Author Archives: Google Developers

Android GDE Zarah Dominguez believes in the power of technology to help others

Posted by The Google Developers Team

Zarah Dominguez 

For Women’s History Month, we’re celebrating a few of our Google Developer Experts. Meet Zarah Dominguez, Android GDE. The GDE program team encourages qualified candidates that identify as women or non-binary to express interest in joining the community by completing this form.


Zarah Dominguez started Android development in 2009 and hasn’t looked back. “When I first discovered Android, I thought it was super cool seeing what I have coded come to life on a device within just a few clicks,” she says.

Learning Android on her own, Zarah began documenting what she learned, to remember it herself and to help others. “Sometimes, I'd see answers on StackOverflow that said, ‘It's simple,’ or ‘It's straightforward,’ but it wasn't simple or straightforward for me, so I kept on writing, and more people, all over the world, started reading my posts. I was very surprised when I met another Android dev at Google I/O, and she told me that one of my posts helped her get unstuck. Being able to help even one person is a reward in itself, and hearing that from a fellow developer made me happy.”

Zarah got involved in the local Android community by speaking at conferences and organizing meetups, and a community manager nominated her to apply for the GDE program. She has run monthly Android meetups in Sydney and organized DevFests, and she speaks at community events and conferences in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand.

Android development is exciting and challenging because of the dynamic nature of the technology, Zarah says, with new features being released frequently and a vibrant developer community engaged with the platform. “The community around Android development is amazing–everyone is generous with their time and knowledge, which helps me improve my apps’ stability and performance,” she says. “The guidance and tools the Android team provides help me make better choices as a developer, influencing how I approach problems and propose solutions.”

Zarah says Android broadens the reach of any project. “I am very lucky to get a new device every so often, but not everyone has that privilege, and a huge chunk of our user base may have phones that are a few years old or without a lot of processing power,” she says. “That's part of the beauty of Android! A wide range of devices fit all sorts of budgets. The more devices we support, the more people we reach; the more people we reach, the more people we can help.”

Helping others is Zarah’s priority, as she believes accessibility should be first and foremost in the minds of app developers. “Technology, when used properly, has a huge potential of improving the lives of so many people,” she says. “I like building apps that have a positive social impact. From apps that help phlebotomists and nurses record and organize blood samples, to real estate apps that help people find their perfect home, to supermarket apps that help Australians get their weekly shop sorted, Android has allowed me to reach thousands of people and make their day-to-day tasks a little bit easier.”

She encourages other women developers to be confident and join the community. “@AndroidFeminati on Twitter is a good place to start,” she says. “It's an inclusive and supportive group of women in Android. It's also good to seek out local meetups like Women Who Code or Girl Geek Dinners to meet other women in tech in your local area. There's nothing like having a group of strong women who are behind you no matter what and will support you 100%.”

She advises taking mistakes in stride and staying upbeat. “You will learn from it, and you will be better for it,” she says. “Perhaps most important of all is to always remember that you are capable, you are strong, you are extraordinary, and do not let anyone tell you otherwise!”

Learn more about Zarah’s journey by watching her Android Developer Story: https://youtu.be/ZKbuqDbk-0c

Follow Zarah on Twitter at @zarahjutz | Learn more about Zarah on LinkedIn.

The Google Developers Experts program is a global network of highly experienced technology experts, influencers, and thought leaders who actively support developers, companies, and tech communities by speaking at events and publishing content.

The GDE program team encourages qualified candidates that identify as women or non-binary to express interest in joining the community by completing this form.

GDE Profile: Danielle Monteiro, Cloud GDE

Posted by Janelle Kuhlman, Developer Relations Program Manager

Image of brown woman with black curly hair facing forward and smiling

Cloud GDE Danielle Monteiro seeks to introduce more women and underrepresented people to data and the Cloud

For Women’s History Month, we’re celebrating a few of our Google Developer Experts. Meet Danielle Monteiro, Cloud GDE.

“There are few Black women working with data,” says Cloud GDE Danielle Monteiro, who works full-time as a Cloud Solutions Architect - Data & Artificial Intelligence at Microsoft in São Paulo, Brazil. “Being a Black woman working with data and recognized by Google is a very important recognition, and it helps me bring possibilities to women who share the same origin as me.”

In her almost 20 years of experience in technology, Danielle has worked as a developer, a Database Administrator, a Data Architect, and a Data Engineer, and is now a Cloud Solutions Architect. She holds a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering and is a Microsoft Regional Director, a Microsoft #MVP, and a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert. She gives frequent talks and has designed multiple courses and tutorials because she believes it’s important to share technical knowledge with as many women as possible. “We have openings in technology; we have wonderful technologies, but we lack people with this knowledge,” she says. “I believe that technology, combined with shared knowledge and empathy, will change the world.”

In 2019, Danielle was the first Brazilian woman to speak at MongoDB World, was honored with a MongoDB innovation award and named a MongoDB Female Innovator. She has recorded three courses for LinkedIn Learning. Danielle also created the DANI Academy platform to help developers and database administrators deploy, optimize, and propose complex data architectures. Her DB4Beginners.com blog helps beginner developers model and query relational and NoSQL databases. She also participates in communities including Databases-SP, woMakersCode, .NET-SP, and BlackRocks. Currently, Danielle is in the midst of a project focused on inviting people from underrepresented groups to work with data and the Cloud. “I love working with data and the Cloud,” Danielle says. “I believe that I can share my knowledge and bring more and more women to an incredible area.”

Google Cloud has helped her in her work and personal projects, and being a GDE has allowed her to dive deeper into the product. “Believe me, this support is essential,” she says. “I believe in the union of a great company and my ideas of sharing and mirroring knowledge to other women. It’s an honor to be a GDE.”

Follow Danielle on Twitter at @danimonteirodba | Learn more about Danielle on LinkedIn.

The Google Developers Experts program is a global network of highly experienced technology experts, influencers, and thought leaders who actively support developers, companies, and tech communities by speaking at events and publishing content.

How Jira for Google Chat uses the latest platform features for app and bot building

Posted by By Kyle Zhao, Software Engineer and Charles Maxson, Developer Advocate

Nothing breaks the flow of getting work done like having to stop what you’re doing in one application and switch over to another to look up information, log an event, create a ticket or check on the status of a project task. For Google Workspace users who also rely on Atlassian’s Jira Software for their issue tracking and project management needs, Jira for Chat helps bridge the gap between having conversations with your team in Google Chat and seamlessly staying on top of issues and tasks from Jira while keeping everyone in the loop.

Recently, there have been a number of enhancements to the Google Chat framework for developers that allows them to make connections between applications like Jira and Google Chat a whole lot better. And in this post, we’ll take a look at how the latest version of Jira for Chat takes advantage of some of those newer enhancements for building apps and bots for Chat. Whether you are thinking about building or upgrading your own integration with Chat, or are simply interested in getting more out of using Jira with Google Workspace for you and your team, we’ll cover how Jira for Chat brings those newer features to life.

Connections made easy: Improved Connection Flow

One of the most important steps for getting users to leverage any integration is to make it as easy as possible to set up. Setting up Jira to integrate with Chat requires two applications to be installed, 1) the Google Chat bot for Jira Cloud from the Atlassian Marketplace and 2) Jira for Chat (unfortunately there are no direct links available, but you can navigate to it in the Chat catalog) located in the Google Chat application under the “+” icon to start a chat.

In the earlier version of Jira for Chat, the setup required a number of steps that were somewhat less intuitive. That’s changed, with the redesign of the new connection flow process that’s built around an improved connection wizard that provides detailed visual information to connect Jira for Chat to your Jira instance.

The new wizard (made possible by enhancements with the Chat dialogs feature) takes the guesswork of trudging through a number of tedious steps, shows actionable errors if something has been misconfigured or isn’t working and makes it easier by parse out Jira URLs guiding users along the way. See the connection wizard in action below. Now anyone can set it up like a pro!

Jira for Chat Connection Flow Wizard Dialog

Batched Notifications: Taking care of notification fatigue

A user favorite feature of Jira for Chat is its ability to keep you informed via Google Chat of updates to your team's projects, tickets and tasks. But nobody likes a ‘chatty’ app either and notification fatigue is real—and really annoying. Notifications are only useful when they provide valuable information in a timely fashion without being overburdening - otherwise they run the risk of being ignored or even turned off.

To avoid notification fatigue, the Jira Chat bot enables batched notifications that optimizes sending notifications in batches based on the time elapsed since the last activity in an issue. Jira for Chat will send all updates to a ticket with a single card to Google Chat if a lot of activity is happening in Jira until at least 15 seconds have passed since the last update to the issue or 60 seconds have passed since the first update in the group. The latter keeps notifications fresh in case a lot of continuous activity is happening.

Updates to the same Jira issue are grouped in one notification card, until one of the following conditions is true:

  1. 15 seconds have passed without any additional updates to the issue.

    Example: Alice reassigned issue X at 6:00:00, and then added a comment at 6:00:10. Both the “assignee change” and the “new comment” will be grouped into a single notification, sent at 6:00:25.

  1. 60 seconds have passed since the first update in the group (to ensure a timely delivery)

    Example: Alice reassigned issue X at 6:00:00, and kept adding comments every 10 seconds. A notification card should be posted around 6:01:00, with all the changes in the past 60 seconds.

Example, Batching Notifications from 5 down to 1

Link Unfurling: Relevant context where you need it

One of the goals of integrating applications with Google Workspace is streamlining the flow of information with less clicks and fewer open tabs, making the new Link Unfurling feature a welcome addition to any Chat bot. Link Unfurling (also known as Link Previews) preemptively includes contextual information associated with a link passed to a Chat message, keeping the information inline and in context to the conversation while eliminating the need to interrupt your focus by following the link out of the conversation to its original source to gather more information.

Specifically with Jira for Chat, this means when a teammate posts a Jira link in Chat or pings you asking about more information about one of your tickets they’ve just linked in a message, you can now see that information immediately in the conversation along with the link, saving the steps of having to resort back to Jira every time. Link unfurling with the Jira Chat bot happens automatically once the app has been added and configured within a Chat conversation, there’s nothing additional that users need to do, and any links that Jira can preview will automatically get previewed within Chat.

Link Unfurling example in Jira for Chat

Create Issue Dialog: Take action from within Chat

Imagine you are in a lengthy conversation thread with colleagues in Google Chat, when you come to the conclusion that the topic you are discussing warrants a new ticket being created in your Jira instance. Instead of pivoting away from the conversation in Chat to create a new ticket in Jira, you can now quickly create a new Jira issue in Chat thanks to Jira for Chat.

To create an issue from Chat, simply invoke the slash command /jira_create to bring up the Create Issue dialog (enabled by the Chat dialogs feature). Then specify the Project that you would like to assign the ticket to, select Ticket Type, and enter a brief Summary. The rest of the fields are optional such as labels and description, and those, as well as advanced fields can always be filled out within your Jira instance at a later time if you would like. This way you can jump right back into the conversation, knowing you won’t forget to get this ticket logged, but also without missing a beat with what your team is talking about.

Create a Jira Issue Dialog

Takeaway and More Resources

The new enhancements to Jira for Chat make it a super useful companion for teams that rely on Google Workspace and Jira Software to manage their work. Whether it's the new and improved connection flow, the less-is-more batched notifications handling, or the instant gratification of creating issues directly from Chat, it's more than just a productivity booster, but also a great showcase for how the types of apps you can build with Google Chat are evolving.

Get started with Jira for Chat today or learn how you can build your own apps for Google Chat with the developer docs. To keep up with all the news about the Google Workspace Platform, please subscribe to our newsletter.

Stepping up as a Machine Learning Developer —My Experience With the Google Machine Learning Bootcamp

Posted by Hyunkil Kim, Software Quality Engineer at Line Corp.

banner image that includes math chart, brain, and GDS logo

This article is written by Hyunkil Kim who participated in the Machine Learning Bootcamp which is a machine learning training program conducted in Korea to nurture next-generation ML engineers and help them to find jobs.

banner image with text that reads google developers machine learning bootcamp

As a developer, I had developed a certain level of curiosity about machine learning. I had also heard that many former developers were switching their specialization over to machine learning. Thus, I signed up for the <Google Machine Learning Bootcamp>, thinking it would be a good chance to get my feet wet.

I was a bit nervous and excited at the same time after getting the acceptance notification. Wondering if I should go over my Python skills one more time in preparation, I installed the newest version of TensorFlow on my machine. I also skimmed through documents on the basics of machine learning. Those were all unnecessary. To put it bluntly, I had to relearn everything from scratch over the course of the bootcamp. It was quite challenging to be introduced to new concepts I wasn't familiar with, such as functional API and the concept of functional programming in general, various visualization libraries, and data processing frameworks and services that were new to me. I worked very hard with the mindset of starting fresh.

Journey to Becoming a Machine Learning Engineer

There were three main objectives for the participants: completing the Deep Learning Specialization on Coursera which is based on TensorFlow, acquiring ML certifications(TensorFlow certificate or Google Cloud ML(or Data Science) Engineer certification), and participating in Kaggle competitions. Google Developers team provided the course fee for Coursera and the certification fee and offered many benefits to those who completed the course. You could really make it worth your while as long as you took the initiative and applied your passion.

<Coursera Deep Learning Specialization>

The Coursera class is based on TensorFlow 2.x and requires watching a set amount of instructor Andrew Ng's lectures on AI every week with screenshots and proof. It was pretty tough at first as the lectures were not in Korean. However, because the class was so famous, I was able to find posts on the internet that broke down the lectures and made them easier to understand. The class also provided reference links, so you could study more on your own once you got used to the class.

While this is not really related to the Coursera class, I also participated in online coding meetups by the bootcamp participants in-between classes as in the picture below, and it was a memorable experience. These are basically sessions held in coffee shops or study rooms where people got together and worked individually on their own coding projects in normal times. Because of the pandemic, we could not meet in person obviously and used Google Meet or Gather town and left our cameras on as we coded. It felt like I was studying with other people, and I liked the solidarity of relating to others.

animated image of cartoon figures in a dining room

<Machine Learning Certifications>

You were required to acquire at least one certification during the bootcamp. I chose to work on the GCP ML Engineer certification. As I used Google Cloud, I had wondered how ML services could be used on cloud. Coursera happened to have a specialization program for the GCP ML certification, so I took it, too. However, in the end, Google's website offering GCP AI operations and use cases helped me more with the certification than the course on Coursera.

Image of Google Cloud certification awarded to Hyunkil Kim

<Kaggle Competition>

I didn't get to spend as much time on Kaggle. I didn't see any current projects that interested me, so I tried the TPS to review what I had learned so far. TPS stands for Tabular Playground Series, which is a beginner-to-intermediate level competition for new-ish Kagglers that are just getting the hang of it. You're required to predict the value of the target from the provided tabular data. It is slightly more difficult than Titanic Survival Predictions, which is a beginner competition. I chose this competition because I figured it would be a good practice of things I had learned so far, like data analysis, feature engineering, and hyperparameter tuning.

Image of duck shown as Hyunkil Kim's profile picture on the Kaggle dashboard

This was the part where I personally felt like I could have done better. I had many ideas for improving the model or enhancing the performance, but it took way more time to apply and experiment with them than I had expected. If I had known that model learning would take this much time, I would have started working on Coursera, the certification, and the Kaggle competition all at once from the beginning. Maybe I was too nervous about entering a Kaggle competition and put it off until the end. I should have just tried without getting so nervous. I hesitated too long and ended up regretting it a little too late.

<Tech Talk and Career Talk>

The bootcamp also included many other activities, including a weekly Tech Talk on specific themes and recruiting sessions of potential employers. Companies looking for ML talents were invited and had a chance to introduce themselves, explain the available positions, and take questions about joining their workforce. Some companies sent their current Machine Learning engineers to explain how they solved business problems with which models or what kind of data. Some companies focused more on describing the type of people they were looking for in detail. I didn't know at the time, but I heard that some of the speakers were big names in the industry. Personally, I found these talks very helpful in terms of both finding employment and familiarizing myself with the trends in the industry. The sessions were very inspiring as new ideas kept flowing as I heard about applications of technologies I only knew in theory or thought about what kind of investments in AI would be promising.

Besides the Tech Talks, there were also more relaxed sessions for things like career consultation and resume/CV reviews. There were even sessions by the Googlers, where they personally answered participants' questions and offered some advice. As I attended various sessions, I noticed that the bootcamp crew and many Tech Talk speakers from hiring companies offered authentic and valuable advice and were very eager to help out the bootcamp participants. Nobody talked about the cold reality of the world out there. Knowing how rare it is to find mentors that offer genuinely constructive feedback and guidance, I personally was very touched and grateful about that.

Concluding the Machine Learning Bootcamp.

The Google Machine Learning Bootcamp captured the essence of what it would be like to work for Google. I felt like they expected you to take your own initiative to do what you wanted. They showed that they were willing and able to help you grow as much as possible as long as you did your best. For example, one of the world's most famous programmers Jeff Dean was at the kickoff session, and there was even an AMA session with Laurence Moroney, who had developed the training course for TensorFlow. They also allowed maximum freedom about finding teammates for the Kaggle competitions so that you didn't have to worry about having to carry your team. Things covered in the Tech Talks or recruitment sessions were not included in assignments. They let the participants do their thing freely while promising the best support possible in the industry if needed. I could see how some people would find it too lax that Google lets you study on your own at your own pace.

Image of video conference call with Andrew Ng, Jeff Dean, and Laurence Moroney

I think this was a rare chance to meet people from various backgrounds with the common goal of becoming machine learning engineers or developers. It was a unique experience where I got to talk and study with good people and even do something strange like the online coding meetup. There were also times when I was vainly taking pride in what little knowledge I had, but I ended up putting a lot of work into the bootcamp, wanting to make the most of it and to come ahead of others.

In the end, the take-home message is to "try anything."

Personally, I was very happy with the experience. I got to be a little more comfortable with machine learning. As a result, I'm able to pay more attention to details related to machine learning at my new job. The challenge of facing something new is a constant of a developer's life. Still, participating in this bootcamp felt especially meaningful to me, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

While the bootcamp is over, I heard that some participants are still continuing with their study groups or projects. Wanting to study as a group myself, I also had asked around and volunteered to join a study group, but I ended up studying alone because none of the groups covered the area I was interested in. Even so, many people sharing useful information on Slack helped me as I studied alone, and they are still helping me even after the bootcamp.

At any rate, I keep coming up with various ideas that I want to try in my current job or as a personal project. It feels like I found a new toy that I can have fun with for a while without getting tired of it. I think I'll start slowly with a small toy project.

Introducing the Google Forms API

Posted by Christian Schalk, Developer Advocate

Building on the power of Google Forms

For the first time, Google Forms has an API and we are going to show you how you can use it and what’s in it. The new Google Forms API joins the large family of APIs available to developers under the Google Workspace Platform. The Forms API provides programmatic access for managing forms, acting on responses, and empowering developers to build powerful integrations on top of Forms.

The API supports two key use cases

Automated form creation and editing: Enables automated form creation and editing. Enables rapid form generation from large volume question banks or other data backends.

Reaction to Form responses: The API also enables developers to build automations for acting on incoming responses. Examples include developing real-time dashboards or visualizations and triggering business workflows based on response data.

Example Use Cases

Education Automation Integrations

  • Integrations with Learning Management Systems
  • Custom form/quiz generation from question banks
  • Student tracking with real-time dashboards

Customer Management and Support

  • Auto-generate surveys / forms based on customer data
  • Trigger notifications and processes based on responses from customers

Data Analysis and Visualization

  • Create custom visualizations with response data
  • Leverage push notifications to update in realtime

API Functionality

The Forms API has a rich set of methods to perform all forms operations.

Core Methods

  • forms.create - Creates a new form
  • forms.get - Get all information on a form
  • forms.batchUpdate - Perform form updates (add, edit, delete form items)
  • forms.responses.list - List all responses from a form
  • forms.responses.get - Get a single response from a form

Forms API ‘Watches’

Forms API Watches allow applications to subscribe to Cloud Pub/Sub notifications when forms change events occur.

Event types

  • Schema - Changes to form content or settings
  • Response - When form responses are submitted

Watch Methods

  • forms.watches.create
  • forms.watches.delete
  • forms.watches.list
  • forms.watches.renew

Examples developers have built during Beta

We had a great community response to our call for early access and beta developers and are proud to share some of their innovative integration examples with you.

Thousands of SMBs rely on Zapier’s current Google Forms integration today, which enables their users to connect Google Forms to 4000+ other applications. Zapier users automate tens of thousands of tasks daily using Google Forms, for example in coordinating internal business processes, handling external customer requests, even helping educators manage classroom activities, all which will be made much more reliable with the updated integration on the new Forms API.

Try it out here!

Portant’s new Google Forms API integration enables users to connect Google Forms to Google Docs & Slides to create custom document workflows. Some of the features enabled by Portant’s Forms API integration include:

  • Auto-Create - Automatically create new documents when a Google Form response is submitted.
  • Customize Documents - Personalize Docs and Slides by inserting question responses into templates.
  • Insert Images - Insert images and gifs into documents, slides and emails.
  • Multiple Docs - Create multiple documents and presentations in one workflow.
  • Export to PDF - Automatically save documents and presentations as PDFs.
  • Share via Gmail - Automatically share created documents via personalized emails.

Try it out here!

Automagical Forms is a Google Workspace Add-on with integrations in Drive, Docs, Slides, and Gmail. It finds questions in the files and makes it easy to create a Google Form. With the help of the Forms API it can also export Forms to other integrations. Implementing the Forms API has increased their development speed by over 3x, which is helpful for Google Workspace Add-ons that can only run for 30 seconds. Their current integration generates Short Answer and Multiple Choice forms with export to other file formats for 3rd party integrations. Their next implementations will include embedded images, and push notifications (Pub/Sub) for acting on Forms responses.

Try it out here!

Form Builder Plus helps to build your Google Form from existing content of Google Sheets, Docs, Slides, Drive, Gmail, and Calendar automatically. This saves time and effort of people who regularly create new forms. It uses the Forms API to add questions in bulk within a few seconds. Educators like teachers, trainers, coaches, quiz masters use it for creating Google Forms quickly to conduct assessment, quizzes, exams etc. Businesses that use Google Forms for skill assessments or recruiting use it to rotate questions from question bank spreadsheets and other existing documents.

Try out the add-on here or see a short video demo!

Getting Started

If you’d like a quick recap of the Forms API, please watch the overview video. We’ve also created a list of resources to help you quickly get started and get community support.

We’re very excited about this announcement and can’t wait to see what you build for Google Workspace! For more announcements about the Google Workspace Platform and APIs, please subscribe to our developer newsletter.

Android GDE Annyce Davis encourages other women developers to be inquisitive and confident

Posted by The Google Developers Team

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For Women’s History Month, we’re celebrating a few of our Google Developer Experts. Meet Annyce Davis, Android GDE and Vice President of Engineering at Meetup.

When Annyce Davis first started learning about Android development, she was fascinated by the ability to create applications for a device that she carried around in her purse. “The ecosystem was young, and it was full of opportunities and challenges,” she says. “I could finally show my friends and family what I worked on every day!”

She says the fact that Android developers support multiple form factors and devices makes Android development fun and challenging. “Something that works on one type of Android device doesn't necessarily work on another,” she says. “Being able to have the patience to work through the nuances makes it a challenging career.”

In the course of her career, Annyce has had the opportunity to develop Android applications across multiple form factors and in various contexts. She has designed applications for Android TV and tablets focused on video streaming. At another point in her career, she was designing for low-end devices with limited internet connectivity. “In each of the circumstances, I'm able to use specific aspects of the Android platform to get the job done,” she says. “I love that I get to develop applications used by millions of people around the world. I also appreciate being a part of the constant evolution of the Android ecosystem.”

She has taught thousands of people about Android development through blog posts, Meetup events, and conference talks. In her current professional role as the Vice President of Engineering at Meetup, Annyce says Android gives organizations flexibility, numerous resources, and community support. “As Android has evolved, it's becoming easier to learn and develop for,” she says. “Additionally, the community support is unmatched. You have numerous resources that you can avail yourself of to get help when needed.”

Photo of Annyce presenting

When Annyce reflects upon her career, she says she wishes she had been braver about asking questions. She advises other women developers to be confident about asking for help or information and to be unafraid to make mistakes. “I experienced the most growth in my career when I was willing to put myself out there and just ask,” she says. “Being vulnerable and reaching out to others helped me to accelerate my growth. Grow your network and don't be afraid to ask for help.”

Follow Annyce on Twitter at @brwngrldev | Learn more about Annyce on LinkedIn.

The Google Developers Experts program is a global network of highly experienced technology experts, influencers, and thought leaders who actively support developers, companies, and tech communities by speaking at events and publishing content.

Machine Learning Communities: Q4 ‘21 highlights and achievements

Posted by HyeJung Lee, DevRel Community Manager and Soonson Kwon, DevRel Program Manager

Image shows graphic illustrating Q4 success. Includes an arrow pointing to a group of stick figures

Let’s explore highlights and achievements of vast Google Machine Learning communities over the last quarter of last year! We are excited and grateful about all the activities that the communities across the globe do.

Image of the Jax logo next to images of animals and objects. The animals and objects are labelled Predictions

India-based Aakash Nain has completed the TF-Jax tutorial series with Part 9 (Autodiff in JAX) and Part 10 (Pytrees in JAX). Aakash also started a new tutorial series to learn about the existing methods of building models in JAX. The first tutorial Building models in JAX - Part1 (Stax) is released.

Christmas tree made of code next to words that say Advent of Code

On Dec 12th, ML GDE Paolo Galeone started to solve puzzles of the Advent of Code series using “pure TensorFlow” (without any other library). His solution has been updated in a series of 12 on his blog. He explained how he designed the solutions, how he implemented them, and - when needed - focused on some TensorFlow features not widely used. (Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6, Day 7, Day 8, Day 9, Day 10, Day 11, Day 12, Wrap up)

Detailed diagram of batch prediction/evaluation pipeline leading to model training pipeline

ML GDE Chansung Park (Korea) & Sayak Paul (India) published an “Continuous Adaptation for Machine Learning System to Data Changes” article on TensorFlow blog. They presented a project that implements a workflow combining batch prediction and model evaluation for continuous evaluation retraining In order to capture changes in the data.

Image of Elyes Manais' Google Cloud Certification

ML GDE Elyes Manai from Tunisia wrote an article on GDE blog about his experience on the Google Cloud ML Engineer certification covering guide to certificate and tips.

Image collage of medical staff wearing PPE

TFUG organizer Ali Mustufa Shaikh and Rishit Dagli released “CPPE-5: Medical Personal Protective Equipment Dataset” (paper, code). This paper got featured on Google Research TRC's publication section on January 5, 2022.

Image of a Google slide with text reading Ok, but what are transformers?

TFUG New York hosted a series of events in Dec. End-to-End NLP Workshop with TensorFlow. Brief introduction to the Kaggle competition for Great Barrier Reef challenge by Google(Slide). TF idea for ML Projects with GCP.

Left side of image shows a screenshot from the Google for Startups Accelerator:MENA page. Right side of mage shows man with glasses holding a piece of paper in front of a wall that has signs on it that say hashtag creativity and hashtag technology

ML GDE Elyes Manai from Tunisia wrote an article “The ability to change people’s lives and leave one’s mark“. Are you facing difficulties growing in constrained environments? And do you think you're not a first-class student and you don't have connections in the industry? Then, check out Elyes’s story. He shared how Google helped him accelerate his impact.

Image shows a graph with data. Labels are on the side to denote wing, body, and tail

ML GDE Sayak Paul (India) and Soumik Rakshit’s Point Cloud Segmentation implemented the PointNet architecture for segmenting 3D point clouds using the ShapeNetCore dataset with TensorFlow 2.x. It is a winner of #TFCommunitySpotlight too.

Screenshot from a paper titled What Should Not be Contrastive in Contrastive Learning

Annotated Research Papers by ML GDE Aakash Kumar Nain (India) is an effort to make papers more accessible to a wider community. It also supports the web version and includes papers from Google Research and etc. This repository is popular enough to have a +2k star and a +200 fork.

Graphic wih text that reads A DevLibrary video interview wth Shai Reznik

Interview series of DevLibrary contributors : Meet the ML GDE Shai Reznik (Israel) and Doug Duhaime. And check out what they built with Google technology and what made them passionate.

Image of a TensorFlow 2.0 Global Docs Sprint event invite with Vikram Tiwari

ML DevFest 2021 by GDG Cloud San Francisco. There are 5 sessions that walk you through framing ML problems, researching ML, building proofs of concepts using existing ML APIs and models, building ML pipelines and etc. ML GDE Vikram Tiwari (USA) presented Vertex, ML Ops and GCP.

The words using Machine Learning for COVID19 helpline with Krupal Modi next to a picture of a man holding a microphone

Krupal Modi (India)’s blog article and #IamaGDE video shares how he’s been leading the machine learning initiatives at Haptik, a conversational AI platform, and how the team paired with the Indian Government and WhatsApp to build a COVID-19 helpline.

Hashtag I am a GDE next to a photo of a woman with sunglasses on her head

Leigh Johnson from USA is the founder of Print Nanny, an automated failure detection system and monitoring system for 3D printers. Meet Leigh in this blog and video!

Celebrating global women in tech and trailblazers

Posted by Google Developer Studio

In honor of Women’s History Month, we are featuring tech trailblazers who have made significant contributions to developer communities close to Google and beyond. Many of the women we spoke to work directly with some of our educational outreach and inclusivity programs like Google Developer Experts and Women Techmakers, while others are Google Developer Student Clubs participants or Googlers who do incredible work around the globe.

They all share a passion for making the developer community more accessible and inclusive for generations of women to come. Read about them below to learn more about these individuals whose drive contributes to a better workplace and world.

We’re proud to celebrate #WHM22 with them.

Google Developer Experts

Laura Morillo-Velarde Rodríguez

Guest's location: Zaragoza, Spain

Tell us more about your role.

I work as a Tech Lead at Seedtag, a contextual advertising company, where I help build an amazing tech team to go through all the technical challenges that we have to face. Besides that, I'm also a Women Techmakers Ambassador and Cloud Google Developer Expert.

Is there a project you've worked on recently that you're excited to share?

During the pandemic I started recording podcasts (in Spanish) with some friends (GDG Spain Podcast, Cloud Español) and one of those is Tech & Ladies Podcast. Every two weeks Cristina Pampín, Silvia García and I talk with other women in tech about their careers, different technologies or other topics related to the tech space.

What makes you passionate about being in the tech space?

I'm passionate about the tech space because you always have something new to learn. I think that this can be a bit overwhelming sometimes, as you need to find the time and it usually involves a lot of self-study, but it also prevents our work from becoming boring.

What is the biggest piece of advice you would offer professionals starting in the tech space?

I would recommend them to make the most of the technical communities that we have. There, you can learn a lot, meet amazing people and contribute to the growth of others with your knowledge and experience.

Luz Maria Maida Claude

Guest’s Location: Ingelheim, Germany

Tell us more about your role.

I’ve been a Software Engineer for the last 7 years. Right now, I'm working at BIX that is the Digital Lab of Boehringer Ingelheim. Although my job description is “Frontend Engineer,” the reality is that every day I have different challenges that involve a great diversity of technologies and tools.

Is there a project you've worked on recently that you're excited to share?

With my team I created some prototypes using hardware oriented to the healthcare systems. In my free time I'm creating a project to collect funds for stray animals.

What makes you passionate about being in the tech space?

Technology gives us the power to turn our ideas into reality, but many of the things that are in our lives today are there because we share our knowledge with others. Thanks to many communities and groups we have more opportunities to improve our environments and grow step by step, something that is important in this time where we need to create changes.

What is the biggest piece of advice you would offer professionals starting in the tech space?

Be curious, trust in yourself and enjoy the journey. It is important to understand that every day counts to reach the objectives that we have. We’ll never have all the knowledge, but your current version knows something more than yesterday and the last week. Don’t stop and continue growing.

Google’s Coding Competitions

Chu-Ling Ko

Guest’s Location: Palo Alto, California

Tell us more about your role

I am a software engineer at Google for Clinicians of Google Health. Also, I am a volunteer for Google’s Coding Competitions. We develop the coding competition problems for Kick Start, Code Jam, and Code Jam to I/O for Women!

Is there a project you've worked on recently that you're excited to share?

Recently, a group of women volunteers including me are working together to develop the problem sets for Code Jam to I/O for Women 2022. We prepare input verifiers, test case generators, various solutions (and some fake ones), and solution articles. It is so exciting that we are all a part of this amazing event!

What makes you passionate about being in the tech space?

I am so passionate about this work because it is something that helps people. Google’s Coding Competition team produces plenty of high-quality problem sets every year, along with comprehensible, educational solution articles. We hope the participants can enjoy and learn new things from each of our coding competitions!

What is the biggest piece of advice you would offer professionals starting in the tech space?

Enjoy and take everything you are doing seriously, and appreciate the people you meet in the adventure!

Tatiyana Mishtal

Guest’s Location: Zurich, Switzerland

Tell us more about your role.

I'm a Senior Software Engineer at YouTube Content ID, also TL of our team. We are working on detection of copyright violations on YouTube. Due to the specifics of our product, we have a very intensive Quality focus - I spend a lot of time on data analysis and cross-team collaboration to improve automated decisions made. At the same time reliability requirements, new signals development and continuous improvements to YouTube infrastructure bring endless interesting engineering challenges as well.

Is there a project you've worked on recently that you're excited to share?

In addition to my main project, I'm also part of the Hash Code team. For several years already we have organized this coding competition for developers of all levels from all around the world. And just a few weeks ago we held the 2022 Qualification Round, which was especially challenging for us. Not only did we need to prepare a hard and exciting problem for the competition as we do every year, but also we had migrated to the new Google Coding Competitions platform and it was our debut there. Thanks to ours and the Coding Competitions team's joint effort everything went smoothly!

What makes you passionate about being in the tech space?

I really like making things work. I enjoy solving problems, overcoming challenges and in the end seeing how results impact people’s lives. I especially value personal time and it delights me that technology can both improve the quality of people's lives and cut the "time cost" of many mundane things.

What is the biggest piece of advice you would offer professionals starting in the tech space?

Ask "why" instead of "how". Why something works the way it does, why people came to particular ideas and why would one use the technology in a way they do. There are a lot of options of "how" for everything in tech, but you need to know "why" to take the most out of it.

Google Developer Groups

Michelle Mannering

Guest’s Location: Melbourne, Victoria

Tell us more about your role.

The GitHub DevRel team gets to do some of the most amazing things in the Developer Relations space. We showcase the products and services that GitHub has, but more importantly we highlight the awesome things our community is doing. Whether someone is a maintainer, an open source contributor, student, or developer working within a company, everyone has a unique and interesting experience. By showcasing these cool developers and projects we can show how people are building better things for the world.

Is there a project you've worked on recently that you're excited to share?

We’re always doing such fun and awesome things at GitHub. One of the things I’ve been working on a lot is the Release Radar. It’s a monthly blog post that goes out showcasing awesome open source projects. We also have a video that goes out featuring some of the projects, talking about what they do, and how others can use them. It’s a really awesome way to get the word out about what developers are building. You can find out more on releaseradar.github.com

What makes you passionate about being in the tech space?

I really love talking to others and hearing about their journey and experience. The best thing about the tech space is listening to someone get really excited about the thing they are building and then showing it to as many people as possible. I’m always so blown away by what people can create. I’ve been in this boat a few times and when you’re learning or building something and you get it right, and it deploys and doesn’t break, it’s not just you that gets excited, but everyone around you!

What is the biggest piece of advice you would offer professionals starting in the tech space?

Don’t think that this is a space where you have to be a genius and know everything. Everyone, all developers, from the most junior to the most senior, still use Stack Overflow to find answers. Never think you are not enough, and on the flip side, never think that you know it all. You can always learn more. So my best advice is “no matter what your role or your experience, always be learning!”

Cassidy Williams

Guest’s Location: Chicago, Illinois

Tell us more about your role.

In short: I build open source and educational content to help people get jobs!

Is there a project you've worked on recently that you're excited to share?

I've been working on my newsletter full of web news, practice interview questions, and jokes! It's at cassidoo.co/newsletter and I'm about to hit my 5-year-anniversary writing it!

What makes you passionate about being in the tech space?

Tech is such a creative, logical, exciting field that can change peoples' lives. I love helping people get jobs in tech to afford and build the lives and ideas they want to.

What is the biggest piece of advice you would offer professionals starting in the tech space?

Look for people who are where you want to be. Look at their paths, and see how you can try to mimic it. Make yourself available for people to mimic you. One of my favorite quotes is to "lift as you climb"! If you help others as you move forward in their careers as you move forward in yours, you'll build a wonderful community of people around you, and make the tech community a better place!

Students in LATAM come together for continent-wide tech conference

Posted by Paco Solsona, Regional Lead LATAM



A continental community of coders

Growing up, many students across Latin America watched eagerly as the technology in their cities became more advanced and opportunities to create the future expanded. For some, computers and web technologies presented untold potential. Still, excitement about doing right by their communities was all at the heart of it all. Now, a forward-looking group of university students from 27 different Latin American nations and Google Developer Student Clubs (GDSC) have formed a continent-wide network to chart a course forward for their continent. They are building a community of Spanish-speaking Latin American student developers that support each other, help foster leadership skills, and bring more opportunities to student developers in the region.

Teaming up to build skills and teach other student developers

In November 2021, this regional coalition of students came together to host a continent-wide LATAM conference, a two-day student conference (the team planned and executed it in just two weeks). The event featured ten speakers from Spanish-speaking Latin American countries and taught students about different developer technologies. Attendees learned about machine learning, automating processes using data pipelines, leveraging react to upload landing pages to Firebase, and building mobile applications with Firebase and React Native. 300 people attended the conference over two days, and the conference recordings have attracted hundreds of views on YouTube.

Screenshot of a group of GDSC leads video chatting during a live event

“We’re coming from a less developed region. We grew up seeing other countries that were more technologically advanced. Now, developers from Latin America are more confident that they have the skills to implement projects, produce new things, and bring advancement to the continent.” - Maria Agustina Cuello (Chichi)

Working together with purpose

Through working together on the conference, the organizers of LATAM conference know Latin American youth have a bright future. They are excited by the opportunity to use the power of technology and connectivity to change the world.

Screenshot of a group of women GDSC leads video chatting during a live event

Luis Eduardo, Lead GDSC UTP (Perú), says it felt amazing to be part of the LATAM conference: “being able to meet students from other countries with the same desire to work for the community was wonderful. Knowing that, despite being thousands of miles away, there was no impediment to being able to work as an organized team. This is what makes this family unique.”

Screenshot of a group of GDSC members video chatting during a live event

“LATAM conference was the opportunity to show that wherever we are, we can help others, and you will always find people with similar ideas,” says Francisco Imanol Suarez, Lead GDSC UNPSJB (Argentina).

Solution Challenge preparations

The group is now hosting events to teach student developers new skills and prepare them for the 2022 Solution Challenge, a global contest where students from around the world are invited to solve for one of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals using Google technologies.

In preparing their communities to build projects, the group plans to activate the countries and regions in Latin America. The students aim to expose each other to multiple technologies in the field and plan to host theme weeks for the Solution Challenge, like a Firebase week, a UX/UI week, and a Flutter Festival.

Students across the GDSC LATAMs are forming teams for the Solution Challenge. Some are local, coming from a single university, while others are broader, like students in Argentina working with students from Mexico. “A few months ago, no one knew how many people we would help take their first steps in the world of development. Let's hope this community continues to grow to be able to show that amazing things can be done in LATAM,” says Luis Eduardo, Lead GDSC UTP (Perú).

Screenshot of a GDSC student giving a presentation on Google technology via video chat

“I’m grateful to be part of this community and work with amazing team members who are so eager to work together and do activities. We want to bring all the opportunities we can to Latin American students, and gender and language are not a barrier,” says Cuello.

What’s next for GDSC LATAM

The members of GDSC LATAM plan to continue hosting collaborative events for the community such as Google Cloud Machine Learning bootcamp, a hackathon, and a 2022 student conference and related events with other student communities. The group holds Android and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) study jams, publishes a podcast, and hosts networking events to help reach more students, create networking opportunities, and expand each university’s GDSC. Eventually, they hope to positively impact the region by encouraging budding developers to build new technologies in Latin America.

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If this inspires you, sign up for the Solution Challenge and submit a project by March 31, 2022 at goo.gle/solutionchallenge and join a Google Developer Student Club at your college or university.

Check out GDSC LATAM on social media: Twitter | FB | YouTube Channel | Instagram

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