Tag Archives: Event

Women in ML Symposium 2023: Meet the presenters



Posted by Sharbani Roy – Senior Director, Product Management, Google

We’re back with the third annual Women in Machine Learning Symposium on December 7, 2023

Join us virtually from 9:30 am to 1:00 pm PT for an immersive and insightful set of deep dives for every level of Machine Learning experience.

The Women in ML Symposium is an inclusive event for anyone passionate about the transformative fields of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Meet this year’s women in ML as they uncover practical applications across multiple industries and discuss the latest advancements in frameworks, generative AI, and more.


Joana Carrasqueira, presenter for “Enabling Anyone to Build with Google AI”

Joana is a Developer Relations Lead for AI/ML at Google and her mission is to empower individuals and organizations to harness the power of AI to address real-world challenges.

She is a business leader with a track record of bringing strategic vision and global cross-functional programs to life. She’s also the creator of Google’s Women in ML program and flagship symposium, a pioneering initiative that has equipped thousands of developers with knowledge and skills in AI/ML.

Prior to Google, she worked at the Silicon Valley Innovation Center on innovation consulting for Forbes top500, startups and Venture Capital firms. Served as Education Manager at the International Pharmaceutical Federation, working closely with WHO, UNESCO, the United Nations and started her career at the Portuguese Pharmaceutical Society.

Joana holds an MBA from IE Business School, a Master in Pharmaceutical Sciences and a Leadership Certificate from U.C. Berkeley in California.



Sharbani Roy, presenter for “What’s New in Machine Learning?”

Sharbani is Sr. Director in Google’s Core Machine Learning group.

Before joining Google, Sharbani led engineering and product teams in Amazon Alexa, focused on media streaming, real-time communication, and applied ML (e.g., NLU, CV, and AR) for 1P/3P developers and end consumers.

Sharbani holds degrees in physics and mathematics from the University of Chicago and an MBA from Stanford University, and lives in Seattle with her husband and three children.



Eve Phillips, presenter for “Future of Frameworks: Navigate the OSS Landscape"

Eve is a Director of Product Management at Google.

Currently, Eve leads the ML Frameworks product team, which includes responsibility for TensorFlow, JAX and Keras. Previously, she led product teams within Google for Clinicians and ChromeOS. Prior to Google, she served as CEO of Empower Interactive, delivering tech-enabled behavioral health.

Earlier, she held roles in leading technology companies and investors including Trilogy, Microsoft, and Greylock.

Eve earned a BS and M.Eng in EECS from MIT and an MBA from Stanford.



Meenu Gaba, presenter for “Data-Centric AI: A New Paradigm"

Meenu leads the Machine Learning infrastructure team at Google, with a mission to power AI innovation with world-class ML infrastructure and services.

She is a technology leader with years of experience launching new products and growing small teams into mature scalable, multi-tiered organizations that are poised to deliver high quality products. Meenu enjoys fast-paced, dynamic, highly iterative/innovative environments and has lots of experience in balancing these disciplines while fostering a people-first culture and forming solid grounds for cross-functional relationships.

Meenu holds a Master's degree in Computer Science. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, solving crosswords, and watching movies.



Kelly Shaefer, presenter for “Maximize Your Data Exploration”

Kelly leads product teams at Google Labs, building both entirely new AI products and AI-enabled features into Google's largest existing products.

In the past, she led the Growth team for Google Workspace, including Gmail, Drive, Docs, and many more.

Outside of Google, she led the Enterprise product team at Stripe and was the P&L owner for Stripe's multi-billion dollar Payments area.

Kelly has an undergraduate degree from Wharton at UPenn, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.



Divyashree Sreepathihalli, presenter for “Keras: Shortcut to AI Mastery”

Divya is a talented machine learning software engineer who is currently a part of the Keras team at Google.

In this role, she specializes in developing Keras core modeling APIs and KerasCV to improve the functionality of the software.

Prior to joining Google, Divya worked as a Deep Learning Scientist for Zazu Sensor, a startup group in Intel's Emerging Growth Incubation (EGI) group. Her work there focused on computer vision and deep learning algorithm development for object detection and tracking, resulting in significant advancements for the startup.

Divya completed her Masters in Computer Engineering from Texas A&M University where she focused on Artificial intelligence in 2017.



Na Li, presenter for “Prototype ML with Visual Blocks”

Na Li is a software engineer manager from Google CoreML.

She leads a team to build developer tools to support ML development journey, from prototyping to model visualization and benchmarking.

Prior to Google, she was a research scientist at Harvard, working in HCI domain.

Throughout her career, Na strives to make ML accessible for everyone.



Zoe Wang, presenter for “Deploying ML Models to Mobile Devices”

Zoe is a technical program manager at Google.

Her career has been focused on Machine Learning (ML) productionization.

Currently she works with her team bringing ML models to mobile devices that power some of AI features for Pixel and other edge devices.

Prior to Google, Zoe worked at Meta on ML Platforms for end-to-end ML lifecycles.



Yvonne Li, presenter for “New GenAI Products and Solutions on Google Cloud”

Yvonne Li is a software engineer on the Duet Platform team at Google, where she focuses on improving the quality of generative AI models.

As a machine learning engineer and developer advocate at IBM, she designed and developed language models and curated open source datasets.

She has over 3 years of experience in the big tech industry, and is passionate about using machine learning to solve real-world problems.

Yvonne is the author of two Coursera courses: Data Analysis with R, and, Data Visualization with R.



Nithya Natesan, presenter for “AI-powered Infrastructure: Cloud TPUs”

Nithya Natesan is a Group Product Manager in the Cloud ML Accelerators team focussing on GPU / TPU offerings for Google Cloud.

Prior to Google, she was head of product management at NVIDIA, launching several products like DGX Cloud, Base Command Platform.

She has ~14 years of experience in hyper convergence Data Center software products, with recent focus on ML / AI Infra and Platform products. She is passionate about building rock solid PM teams, and shipping high quality usable ML / AI products.

Nithya has also won industry accolades namely WomenImpactTech 2023.



Andrada Vulpe, presenter for “Community Matters: 8 Reasons Why You Should Be Involved with Kaggle”

Andrada is a Data Scientist at Endava, a Notebooks Grandmaster on Kaggle, a Dev Expert at Weights and Biases and a proud Z by HP Data Science Global Ambassador.

She is highly passionate about Python, R, Machine and Deep Learning, powerful visualizations and everything in between.

Andrada finished her MSc in Data Science and Analytics in the UK and won 2 Kaggle Analytics competitions.



Jeehae Lee, presenter for “From Recovering Pro Golfer to AI Entrepreneur”

Jeehae Lee is a golf industry executive who has worked to create and build transformational sports technology businesses.

As the Co-Founder & CEO of Sportsbox AI, Jeehae is currently developing products using AI-enabled 3D motion analysis technology that will help participants of various sports and fitness activities learn and improve their skills.

Before founding Sportsbox, she spent five years between 2015 and 2020 at Topgolf Entertainment Group, leading strategy and new business development for various divisions including Toptracer. Between 2012 and 2013, she was at global sports and entertainment marketing agency, IMG, representing professional golfer icon Michelle Wie West. Prior to her career in sports business, she played professional golf at the highest level in the sport, competing on the LPGA tour for three years between 2009 and 2011.

Jeehae is a proud graduate of Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, and has a BA in Economics from Yale and an MBA from The Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania.



Jingwan (Cynthia) Lu, panelist for “The Impact of Generative AI in Different Industries”

Cynthia is a senior director from Adobe leading an applied research organization focusing on developing the Adobe Firefly family of GenAI models built from the ground up.

Her team started training Adobe’s first large-scale foundational model and helped rally together the rest of the company to roll out a new web-based product called Firefly featuring the image generation model as the first step in early 2023.

The same technology and its extension power Adobe Photoshop’s Generative Fill and Generative Expand features giving users intelligent image inpainting and outpainting experience. Time recognizes Adobe Photoshop Generative Fill and Generative Expand as best inventions of 2023 in the AI category.

Before Firefly, Jingwan was a computer vision research scientist and team lead who pioneered and led a large group effort to explore early generative models such as GANs within Adobe.



Wei Xiao, panelist for “The Impact of Generative AI in Different Industries”

Wei is the Director of Developer Relations at NVIDIA for the Middle East, Africa, and emerging regions. Her primary focus is to drive AI and accelerated computing integration within the ecosystem.

Before assuming her current role, Wei Xiao headed Ecosystem Engineering and Evangelism teams at both ARM and Samsung Semiconductor.

In addition to her professional endeavors, Wei dedicates her free time to teaching AI courses at the Graduate School of Computer Science at Santa Clara University.



Priya Mathur, panelist for “The Impact of Generative AI in Different Industries”

Priya is a Staff Data Science Manager at Google and she is the founder of Sparkle – GenAI Data Analyst.

At Google, she leads Data Science for Home Platform Monetization and GenAI efforts for DSPA.

Previously at Groupon, she led Data Science for App Push Notifications and TV Ads.



Katherine Chou, panelist for “The Impact of Generative AI in Different Industries”

Katherine is the Senior Director of Research and Innovations at Google with a specific focus on nurturing scientific and technical breakthroughs that can lead to global impact for science, health, climate, and advancement of platform technologies for our developers and researchers.

Katherine is focused on improving the availability and accuracy of healthcare using machine learning. She is a serial intrapreneur, particularly interested in removing health inequities and improving health and well-being outcomes across all populations.

She previously developed products within Google[x] Labs for Life Sciences (now Verily) and co-founded Medical Brain (now “Health AI'') at Google. She also headed up global teams to develop partner solutions and establish developer ecosystems for Mobile Payments, Mobile Search, GeoCommerce, YouTube, and Android.

Outside of Google, she is a Board member and Program Chair of Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, a Scientific Advisor to the ARCS Foundation, a fellow of the Zoological Society of London, and collaborates with other wildlife NGOs and the Cambridge Business Sustainability Programme in applying the Silicon Valley innovation mindset to new areas.

Katherine holds a double major in Computer Science and Economics at Stanford University and an M.S. in CS specialized in graphics.



Jaimie Hwang, presenter for “Take Action, Learn More, Start Building with Google AI”

Jaimie Hwang is a global product marketing leader with over a decade of experience, specifically in AI/ML.

She has built and led global product marketing teams at a number of AI companies, including an award-winning computer vision startup and tech giant Amazon.

She specializes in executive thought leadership, product storytelling, and integrated GTM strategy. She is passionate about promoting AI technology that is built responsibly and solves real-world problems in a human-centric way.

Jaimie holds a BS in Journalism and Integrated Marketing and Communications from Northwestern University. She lives in Seattle, Washington.


Save your spot at WiML Symposium 2023

The Women in ML Symposium offers sessions for all expertise levels, from beginners to advanced practitioners. RSVP today to secure your spot and explore our comprehensive agenda. We can’t wait to see you there!

Women in ML Symposium 2023: Meet the presenters



Posted by Sharbani Roy – Senior Director, Product Management, Google

We’re back with the third annual Women in Machine Learning Symposium on December 7, 2023

Join us virtually from 9:30 am to 1:00 pm PT for an immersive and insightful set of deep dives for every level of Machine Learning experience.

The Women in ML Symposium is an inclusive event for anyone passionate about the transformative fields of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Meet this year’s women in ML as they uncover practical applications across multiple industries and discuss the latest advancements in frameworks, generative AI, and more.


Joana Carrasqueira, presenter for “Enabling Anyone to Build with Google AI”

Joana is a Developer Relations Lead for AI/ML at Google and her mission is to empower individuals and organizations to harness the power of AI to address real-world challenges.

She is a business leader with a track record of bringing strategic vision and global cross-functional programs to life. She’s also the creator of Google’s Women in ML program and flagship symposium, a pioneering initiative that has equipped thousands of developers with knowledge and skills in AI/ML.

Prior to Google, she worked at the Silicon Valley Innovation Center on innovation consulting for Forbes top500, startups and Venture Capital firms. Served as Education Manager at the International Pharmaceutical Federation, working closely with WHO, UNESCO, the United Nations and started her career at the Portuguese Pharmaceutical Society.

Joana holds an MBA from IE Business School, a Master in Pharmaceutical Sciences and a Leadership Certificate from U.C. Berkeley in California.



Sharbani Roy, presenter for “What’s New in Machine Learning?”

Sharbani is Sr. Director in Google’s Core Machine Learning group.

Before joining Google, Sharbani led engineering and product teams in Amazon Alexa, focused on media streaming, real-time communication, and applied ML (e.g., NLU, CV, and AR) for 1P/3P developers and end consumers.

Sharbani holds degrees in physics and mathematics from the University of Chicago and an MBA from Stanford University, and lives in Seattle with her husband and three children.



Eve Phillips, presenter for “Future of Frameworks: Navigate the OSS Landscape"

Eve is a Director of Product Management at Google.

Currently, Eve leads the ML Frameworks product team, which includes responsibility for TensorFlow, JAX and Keras. Previously, she led product teams within Google for Clinicians and ChromeOS. Prior to Google, she served as CEO of Empower Interactive, delivering tech-enabled behavioral health.

Earlier, she held roles in leading technology companies and investors including Trilogy, Microsoft, and Greylock.

Eve earned a BS and M.Eng in EECS from MIT and an MBA from Stanford.



Meenu Gaba, presenter for “Data-Centric AI: A New Paradigm"

Meenu leads the Machine Learning infrastructure team at Google, with a mission to power AI innovation with world-class ML infrastructure and services.

She is a technology leader with years of experience launching new products and growing small teams into mature scalable, multi-tiered organizations that are poised to deliver high quality products. Meenu enjoys fast-paced, dynamic, highly iterative/innovative environments and has lots of experience in balancing these disciplines while fostering a people-first culture and forming solid grounds for cross-functional relationships.

Meenu holds a Master's degree in Computer Science. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, solving crosswords, and watching movies.



Kelly Shaefer, presenter for “Maximize Your Data Exploration”

Kelly leads product teams at Google Labs, building both entirely new AI products and AI-enabled features into Google's largest existing products.

In the past, she led the Growth team for Google Workspace, including Gmail, Drive, Docs, and many more.

Outside of Google, she led the Enterprise product team at Stripe and was the P&L owner for Stripe's multi-billion dollar Payments area.

Kelly has an undergraduate degree from Wharton at UPenn, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.



Divyashree Sreepathihalli, presenter for “Keras: Shortcut to AI Mastery”

Divya is a talented machine learning software engineer who is currently a part of the Keras team at Google.

In this role, she specializes in developing Keras core modeling APIs and KerasCV to improve the functionality of the software.

Prior to joining Google, Divya worked as a Deep Learning Scientist for Zazu Sensor, a startup group in Intel's Emerging Growth Incubation (EGI) group. Her work there focused on computer vision and deep learning algorithm development for object detection and tracking, resulting in significant advancements for the startup.

Divya completed her Masters in Computer Engineering from Texas A&M University where she focused on Artificial intelligence in 2017.



Na Li, presenter for “Prototype ML with Visual Blocks”

Na Li is a software engineer manager from Google CoreML.

She leads a team to build developer tools to support ML development journey, from prototyping to model visualization and benchmarking.

Prior to Google, she was a research scientist at Harvard, working in HCI domain.

Throughout her career, Na strives to make ML accessible for everyone.



Zoe Wang, presenter for “Deploying ML Models to Mobile Devices”

Zoe is a technical program manager at Google.

Her career has been focused on Machine Learning (ML) productionization.

Currently she works with her team bringing ML models to mobile devices that power some of AI features for Pixel and other edge devices.

Prior to Google, Zoe worked at Meta on ML Platforms for end-to-end ML lifecycles.



Yvonne Li, presenter for “New GenAI Products and Solutions on Google Cloud”

Yvonne Li is a software engineer on the Duet Platform team at Google, where she focuses on improving the quality of generative AI models.

As a machine learning engineer and developer advocate at IBM, she designed and developed language models and curated open source datasets.

She has over 3 years of experience in the big tech industry, and is passionate about using machine learning to solve real-world problems.

Yvonne is the author of two Coursera courses: Data Analysis with R, and, Data Visualization with R.



Nithya Natesan, presenter for “AI-powered Infrastructure: Cloud TPUs”

Nithya Natesan is a Group Product Manager in the Cloud ML Accelerators team focussing on GPU / TPU offerings for Google Cloud.

Prior to Google, she was head of product management at NVIDIA, launching several products like DGX Cloud, Base Command Platform.

She has ~14 years of experience in hyper convergence Data Center software products, with recent focus on ML / AI Infra and Platform products. She is passionate about building rock solid PM teams, and shipping high quality usable ML / AI products.

Nithya has also won industry accolades namely WomenImpactTech 2023.



Andrada Vulpe, presenter for “Community Matters: 8 Reasons Why You Should Be Involved with Kaggle”

Andrada is a Data Scientist at Endava, a Notebooks Grandmaster on Kaggle, a Dev Expert at Weights and Biases and a proud Z by HP Data Science Global Ambassador.

She is highly passionate about Python, R, Machine and Deep Learning, powerful visualizations and everything in between.

Andrada finished her MSc in Data Science and Analytics in the UK and won 2 Kaggle Analytics competitions.



Jeehae Lee, presenter for “From Recovering Pro Golfer to AI Entrepreneur”

Jeehae Lee is a golf industry executive who has worked to create and build transformational sports technology businesses.

As the Co-Founder & CEO of Sportsbox AI, Jeehae is currently developing products using AI-enabled 3D motion analysis technology that will help participants of various sports and fitness activities learn and improve their skills.

Before founding Sportsbox, she spent five years between 2015 and 2020 at Topgolf Entertainment Group, leading strategy and new business development for various divisions including Toptracer. Between 2012 and 2013, she was at global sports and entertainment marketing agency, IMG, representing professional golfer icon Michelle Wie West. Prior to her career in sports business, she played professional golf at the highest level in the sport, competing on the LPGA tour for three years between 2009 and 2011.

Jeehae is a proud graduate of Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, and has a BA in Economics from Yale and an MBA from The Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania.



Jingwan (Cynthia) Lu, panelist for “The Impact of Generative AI in Different Industries”

Cynthia is a senior director from Adobe leading an applied research organization focusing on developing the Adobe Firefly family of GenAI models built from the ground up.

Her team started training Adobe’s first large-scale foundational model and helped rally together the rest of the company to roll out a new web-based product called Firefly featuring the image generation model as the first step in early 2023.

The same technology and its extension power Adobe Photoshop’s Generative Fill and Generative Expand features giving users intelligent image inpainting and outpainting experience. Time recognizes Adobe Photoshop Generative Fill and Generative Expand as best inventions of 2023 in the AI category.

Before Firefly, Jingwan was a computer vision research scientist and team lead who pioneered and led a large group effort to explore early generative models such as GANs within Adobe.



Wei Xiao, panelist for “The Impact of Generative AI in Different Industries”

Wei is the Director of Developer Relations at NVIDIA for the Middle East, Africa, and emerging regions. Her primary focus is to drive AI and accelerated computing integration within the ecosystem.

Before assuming her current role, Wei Xiao headed Ecosystem Engineering and Evangelism teams at both ARM and Samsung Semiconductor.

In addition to her professional endeavors, Wei dedicates her free time to teaching AI courses at the Graduate School of Computer Science at Santa Clara University.



Priya Mathur, panelist for “The Impact of Generative AI in Different Industries”

Priya is a Staff Data Science Manager at Google and she is the founder of Sparkle – GenAI Data Analyst.

At Google, she leads Data Science for Home Platform Monetization and GenAI efforts for DSPA.

Previously at Groupon, she led Data Science for App Push Notifications and TV Ads.



Katherine Chou, panelist for “The Impact of Generative AI in Different Industries”

Katherine is the Senior Director of Research and Innovations at Google with a specific focus on nurturing scientific and technical breakthroughs that can lead to global impact for science, health, climate, and advancement of platform technologies for our developers and researchers.

Katherine is focused on improving the availability and accuracy of healthcare using machine learning. She is a serial intrapreneur, particularly interested in removing health inequities and improving health and well-being outcomes across all populations.

She previously developed products within Google[x] Labs for Life Sciences (now Verily) and co-founded Medical Brain (now “Health AI'') at Google. She also headed up global teams to develop partner solutions and establish developer ecosystems for Mobile Payments, Mobile Search, GeoCommerce, YouTube, and Android.

Outside of Google, she is a Board member and Program Chair of Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, a Scientific Advisor to the ARCS Foundation, a fellow of the Zoological Society of London, and collaborates with other wildlife NGOs and the Cambridge Business Sustainability Programme in applying the Silicon Valley innovation mindset to new areas.

Katherine holds a double major in Computer Science and Economics at Stanford University and an M.S. in CS specialized in graphics.



Jaimie Hwang, presenter for “Take Action, Learn More, Start Building with Google AI”

Jaimie Hwang is a global product marketing leader with over a decade of experience, specifically in AI/ML.

She has built and led global product marketing teams at a number of AI companies, including an award-winning computer vision startup and tech giant Amazon.

She specializes in executive thought leadership, product storytelling, and integrated GTM strategy. She is passionate about promoting AI technology that is built responsibly and solves real-world problems in a human-centric way.

Jaimie holds a BS in Journalism and Integrated Marketing and Communications from Northwestern University. She lives in Seattle, Washington.


Save your spot at WiML Symposium 2023

The Women in ML Symposium offers sessions for all expertise levels, from beginners to advanced practitioners. RSVP today to secure your spot and explore our comprehensive agenda. We can’t wait to see you there!

Join us online from 23-27 October for Passkeys Week

Posted by Milica Mihajlija, Technical Writer

Passkeys are a safer and simpler alternative to passwords that works on all modern browsers and platforms. They enable signing into online accounts by using a device screen lock–with a fingerprint, facial recognition, PIN or a pattern.

More and more online services are adding passkey support every day. On 10 October, 2023, Google accounts made passkeys the default sign in method for all devices that support it.

To accelerate our way into a passwordless future, from 23-27 October we are hosting Passkeys Week–an online event where you can learn everything you need to know to successfully implement passkeys. Use #PasskeysWeek to participate in the conversation and spread the word about your products that support passkeys.

Keep an eye on @ChromiumDev and @AndroidDev, where we'll share new learning materials, including blog posts, case studies and pathways to earn passkeys badges on your Google Developer Profile.

On 25 October at 10 AM PDT, we’ll host a live Q&A session on Google for Developers YouTube channel where you can get all your questions about passkeys answered by passkeys engineers from Google. Bookmark this link or click "Notify me" to get alerted when the livestream is about to start:

The recording will also be available on the channel after the event — we hope you will tune in.

Join us online from 23-27 October for Passkeys Week

Posted by Milica Mihajlija, Technical Writer

Passkeys are a safer and simpler alternative to passwords that works on all modern browsers and platforms. They enable signing into online accounts by using a device screen lock–with a fingerprint, facial recognition, PIN or a pattern.

More and more online services are adding passkey support every day. On 10 October, 2023, Google accounts made passkeys the default sign in method for all devices that support it.

To accelerate our way into a passwordless future, from 23-27 October we are hosting Passkeys Week–an online event where you can learn everything you need to know to successfully implement passkeys. Use #PasskeysWeek to participate in the conversation and spread the word about your products that support passkeys.

Keep an eye on @ChromiumDev and @AndroidDev, where we'll share new learning materials, including blog posts, case studies and pathways to earn passkeys badges on your Google Developer Profile.

On 25 October at 10 AM PDT, we’ll host a live Q&A session on Google for Developers YouTube channel where you can get all your questions about passkeys answered by passkeys engineers from Google. Bookmark this link or click "Notify me" to get alerted when the livestream is about to start:

The recording will also be available on the channel after the event — we hope you will tune in.

Save the date for Firebase’s first Demo Day!

Posted by Annum Munir, Product Marketing Manager

This article was originally posted on the Firebase blog.

For the past six years, we have shared the latest and greatest updates to Firebase, Google’s app development platform, at our annual Firebase Summit – this year, we wanted to do something a little different for our community of developers. So, in addition to the Flutter Firebase festival that just wrapped up, and meeting you all over the world at DevFests, we’re thrilled to announce our very first Firebase Demo Day, happening on November 8, 2023!

What is Demo Day?

Demo Day will be a virtual experience where we'll unveil short demos (i.e. pre-recorded videos) that showcase what's new, what's possible, and how you can solve your biggest app development challenges with Firebase. You’ll hear directly from our team about what they’ve been working on in a format that will feel both refreshing but also familiar.

What will you learn?

You’ll learn how Firebase can help you build and run fullstack apps faster, harness the power of AI to build smart experiences, and use Google technology and tools together to be more productive. We’ve been working closely with our friends from Flutter, Google Cloud, and Project IDX to ensure the demos cover a variety of topics and feature integrated solutions from your favorite Google products.

How can you participate?

Since Demo Day is not your typical physical or virtual event, you don’t need to worry about registering, securing a ticket, or even traveling. This is one of the easiest ways to peek at the exciting future of Firebase! Simply bookmark the website (and add the event to your calendar), then check back on Wednesday, November 8, 2023 at 1:00 pm EST to watch the videos at your own pace and be inspired to make your app the best it can be for users and your business.

In the meantime, we encourage you to follow us on X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn and join the conversation using #FirebaseDemoDay. We’ll be sharing teasers and behind-the-scenes footage throughout October as we count down to Demo Day, so stay tuned!

Indie Games Showcase from Google Play – meet the winners!

Posted by Patricia Correa, Director, Developer Marketing

We just wrapped up the Indie Games Showcase in Europe, Japan & South Korea! Back in March we started our search for some of the newest and most creative indie titles from these regions. The search culminated last week with the celebration of indie developers at events in London, Tokyo, and Seoul, and the selection of the winners from our finalists. Developers from 12 countries traveled to the events and showcased their games to the audience of gamers, industry experts, YouTube creators, and journalists.

The games were on show to the public, who spent several hours trying out their games and voting for their favourites, alongside the Google Play team. The top 10 finalists were then selected, and went on to pitch their games, and compete for big prizes in front of the jury.

collage of event pictures

Now, we are happy to announce the winners from each region! They will be returning home with a prize package that includes promotions on the Google Play Store, consultations with Google teams, Google hardware, and more.

We also want to take this opportunity to congratulate all the other finalists and developers who entered the competition this year. We are impressed by your creativity and passion, and hope you will continue to create amazing experiences for players worldwide.

European illustration with Eiffel Tower and Matryoshka dolls

Europe

logos for the Europe top 3

G30 - A Memory Maze by Ivan Kovalov (Russia)

Ordia by Loju (United Kingdom)

Photographs by EightyEight Games (United Kingdom)


The other finalists as selected by audience and Google Play votes were:

logos for the European top 10

#DRIVE by Pixel Perfect Dude (Poland)

Fly THIS! By Northplay (Denmark)

Golf Peaks by Afterburn (Poland)

Rest in Pieces by Itatake (Sweden)

see/saw by Kamibox (Germany)

STAP by Overhead Game Studio (United Kingdom)

Tesla vs. Lovecraft by 10tons (Finland)

mt.Fuji and other Japanese emblems

Japan

logos for the Japan top 3

Infection - 感染 - by CanvasSoft

MeltLand by 個人

Bear's Restaurant by 個人


The other finalists as selected by audience and Google Play votes were:

logos for the Japan top 10

Lunch Time Fish by SoftFunk HULABREAKS

ReversEstory by 個人

Kamiori - カミオリ by TeamOrigami

キグルミキノコ Q-bit -第一章- by 個人

クマムシさん惑星 ミクロの地球最強伝説 by Ars Edutainment

Girl x Sun - Terasene - Tower defence & Novel game by SleepingMuseum

Persephone by Momo-pi

Korean space needle and temple

South Korea

logos for the South Korea top 3

ROOMS: The Toymaker's Mansion by HandMade Game

Seoul2033: Backer by Banjiha Games

Cartoon Craft by Studio NAP


The other finalists as selected by audience and Google Play votes were:

logos for the South Korea top 10

Hexonia by Togglegear

Hexagon Dungeon by Bleor Games

7Days - Decide your story by Buff Studio

WhamBam Warriors by DrukHigh

Onslot Car by Wondersquad

Maze Cube by IAMABOY

언노운 나이츠 by teamarex

How useful did you find this blog post?

Congratulations to the finalists of the Indie Games Showcase from Google Play

Posted by Patricia Correa, Director, Platforms & Ecosystems Developer Marketing

Google Play Indie Games Showcase Announcements gif

Back in March we opened submissions for the Indie Games Showcase, an international competition for games studios from Europe*, South Korea, and Japan who are constantly pushing the boundaries of storytelling, visual excellence, and creativity in mobile.

We were once again impressed by the diversity and creativity that the indie community is bringing to mobile, and we’re happy to announce the 20 finalists.

Check out the local websites to learn more about the finalists and the events.

European illustration with Eiffel Tower and Matryoshka dolls

Europe

Europe Finalists logos for Indie Games Showcase

AntVentor by LoopyMood (Ukraine)

CHUCHEL by Amanita Design (Czech Republic)

#DRIVE by Pixel Perfect Dude (Poland)

Fly THIS! By Northplay (Denmark)

Fobia by Tapteek (Russia)

G30 - A Memory Maze by Ivan Kovalov (Russia)

Gold Peaks by Afterburn (Poland)

Grayland by 1DER Entertainment (Slovakia)

Hexologic by MythicOwl (Poland)

Lucid Dream Adventure by Dali Games (Poland)

OCO by SPECTRUM48 (United Kingdom)

Ordia by Loju (United Kingdom)

Peep by Taw (Russia)

Photographs by EightyEight Games (United Kingdom)

Rest in Pieces by Itatake (Sweden)

Returner Zhero by Fantastic, yes (Denmark)

see/saw by Kamibox (Germany)

STAP by Overhead Game Studio (United Kingdom)

Tesla vs. Lovecraft by 10tons (Finland)

Tiny Room Stories: Town Mystery by Kiary games (Russia)

mt.Fuji and other Japanese emblems

Japan

Japan Finalists logos for Indie Games Showcase

ALTER EGO by 株式会社カラメルカラム

Infection - 感染 - by CanvasSoft

Jumpion - Make a two-step jump ! by Comgate

Lunch Time Fish by SoftFunk HULABREAKS

MeltLand by 個人

ReversEstory by 個人

キグルミキノコ Q-bit -第一章- by 個人

SumoRoll - Road to the Yokozuna by Studio Kingmo

Escape Game: The Little Prince by 株式会社 Jammsworks

Kamiori - カミオリ by TeamOrigami

Bear's Restaurant by 個人

クマムシさん惑星 ミクロの地球最強伝説 by Ars Edutainment

ゴリラ!ゴリラ!ゴリラ!by Gang Gorilla Games

Girl x Sun - Terasene - Tower defence & Novel game by SleepingMuseum

タシテケス by 個人

Destination: Dragons! by GAME GABURI

Cute cat's cake shop by 個人

Persephone by Momo-pi

Hamcorollin' by illuCalab.

Food Truck Pup: Cooking Chef by 合同会社ゲームスタート

Korean space needle and temple

South Korea

South Korea Finalists logos for Indie Games Showcase

다크타운 - 온라인 by 초콜릿소프트

Bad 2 Bad: Extinction by Dawinstone

셧더펑 : 슈팅액션 by Take Five Games

Cartoon Craft by Studio NAP

Catch Idle by HalftimeStudio

Hexagon Dungeon by Bleor Games

Hexonia by Togglegear

Mahjong - Magic Fantasy by Aquagamez

Maze Cube by IAMABOY

Road to Valor: World War II by Dreamotion Inc.

Onslot Car by Wondersquad

ROOMS: The Toymaker's Mansion by HandMade Game

Rhythm Star: Music Adventure by Anbsoft

7Days - Decide your story by Buff Studio

Seoul2033: Backer by Banjiha Games

Super Jelly Pop by STARMONSTER

UNLINK Daily Puzzle by Supershock

몬스터파크 온라인 by OVENCODE

WhamBam Warriors by DrukHigh

언노운 나이츠 by teamarex

We will welcome all finalists at events in London, Seoul, and Tokyo, where they will showcase their games to an audience of players, press and industry experts, for a chance to win the top prizes.

The events are open to the public, so if you would like to meet these games developers, try out their creations, and help choose the winners, sign up on the regional websites.

Congratulations to all finalists!

* The competition is open to developers from the following European countries and Israel: Austria, Belgium, Belarus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom (including Northern Ireland).

How useful did you find this blog post?

Grow your indie game with Google Play

Posted by Patricia Correa, Director, Platforms & Ecosystems Developer Marketing

Google Play empowers game developers of all sizes to engage and delight people everywhere, and build successful businesses too. We are inspired by the passion and creativity we see from the indie games community, and, over the past few years, we've invested in and nurtured indie games developers around the world, helping them express their unique voice and bring ideas to life.

This year, we've put together several initiatives to help the indie community.

Indie Games Showcase

For indie developers who are constantly pushing the boundaries of storytelling, visual excellence, and creativity in mobile we are announcing today the Indie Games Showcase, an international competition for games studios from Europe*, South Korea and Japan. Those of you who meet the eligibility criteria (as outlined below) can enter your game for a chance to win several prizes, including:

  • A paid trip and accommodation to the final event in your region to showcase your game.
  • Promotion on the Google Play Store.
  • Promotion on Android and Google Play marketing channels.
  • Dedicated consultations with the Google Play team.
  • Google hardware.
  • And more...

How to enter the competition

If you're over 18 years old, based in one of the eligible countries, have 30 or less full time employees, and have published a new game on Google Play after 1 January 2018, you can enter your game. If you're planning on publishing a new game soon, you can also enter by submitting a private beta. Submissions close on May 6 2019. Check out all the details in the terms and conditions for each region. Enter now!

Indie Games Accelerator

Last year we launched our first games accelerator for developers in Southeast Asia, India and Pakistan and saw great results. We are happy to announce that we are expanding the format to accept developers from select countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, with applications for the 2019 cohort opening soon. The Indie Games Accelerator is a 6 month intensive program for top games startups, powered by mentors from the gaming industry as well as Google experts, offering a comprehensive curriculum that covers all aspects of building a great game and company.

Mobile Developer Day at GDC

We will be hosting our annual Developer Day at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on Monday, March 18th. Join us for a full day of sessions covering tools and best practices to help build a successful mobile games business. We'll focus on game quality, effective monetization and growth strategies, and how to create, connect, and scale with Google. Sign up to stay up to date or join us via livestream.

Developer Days

We also want to engage with you in person with a series of events. We will be announcing them shortly, so please make sure to sign up to our newsletter to get notified about events and programs for indie developers.

Academy for App Success

Looking for tips on how to use various developer tools in the Play Console? Get free training through our e-learning program, the Academy for App Success. We even have a custom Play Console for game developers course to get a jump start on Google Play.

We look forward to seeing your amazing work and sharing your creativity with other developers, gamers and industry experts around the world. And don't forget to submit your game for a chance to get featured on Indie Corner on Google Play.

* The competition is open to developers from the following European countries: Austria, Belgium, Belarus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom (including Northern Ireland).


How useful did you find this blog post?

Scratch Blocks update: Making it easier to develop coding apps for kids

Posted by Champika Fernando, Product Manager, Google, and Kasia Chmielinski, Product Lead, MIT Scratch Team

We want to empower developers to build great creative learning apps for kids. That's why, earlier this year, we announced Scratch Blocks, a free, open-source project created by the MIT Scratch and Google Kids Coding teams. Together, we are building this highly tinkerableand playful block-based programming grammar based on MIT's popular Scratch language and Blockly's architecture. With Scratch Blocks, developers can integrate Scratch-style coding into apps for kids.

Today, we're excited to share our progress in a number of areas:

1. Designing for tinkerability

Research from the MIT Media Lab has highlighted the importance of providing children with opportunities for quick experimentation and rapid cycles of iteration. For example, the Scratch programming environment makes it easy for kids to adjust the code while it's running, as well as try coding blocks by just tapping on them. Since our initial announcement in May, we've focused on supporting this type of tinkerability in the Scratch Blocks project by making it very easy for developers to connect Scratch Blocks directly to the Scratch VM (a related open-source project being developed by MIT). In this model, instead of blocks being converted to a text-based language like JavaScript which is then interpreted, the blocks themselves are the code. The result is a more tinkerable experience for the end-user.

2. Designing for all levels

Computational thinking1 is a valuable skill for everyone. In order to support developers building a wide diversity of coding experiences with Scratch Blocks, we've designed two related block grammars that can be used in a variety of contexts. One grammar uses icon-based blocks that connect horizontally, while the other uses text-based blocks that connect vertically.

We started by developing the horizontal grammar, which is well-suited for beginners of all ages due to its simplicity and limited number of blocks; additionally, this grammar is easier to manipulate on small screens. You can see an example of the horizontal icon-based grammar in Code a Snowflake (an activity in this year's Google Santa Tracker) built by the Google Kids Coding Team. More recently, we've added the vertical grammar, which supports a wider range of complex concepts. The horizontal grammar can also be translated into vertical blocks, making it possible to transition between the grammars. We imagine this will be useful in a number of situations, including designing for multiple screen sizes, or as an element of the app's learning experience.

3. Designing for all devices

We're building Scratch Blocks for a world that is increasingly mobile, where people of all ages will tinker with code in a variety of environments. We've improved the mobile experience in many key areas, both in Scratch Blocks as well as the underlying Blockly project:

  • Redesigned blocks for improved touchability
  • Fast loading of large projects on low-powered devices
  • Optimization of block manipulation and code editing on touch screens
  • Redesigned multi-touch support for a better experience on touch devices

How to get involved

These first six months of Scratch Blocks have been a lot of work - and a ton of fun. To stay up to date on the project, check out our Github project, and learn more on our Developer Page.

[1] Learn more about Computational Thinking

Welcoming the third class of Launchpad Accelerator with expansion into new countries!

Roy Glasberg, Global Lead, Launchpad Program & Accelerator

After two successful classes, we're excited to announce the next group of promising startups for the third class of Launchpad Accelerator. The startups from Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Mexico will be joined by developers from five additional countries: Argentina, Colombia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

The program includes intensive mentoring from Google engineers, product managers and other expert mentors from top technology companies and VCs in Silicon Valley. Participants receive equity-free support, credits for Google products, PR support and work closely with Google for six months in their home country.

Class 3 kicks off early next year (January 30) at Launchpad Space, our physical space in San Francisco where developers and startups can get free technical training, one-on-one mentoring and more education geared towards helping them successfully build their apps & startups.

Here's the full list of participating startups (by country):




If you're interested in applying for future Launchpad Accelerator cohorts, we encourage you to follow us on the Launchpad Accelerator site to receive updates. We also expect to add more countries to the program in the future. Stay tuned!