We are enthusiastic and grateful about all the activities by the global network of ML communities. Here are the highlights!


ML at DevFest 2022

A group of ML Developers attending DevFest 2022

A large number of members of ML GDE, TFUG, and 3P ML communities participated in DevFests 2022 worldwide covering various ML topics with Google products. Machine Learning with Jax: Zero to Hero (DevFest Conakry) by ML GDE Yannick Serge Obam Akou (Cameroon) and Easy ML on Google Cloud (DevFest Med) by ML GDE Nathaly Alarcon Torrico (Bolivia) hosted great sessions.

ML Community Summit 2022

A group of ML Developers attending ML Community Summit

ML Community Summit 2022 was hosted on Oct 22-23, 2022, in Bangkok, Thailand. Twenty-five most active community members (ML GDE or TFUG organizer) were invited and shared their past activities and thoughts on Google’s ML products. A video sketch from ML Developer Programs team and a blog posting by ML GDE Margaret Maynard-Reid (United States) help us revisit the moments.

TensorFlow

MAXIM in TensorFlow by ML GDE Sayak Paul (India) shows his implementation of the MAXIM family of models in TensorFlow.

Diagram of gMLP block

gMLP: What it is and how to use it in practice with Tensorflow and Keras? by ML GDE Radostin Cholakov (Bulgaria) demonstrates the state-of-the-art results on NLP and computer vision tasks using a lot less trainable parameters than corresponding Transformer models. He also wrote Differentiable discrete sampling in TensorFlow.

Building Computer Vision Model using TensorFlow: Part 2 by TFUG Pune for the developers who want to deep dive into training an object detection model on Google Colab, inspecting the TF Lite model, and deploying the model on an Android application. ML GDE Nitin Tiwari (India) covered detailed aspects for end-to-end training and deployment of object model detection.

Advent of Code 2022 in pure TensorFlow (days 1-5) by ML GDE Paolo Galeone (Italy) solving the Advent of Code (AoC) puzzles using only TensorFlow. The articles contain a description of the solutions of the Advent of Code puzzles 1-5, in pure TensorFlow.

tf.keras.metrics / tf.keras.optimizers by TFUG Taipei helped people learn the TF libraries. They shared basic concepts and how to use them using Colab.

Screen shot of TensorFlow Lite on Android Project Practical Course
A hands-on course on TensorFlow Lite projects on Android by ML GDE Xiaoxing Wang (China) is the book mainly introducing the application of TensorFlow Lite in Android development. The content focuses on applying three typical ML applications in Android development.

Build tensorflow-lite-select-tf-ops.aar and tensorflow-lite.aar files with Colab by ML GDE George Soloupis (Greece) guides how you can shrink the final size of your Android application’s .apk by building tensorflow-lite-select-tf-ops.aar and tensorflow-lite.aar files without the need of Docker or personal PC environment.

TensorFlow Lite and MediaPipe Application by ML GDE XuHua Hu (China) explains how to use TFLite to deploy an ML model into an application on devices. He shared experiences with developing a motion sensing game with MediaPipe, and how to solve problems that we may meet usually.

Train and Deploy TensorFlow models in Go by ML GDE Paolo Galeone (Italy) delivered the basics of the TensorFlow Go bindings, the limitations, and how the tfgo library simplifies their usage.

Keras

Diagram of feature maps concatenated together and flattened

Complete Guide on Deep Learning Architectures, Chapter 1 on ConvNets by ML GDE Merve Noyan (France) brings you into the theory of ConvNets and shows how it works with Keras.

Hazy Image Restoration Using Keras by ML GDE Soumik Rakshit (India) provides an introduction to building an image restoration model using TensorFlow, Keras, and Weights & Biases. He also shared an article Improving Generative Images with Instructions: Prompt-to-Prompt Image Editing with Cross Attention Control.

Mixed precision in Keras based Stable Diffusion
Let’s Generate Images with Keras based Stable Diffusion by ML GDE Chansung Park (Korea) delivered how to generate images with given text and what stable diffusion is. He also talked about Keras-based stable diffusion, basic building blocks, and the advantages of using Keras-based stable diffusion.

A Deep Dive into Transformers with TensorFlow and Keras: Part 1, Part 2, Part3 by ML GDE Aritra Roy Gosthipaty (India) covered the journey from the intuition of attention to formulating the multi-head self-attention. And TensorFlow port of GroupViT in 🤗 transformers library was his contribution to Hugging Face transformers library.

TFX

Digits + TFX banner

How startups can benefit from TFX by ML GDE Hannes Hapke (United States) explains how the San Francisco-based FinTech startup Digits has benefitted from applying TFX early, how TFX helps Digits grow, and how other startups can benefit from TFX too.

Usha Rengaraju (India) shared TensorFlow Extended (TFX) Tutorials (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) and the following TF projects: TensorFlow Decision Forests Tutorial and FT Transformer TensorFlow Implementation.

Hyperparameter Tuning and ML Pipeline by ML GDE Chansung Park (Korea) explained hyperparam tuning, why it is important; Introduction to KerasTuner, basic usage; how to visualize hyperparam tuning results with TensorBoard; and integration within ML pipeline with TFX.

JAX/Flax

JAX High-performance ML Research by TFUG Taipei and ML GDE Jerry Wu (Taiwan) introduced JAX and how to start using JAX to solve machine learning problems.

[TensorFlow + TPU] GatedTabTransformer[W&B] and its JAX/Flax counterpart GatedTabTransformer-FLAX[W&B] by Usha Rengaraju (India) are tutorial series containing the implementation of GatedTabTransformer paper in both TensorFlow (TPU) and FLAX.

Putting NeRF on a diet: Semantically consistent Few-Shot View Synthesis Implementation
JAX implementation of Diet NeRf by ML GDE Wan Hong Lau (Singapore) implemented the paper “Putting NeRF on a Diet (DietNeRF)” in JAX/Flax. And he also implemented a JAX-and-Flax training pipeline with the ResNet model in his Kaggle notebook, 🐳HappyWhale🔥Flax/JAX⚡TPU&GPU - ResNet Baseline.

Introduction to JAX with Flax (slides) by ML GDE Phillip Lippe (Netherlands) reviewed from the basics of the requirements we have on a DL framework to what JAX has to offer. Further, he focused on the powerful function-oriented view JAX offers and how Flax allows you to use them in training neural networks.

Screen grab of ML GDE David Cardozo and Cristian Garcia during a live coding session of a review of new features, specifically Shared Arrays, in the recent release of JAX
JAX Streams: Exploring JAX 0.4 by ML GDE David Cardozo (Canada) and Cristian Garcia (Colombia) showed a review of new features (specifically Shared Arrays) in the recent release of JAX and demonstrated live coding.

[LiveCoding] Train ResNet/MNIST with JAX/Flax by ML GDE Qinghua Duan (China) demonstrated how to train ResNet using JAX by writing code online.

Kaggle

Low-light Image Enhancement using MirNetv2 by ML GDE Soumik Rakshit (India) demonstrated the task of Low-light Image Enhancement.

Heart disease Prediction and Diabetes Prediction Competition hosted by TFUG Chandigarh were to familiarize participants with ML problems and find solutions using classification techniques.

TensorFlow User Group Bangalore Sentiment Analysis Kaggle Competition 1
TFUG Bangalore Kaggle Competition - Sentiment Analysis hosted by TFUG Bangalore was to find the best sentiment analysis algorithm. Participants were given a set of training data and asked to submit an ML/DL algorithm that could predict the sentiment of a text. The group also hosted Kaggle Challenge Finale + Vertex AI Session to support the participants and guide them in learning how to use Vertex AI in a workflow.

Cloud AI

Better Hardware Provisioning for ML Experiments on GCP by ML GDE Sayak Paul (India) discussed the pain points of provisioning hardware (especially for ML experiments) and how we can get better provision hardware with code using Vertex AI Workbench instances and Terraform.

Jayesh Sharma, Platform Engineer, Zen ML; MLOps workshop with TensorFlow and Vertex AI November 12, 2022|TensorFlow User Group Chennai
MLOps workshop with TensorFlow and Vertex AI by TFUG Chennai targeted beginners and intermediate-level practitioners to give hands-on experience on the E2E MLOps pipeline with GCP. In the workshop, they shared the various stages of an ML pipeline, the top tools to build a solution, and how to design a workflow using an open-source framework like ZenML.

10 Predictions on the Future of Cloud Computing by 2025: Insights from Google Next Conference by ML GDE Victor Dibia (United States) includes a recap of his notes reflecting on the top 10 cloud technology predictions discussed at the Google Cloud Next 2022 keynote.
Workflow of Google Virtual Career Center
O uso do Vertex AI Matching Engine no Virtual Career Center (VCC) do Google Cloud by ML GDE Rubens Zimbres (Brazil) approaches the use of Vertex AI Matching Engine as part of the Google Cloud Virtual Career Center solution.

More practical time-series model with BQML by ML GDE JeongMin Kwon (Korea) introduced BQML and time-series modeling and showed some practical applications with BQML ARIMA+ and Python implementations.

Vertex AI Forecast - Demand Forecasting with AutoML by ML GDE Rio Kurihara (Japan) presented a time series forecast overview, time series fusion transformers, and the benefits and desired features of AutoML.

Research & Ecosystem

AI in Healthcare by ML GDE Sara EL-ATEIF (Morocco) introduced AI applications in healthcare and the challenges facing AI in its adoption into the health system.

Women in AI APAC finished their journey at ML Paper Reading Club. During 10 weeks, participants gained knowledge on outstanding machine learning research, learned the latest techniques, and understood the notion of “ML research” among ML engineers. See their session here.

A Natural Language Understanding Model LaMDA for Dialogue Applications by ML GDE Jerry Wu (Taiwan) introduced the natural language understanding (NLU) concept and shared the operation mode of LaMDA, model fine-tuning, and measurement indicators.

Python library for Arabic NLP preprocessing (Ruqia) by ML GDE Ruqiya Bin (Saudi Arabia) is her first python library to serve Arabic NLP.

Screengrab of ML GDEs Margaret Maynard-Reid and Akash Nain during Chat with ML GDE Akash
Chat with ML GDE Vikram & Chat with ML GDE Aakash by ML GDE Margaret Maynard-Reid (United States) shared the stories of ML GDEs’ including how they became ML GDE and how they proceeded with their ML projects.

Anatomy of Capstone ML Projects 🫀by ML GDE Sayak Paul (India) discussed working on capstone ML projects that will stay with you throughout your career. He covered various topics ranging from problem selection to tightening up the technical gotchas to presentation. And in Improving as an ML Practitioner he shared his learning from experience in the field working on several aspects.

Screen grab of  statement of objectives in MLOps Development Environment by ML GDE Vinicius Carida
MLOps Development Environment by ML GDE Vinicius Caridá (Brazil) aims to build a full development environment where you can write your own pipelines connecting MLFLow, Airflow, GCP and Streamlit, and build amazing MLOps pipelines to practice your skills.

Transcending Scaling Laws with 0.1% Extra Compute by ML GDE Grigory Sapunov (UK) reviewed a recent Google article on UL2R. And his posting Discovering faster matrix multiplication algorithms with reinforcement learning explained how AlphaTensor works and why it is important.

Back in Person - Prompting, Instructions and the Future of Large Language Models by TFUG Singapore and ML GDE Sam Witteveen (Singapore) and Martin Andrews (Singapore). This event covered recent advances in the field of large language models (LLMs).

ML for Production: The art of MLOps in TensorFlow Ecosystem with GDG Casablanca by TFUG Agadir discussed the motivation behind using MLOps and how it can help organizations automate a lot of pain points in the ML production process. It also covered the tools used in the TensorFlow ecosystem.

DevFest hits ten year milestone and hosts diverse developers worldwide

Posted by Komal Sandhu - Global Program Manager, Google Developer Groups

A mosaic of DevFest attendees from around the world
A mosaic of DevFest attendees from around the world

DevFest: bringing community, connection, and technical content into focus

What might a flower pressing workshop, a keynote speech from a sitting Minister of Science & Technology, and a dinner at a 144-year-old restaurant in Madrid all have in common? These distinctive hyper-local experiences reveal just a few of the ways developers from all walks came together to master technical topics this year at community-led DevFest events around the world.

DevFest represents the largest distributed tech conference in the world, and the global community-led initiative made a point to include all developers. In its tenth year, DevFest 2021 celebrated using technology for good, and pioneered programs to nurture local economic growth.

Making developer-driven content approachable

Google Developer Groups (GDG) chapters in regions around the world curated events and agendas to suit the needs and interests of local developer communities worldwide. Organizers offered hands-on demos, workshops, and codelabs about the latest developer technologies, including Android, Google Cloud Platform, Web.dev, Firebase, Google Assistant, Flutter and Machine Learning with TensorFlow, . Events also feature talks and sessions that covered emerging topics and how to build experience in the industry.

Communities gathered both in-person and in virtual settings to make technical content accessible for developers. As more developers joined in on the fun, some contributed to Dev Library, a showcase of open-source projects built by community members that feature Google technologies.Some events provide mentorship and career support to early-career developers. Many organizers made diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and youth skills development a central focus of their gatherings.

DevFests around the world: a patchwork of both spoken and programming languages

DevFests bridge multiple languages, developer skill levels, and regions, and each individual event can address local challenges and opportunities.

Picture of a bunch of people in a classroom. On the board in front of them is a projected slide that reads Natural Language Processing
A DevFest session covering Natural Language Processing in the remote area of Norilsk

The Russian city of Norilsk, for example, located above the Polar Circle, usually takes at least five hours to fly to from most places in the area. Developers in this remote region hosted DevFest as part of a weekend long IT summit. Here, Google Developer Experts from Russia, Belarus, and Norway gave talks attended from IT specialists, teachers, high school students, and representatives from city organizations. “The event is significant for Norilsk,” said GDG Norilsk member Maxim. “Finally, we are holding specialized conferences for IT specialists who are cut off from the mainland.”

Large group photo shows the attendees of DevFest 2021 Islamabad
Attendees of DevFest 2021 Islamabad

Take the largest DevFest in Pakistan to date, organized by GDG Islamabad, where organizers and guest speakers shared plans to teach young people skills like Android development, machine learning, and web technologies to infuse technical skills into Pakistan’s economy. Shibli Faraz, celebrated Minister of Science & Technology of Pakistan, remarked that young people contribute technical knowledge to the country.​​ The event also featured women’s online safety training sessions, organized in partnership with Women Techmakers.

Creating inclusive spaces around the globe:

GDG Algeciras in Spain collaborated with the Besana Down Syndrome Association and brought kids together to learn about Google Classroom, Meet, and Maps. GDG Lille introduced live captioning to make their event as accessible as possible for people with hearing impairments. GDG Lleida hosted a morning of tech talks and an afternoon of in-person talks centered around Lleida’s identity as the second-largest fruit growing region in Spain, including a flower-pressing workshop. “The afternoon track was a blast, with all the attendees expressing their thanks for the event and the workshops. Everyone said they felt appreciated and included,” writes GDG Spain organizer Andreu Ibáñez. [Watch: DevFest Lleida Afternoon Events]

From DevFest events in India, China, Uzbekistan, Nigeria, North America, and beyond, developers came together at DevFests across locales and chapters for inspirational talks and technical content and career sessions. In some regions where gatherings were permitted, many attendees noted DevFest remained the first in-person event they’d attended in years, bringing excitement packed with learning, networking, experimenting, and swag (and a reinvigorated sense of community).

Learning together through cross-cultural conversations & coding events

Marking the tenth year of the program, DevFest 2021 culminated as a unifying global initiative, which saw 450+ events in 90+ countries and helped 500k+ developers.

“This year, I thought it was especially important to feature not only technology, but also participants’ feelings and emotions,” writes Andreu Ibáñez, an organizer in Spain that planned three distinct DevFests “After all, community is so much more than just a bunch of tech aficionados.”

The spirit of DevFest has always come from the people involved - developers from all different backgrounds and skill levels. Countries bring their own flavor and spin to their programs, and many organizers offered innovative ways for participants to connect. The event series continues to inspire local developer communities to plug in and share learning resources.

Announcing DevFest 2021

Posted by Erica Hanson, Global Program Manager for Google Developer Communities

GIF with blue background and text that reads DevFest 2021, Google Developer Groups

DevFest season has officially started! From now through the end of the year, developers from all around the world are coming together for DevFest 2021, the biggest global event for developers, focusing on community-led learning on Google technologies. Hosted by Google Developer Groups (GDG) all across the globe, DevFest events are uniquely curated by their local GDG organizers to fit the needs and interests of the local community.

The mission

This year, DevFest 2021 inspires local developers to learn and connect as a community by exploring how to use Google technology to accelerate economic impact. In light of COVID-19, the global economy has shrunk and millions of jobs have been lost. Developers are the backbone of technology, and they play a pivotal role in the recovery of the global economy. In fact, expanding the impact of developers has never been more important!

Luckily, DevFest is the perfect opportunity for Google Developer Groups to show up for developers and their communities during such a challenging time. At DevFest 2021, GDGs and attendees will have the opportunity to explore how to use technology for good where it’s needed most.

Accelerating local economic recovery looks different across the globe, and GDGs hosting DevFest events are encouraged to consider the challenges their specific regions may be facing. For example, GDGs may choose to focus their DevFest events on building solutions that help local businesses grow, or they may prioritize upskilling their community by sharing technical content to help developers become industry ready. Whether it be through technical talks delivered in local languages or by simply meeting fellow local developers, DevFest 2021 will leave attendees feeling empowered to drive positive change in their communities.

What to expect

One of DevFest’s greatest strengths remains the passionate speakers who participate in DevFest events all across the globe. These speakers, often developers themselves, come from various backgrounds, perspectives, and skill levels to create a rich and rewarding experience for attendees. DevFest sessions are hosted in local languages in many different parts of the world.

This DevFest season, attendees will receive career support and mentorship opportunities from senior developers, including speakers from Google, Google Developer Group leaders, Google Developer Experts, and Women Techmakers.

Hands-on demos, workshops, and codelabs will cover a wide variety of technologies, including Android, Google Cloud Platform, Machine Learning with TensorFlow, Web.dev, Firebase, Google Assistant, and Flutter. Through these events, developers will learn how Google technologies help them build solutions that make a difference.

Google Developers is proud to support the community-led efforts of Google Developer Groups during this flagship annual event. DevFest is powered by a global network of passionate GDG community organizers who volunteer their time and efforts to help developers grow together, and this event wouldn’t be possible without them.

GIF with red background and text that reads hashtag DevFest, Register Now, and Google Developer Groups

Coming together

During DevFest 2020, 125,000+ developers participated across 700+ DevFests in 100+ countries. DevFest 2021 is already in full swing, with thousands of attendees across the globe collaborating with like-minded developers, learning new technologies, and building solutions to uplift their communities. Whether you’re looking to explore the latest Google technologies, level up your career, or innovate for impact, there is a DevFest event for you.

Find a DevFest near you here, and use #DevFest to join the conversation on social media.

Announcing DevFest 2020

Posted by Jennifer Kohl, Program Manager, Developer Community Programs

DevFest Image

On October 16-18, thousands of developers from all over the world are coming together for DevFest 2020, the largest virtual weekend of community-led learning on Google technologies.

As people around the world continue to adapt to spending more time at home, developers yearn for community now more than ever. In years past, DevFest was a series of in-person events over a season. For 2020, the community is coming together in a whole new way – virtually – over one weekend to keep developers connected when they may want it the most.

The speakers

The magic of DevFest comes from the people who organize and speak at the events - developers with various backgrounds and skill levels, all with their own unique perspectives. In different parts of the world, you can find a DevFest session in many local languages. DevFest speakers are made up of various types of technologists, including kid developers , self-taught programmers from rural areas , and CEOs and CTOs of startups. DevFest also features a wide range of speakers from Google, Women Techmakers, Google Developer Experts, and more. Together, these friendly faces, with many different perspectives, create a unique and rich developer conference.

The sessions and their mission

Hosted by Google Developer Groups, this year’s sessions include technical talks and workshops from the community, and a keynote from Google Developers. Through these events, developers will learn how Google technologies help them develop, learn, and build together.

Sessions will cover multiple technologies, such as Android, Google Cloud Platform, Machine Learning with TensorFlow, Web.dev, Firebase, Google Assistant, and Flutter.


At our core, Google Developers believes community-led developer events like these are an integral part of the advancement of technology in the world.

For this reason, Google Developers supports the community-led efforts of Google Developer Groups and their annual tentpole event, DevFest. Google provides esteemed speakers from the company and custom technical content produced by developers at Google. The impact of DevFest is really driven by the grassroots, passionate GDG community organizers who volunteer their time. Google Developers is proud to support them.

The attendees

During DevFest 2019, 138,000+ developers participated across 500+ DevFests in 100 countries. While 2020 is a very different year for events around the world, GDG chapters are galvanizing their communities to come together virtually for this global moment. The excitement for DevFest continues as more people seek new opportunities to meet and collaborate with like-minded, community-oriented developers in our local towns and regions.

Join the conversation on social media with #DevFest.

Sign up for DevFest at goo.gle/devfest.





Still curious? Check out these popular talks from DevFest 2019 events around the world...

3 Ways DevFest is Solving for the Environment

GDG DevFest banner

In 2019, powerful conversations on how to solve climate change took place all over the world. In that spirit, the DevFest community recently joined the discussion by looking at how tech can change how we approach the environment. For our new readers, DevFests are community-led developer events, hosted by Google Developer Groups, that take place all around the world and are focused on building community around Google’s technologies.

From DevFests in the rainforests of Brazil to the Mediterranean Sea, our community has come together to take part in a high-powered exchange of ideas, focused on how to solve for the environment. Out of these DevFests have come 3 new solutions, aimed at using tech to create eco-friendly economies, safer seas, and care for crops. Check them out below!

1. Blockchain for Biodiversity - DevFest Brazil

Blockchain for Biodiversity - DevFest Brazil

Blockchain for Biodiversity comes out of the “Jungle’s DevFest”, an event hosted by GDG Manaus that took place in the Brazilian Rainforest with over 1,000 participants. Imagined by Barbara Schorchit’s startup GeneCoin, the idea focuses on using blockchain based solutions to track how “biodiversity friendly” different products and companies are. Her goal is to help create a more eco-friendly economy by providing consumers with information to hold companies accountable for their environmental footprint. This tool for tracking environmentally conscious products will allow consumers to better understand what materials goods are made from, what energy sources were used to produce them, and how their creation will impact climate change. Welcome to a whole new take on purchasing power.

2. ECHO Marine Station - DevFest Mediterranean

ECHO Marine Station - DevFest Mediterranean

The ECHO Marine Station comes from a partnership between the Italian Coast Guard and DevFest Mediterranean hosted by GDG Nebrodi, Palermo, and Gela. The marine vehicle was created with the hope of becoming the “space station of the seas” and is rechargeable via solar panels, equipped with low-consumption electric motors, and does not create waves or noise - so as to not disturb marine life. The DevFest team took the lead on developing the software and hardware for the station with the intention of creating a tool that can analyze and monitor any marine environment.

At the DevFest, two innovative ideas were proposed on how to best purpose the marine station. The first was to program it to collect radioactive ions released by nuclear power plants, with the goal of analyzing and eventually disposing the waste. The second was to program the station to carry out expeditions to collect water samples, analyze pollution levels, and report dangerous conditions back to the coast guard.

With DevFest and the Italian Coast Guard working together, the ECHO Marine Station is ready to change how we save our seas.

3. Doctor's Eyes for Plants - DevFest MienTrung, Vietnam

Doctor's Eyes for Plants - DevFest MienTrung, Vietnam

Doctor’s Eyes for Plants is an idea that came out of DevFest Vietnam’s “Green Up Your Code event”, hosted by GDG MienTrung, Vietnam. You can watch highlights from their event here. Created by local students, the program uses a public dataset with Tensorflow to train a region-convolutional neural network to recognize 6 diseases on 3 different plant species, all in 48 hours. The team was recently able to apply the technology to rice plants, which could revolutionize the world’s capacity and efficiency for growing the crop. The rewards of this technology could be unprecedented. The creation of a healthier eco-system paired with the chance to feed more people? Now that’s high impact.

Inspired by these stories? Find a Google Developer Groups community near you, at developers.google.com/community/gdg/

DevKids: An inside look at the kids of DevFest

DevFest Banner
After Aaron Ma, an 11-year-old DevFest speaker, recently gave his tips on coding, people kept asking us, “so what are the other kids of DevFest working on?” In response, we want to show you how these incredible kids, or DevKids as we call them, are spreading their ideas at DevFest events around the world.


Below you will find the stories of DevKids from Morocco to Toronto, who have spoken on topics ranging from robotics to augmented reality. We hope you enjoy!
Ider, an 11-year-old developer from Morocco

Ider, an 11-year-old developer from Morocco, has a passion for Python and is not afraid to use it. With an incredibly advanced understanding of machine learning and augmented reality, he was asked to speak at DevFest Agadir on what the future holds for kids interested in programming.

Ider’s presentation was titled, The Talk of The Next Generation and focused on how kids can find their passion for computer science and start building the future they one day hope to call reality. 


Selin, a 13-year-old developer from Istanbul

Selin, a 13-year-old developer from Istanbul who was named the European Digital Girl of the Year by AdaAwards, joined the DevFest family last season. Recently, at a DevFest event in Istanbul, she told the story of how she became fascinated with robotics through a presentation titled, My Journey of Building Robots. With a passion for Python, Java, and Ruby, she explained how she is using her skills to build a robotic guide dog for the blind. She hopes that with the help of technology, she can open up a new, more accessible world for those with disabilities.






Radostin, a 13-year-old programmer from Bulgaria

Radostin, a 13-year-old programmer from Bulgaria, joined the DevFest family last season as a speaker and is now a core member of the DevFest Organizing Team. Recently, he created an app for the team that gathers feedback on different DevFest events. 

Previously, he gave a talk at DevFest Sofia on how he built an app that teaches people to play chess on Google Assistant. The young developer also spoke of how his aunt introduced him to coding and how watching her program inspired him to learn Java, Kotlin, C #, Python, Dart, and C ++.  He ended his presentation recounting long nights, spent watching YouTube videos, in search of anything he could get his hands on to learn. Radostin has inspired his DevFest family to believe they can learn anything, anywhere, at anytime. 




Artash (12-years-old) and Arushi (9-years-old), are a brother-sister programing team from Canada

Artash (12-years-old) and Arushi (9-years-old), are a brother-sister programing team from Canada. At DevFest Toronto, they showcased their very-own facial recognition robot that uses Machine Learning to Detect Facial Emotions. Their presentation was complete with live demonstrations where their robot analyzed fellow DevFest speakers and gave physical responses to their emotions. The two up-and-coming programmers also described how they went about creating their own ML algorithm to build the robot. 

What inspired them to start such a project? Space travel. Artash and Arushi believe that as astronauts embark on longer space missions, it’s important to build tools that can monitor their mental health. One day, they hope their robot will accompany astronauts on the first trip to Mars.





Inspired by these awesome kids? Want to share your own ideas with a welcoming community? Then find a DevFest near you, at devfest.withgoogle.com.

Let the Kids Play: A young DevFest speaker and a DevFest organizer talk tech

DevFest banner
As over 400 community-led DevFest events continue to take place around the world, something is becoming clear: kids are taking over. We’re not kidding. Many young students are taking the stage this season to speak on topics ranging from machine learning to robotics, and people are loving it.

At the same time, these kids and the GDG (Google Developers Groups) community organizers of local DevFests are becoming great friends. We saw this recently at a DevFest in San Francisco, where Vikram Tiwari, a GDG Lead, and 11-year-old Aaron Ma, the youngest speaker at the event, had a great conversation on programming. 

We wanted to let you in on their conversation, so we asked Vikram to answer a few questions on coding, and then asked Aaron to respond to his answers. Check out their conversation below! 

What is your favorite language to code in? 



Vikram: I would have to say JavaScript - it used to be the language no one cared about, and then suddenly node.js changed the whole landscape. Nowadays, you can’t escape js, it’s everywhere from browsers to IoT and now even Machine Learning. The best part about using js is the flexibility it gives you. For example, it’s easy to make mistakes in js, but then if you want to prototype quickly, it doesn’t hold you back. And of course, you can’t forget about the vibrant node.js ecosystem, which is always striving for ease of use and speed. 


11-year-old Aaron Ma

Aaron: Open source is definitely the move! Especially open source competitions because they’re super exciting, let me see where I need to improve, and let me test if I’ve mastered a field of study. I also like to contribute or create my own open-source projects so I can grow as an open-source minded developer. Right now, I am the youngest contributor to Google’s TensorFlow, so to all the other kids out there reading this...come join me!




Do you like jumping right into coding or thinking through every line before you write?  


Vikram Tiwari, GDG lead
Vikram: I do like to think about the problem beforehand. However, if the problem has already been distilled down, then I like to get right to execution. In this case, I generally start with writing a bunch of pseudo functions, mocking the inputs and outputs of those functions, connecting them together, and then finally writing the actual logic. This approach generally helps me with context switching in a sense that I can stop working on that specific problem at any point and pick it back up from the same position when I get back to it.



11-year-old Aaron Ma

Aaron: I like how you think! ?If someone has already implemented the problem and packaged it, I would try to get right to the deployment process. But if no one has implemented the problem, I would first start with writing some pseudocode, and then slowly convert the pseudocode into actual code that works.








What is your favorite part of the DevFest community?


Vikram Tiwari, GDG lead

Vikram: That DevFest is a home for all developers, from all walks of life, with all kinds of ideas. Yes, this family loves building your tech skills, but it also loves helping you breakthrough any social barriers you may face. From feeling more comfortable around people to feeling more confident with your code, this community wants to help you do it all.





11-year-old Aaron Ma
Aaron: We are a DevFamily! ❤️I couldn’t agree more. My favorite part about DevFest is how this community can inspire. We, as DevFest developers, have the chance to change how we all think about CS every time we get together. From students like myself to long time experts, there is such an open and positive exchange of ideas taking place here - it’s so exciting and always makes me smile. ?





Want to join a conversation like this one? Respond to the questions yourself with the #DevFest or find a DevFest near you, at devfest.withgoogle.com.

DevFest 2019: It’s time for Latin America!

DevFest banner Posted by Mariela Altamirano, Community Manager for Latin America with Grant Timmerman, Developer Programs Engineer and Mete Atamel, Developer Advocate

DevFest season is always full of lively surprises with enchanting adventures right around the corner. Sometimes these adventures are big: attending a DevFest in the Caribbean, in the heart of the amazon jungle, or traveling more than 3,000 meters above sea level to discover the beautiful South American highlands. Other times they are small but precious: unlocking a new way of thinking that completely shifts how you code.

October marks the beginning of our DevFest 2019 season in Latin America, where all of these experiences become a reality thanks to the efforts of our communities.

What makes DevFests in LATAM different? Our community is free spirited, eager to explore the natural landscapes we call home, proud of our deep cultural diversity, and energized by our big cities. At the same time, we are connected to the tranquil spirit of our small towns. This year, we hope to reflect this way of life through our 55 official Latin America DevFests.

During the season, Latin America will open its doors to Google Developer Experts, Women Techmakers, Googlers, and other renowned speakers, to exchange ideas on Google products such as Android, TensorFlow, Flutter, Google Cloud Platform. Activities include, hackathons, codelabs and training sessions. This season, we will be joined by Googlers Grant Timmerman and Mete Atamel.

Grant is a Developer Programs Engineer at Google where he works on Cloud Functions, Cloud Run, and other serverless technologies on Google Cloud Platform. He loves open source, Node, and plays the alto saxophone in his spare time. During his time in Latin America, he'll be discussing all things serverless at DevFests and Cloud Summits in Chile, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico.

Grant Timmerman, developer programs engineer
Mete Atamel, developer advocate

Mete is a Developer Advocate based in London. He focuses on helping developers with Google Cloud. At DevFest Sul in Floripa and other conferences and meetups throughout Brazil in October, he’ll be talking about serverless containers using Knative and Cloud Run. He first visited the region back in 2017 when he visited Sao Paulo

Afterwards, he went to Rio de Janeiro and immediately fell in love with the city, its friendly people and its positive vibe. Since then, he spoke at a number of conferences and meetups in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, and always has been impressed with the eagerness of people to learn more.

This year we will be visiting new countries such as Jamaica, Haiti, Guyana, Honduras, Venezuela and Ecuador that have created their first GDG (Google Developer Group) communities. Most of these new communities are celebrating their first DevFest! We'll also be hosting diversity and inclusion events, so keep an eye out for more details!

We thank everyone for being a part of DevFest and our community.

We hope you join us!

#DevFest

#DevFestLATAM

Find a DevFest near you at g.co/dev/fest/sa

From Code to Community: Why developers call DevFest home

DevFest Banner
Ricardo on the left with fellow GDG lead planning DevFest Coimbra

Ricardo Costeira is a Software Engineer from Coimbra, Portugal. For the first time last year, he attended DevFest, the largest developer community-led movement hosted by Google Developer Groups across the world. To celebrate DevFest 2019, we want to share with you Ricardo’s story and how he went from writing code to finding community.

Ricardo (left) and a fellow GDG Lead plan DevFest Coimbra.

1. How did you first hear about DevFest? What inspired you to join?

In 2018, after living in Coimbra for 3 years, I didn't have any friends outside of work that were software developers. I longed to fill my life with more people that understood my passion and decided it was time to make a change. So I took to social media to see how I could connect with more like minded thinkers. Eventually, DevFest showed up on my feed. Out of nowhere, I saw this crazy event in Coimbra packed with bold leaders, energizing speakers, and profoundly creative exercises. I never expected that being with a community would get me so excited. I got a ticket on the spot.

2. Can you tell us about your first experience at DevFest?

It was exhilarating - out of this world. When I first walked in, everyone talked to me as if we had known each other for years. Big smiles, loud laughs, and deep kindness were all around me. As someone who is relatively shy and a loner by nature, I was stunned when I felt myself saying, "I belong here, I'm home." That very same night, I looked up the next event I could attend. Since then, I have attended 2 other events, signed up for 6 more, and have become a GDG Lead. In other words, I’m hooked.

Ricardo

So how did this all change me? To be honest, DevFest brought forward a shift in my personality. I now want to be part of a community - that is a new feeling in my life.

“As someone who is relatively shy and a loner by nature, I was stunned when I felt myself saying, "I belong here, I'm home."

3. What from DevFest 2018 are you looking forward to seeing again this year?

The booths. DevFest Coimbra has booths where you can talk with different companies. It’s exciting to learn about all the opportunities to grow so close to home. In my case, it was thrilling to see just how quickly Portugal is scaling and how so many companies come to DevFest eager to talk with the best talent. Forming these relationships is what can make the difference when finding the right opportunity for you.

4. Leading up to DevFest 2019, what are you most excited for?

Lighting a spark in new attendees. I recently joined the organizational staff and I’m excited to give new attendees that feeling I had when I first walked into DevFest. I’ve found such meaning in working with my fellow GDG Leads to bring together attendees in a sense of shared awe.

5. Any advice for those attending DevFest 2019?

Just say hi. You will be surprised with how far it will take you. DevFest is not only about the talks or workshops, it’s also about the people. This community knows the extrovert and understands the introvert, and warmly welcomes both. That is to say, no matter who you are or how you code, there is a place for you here.

“DevFest is not only about the talks or workshops, it’s also about the people.”

Want to find a DevFest event near you? Check out devfest.withgoogle.com to join our community, meet other developers and learn about Cloud, Android, Flutter, Machine Learning and more.

#DevFest #Community