Category Archives: Google Developers Blog

News and insights on Google platforms, tools and events

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

Headshot 

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.

—

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

—

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.

—

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

—

Google for Games Developer Summit returns March 15

Posted by Greg Hartrell, Product Director, Games on Play/Android

Image with Google for Games castle, rocket, volcano, and racetrack

With over three billion players showing strong engagement worldwide, the games market continues to remain resilient and grow beyond expectations. As we look ahead this year, the influx of new and returning players creates a great opportunity for developers to scale their games businesses.

The Google for Games Developer Summit returns virtually on March 15, 2022 at 9AM Pacific. From mobile to cloud, learn about our new solutions for game developers that make it easier to build high-quality games and reach audiences around the world.

Join us for the keynote at 9AM Pacific followed by over 20 developer sessions on-demand. We’ll share deep-dives and updates on the Android Game Development Kit, Google Play Games beta on PC, Play Asset Delivery, Play Console, and more. The summit is open for all. Check out the full agenda today at g.co/gamedevsummit.

ML Olympiad: Globally Distributed ML Competitions by the Community

Posted by Hee Jung, DevRel Community Manager

Blog header image shows graphic illustration of people, a group, and a medal

We are happy to announce ML Olympiad, an associated Kaggle Community Competitions hosted by Machine Learning Google Developer Experts (ML GDE) and TensorFlow User Group (TFUG).

Kaggle recently announced "Community Competitions" allowing anyone to create and host a competition at no cost. And our proud members of ML communities decided to dive in and take advantage of the feature to solve critical issues of our time, providing opportunities to train developers.

Why the ML Olympiad?

To train ML for developers leveraging Kaggle’s community competition. This is an opportunity for the participants to practice ML. This is the first 2022 global campaign of the ML Ecosystem team and this helps build stronger communities.

Image with text that reads Community Competitions make machine learning fun

ML Olympiad Community Competitions

Currently, 16 ML Olympiad community competitions are open, hosted by ML GDEs and TFUGs.

Arabic_Poems (in local language) link

  • Predict the name of a poet for Arabic poems. Encourage people to practice on Arabic NLP using TF.
  • Hosts: Ruqiya Bin Safi (ML GDE), Eyad Sibai, Hussain Alfayez / Saudi TFUG & Applied ML/AI group

Sky Survey link

  • Stellar classification with the digital sky survey
  • Hosts: Jieun Yoo, Michael Mellinger / NYTFUG

Análisis epidemiológico Guatemala (in local language) link

  • Make an analysis and prediction of epidemiological cases in Guatemala and the relations.
  • Hosts: Alvin Estrada, Julio Monterroso / TensorFlow User Group Guatemala

QUALITY EDUCATION (in local language) link

  • Competition will be focused on the Enem (National High School Examination) data. Competitors will have to create models to predict student scores in multiple tests.
  • Hosts: Vinicius Fernandes Caridá (ML GDE), Pedro Gengo, Alex Fernandes Mansano / Tensorflow User Group São Paulo

Landscape Image Classification link

  • Classification of partially masked natural images of mountains, buildings, seas, etc.
  • Hosts: Aditya Kane, Yogesh Kulkarni (ML GDE), Shashank Sane / TFUG Pune

Autism Prediction Challenge link

  • Classifying whether individuals have Autism or not.
  • Hosts: Usha Rengaraju, Vijayabharathi Karuppasamy, Samuel T / TFUG Mysuru and TFUG Chennai

Tamkeen Fund Granted link

  • Predict the company funds based on the company's features
  • Hosts: Mohammed buallay (ML GDE), Sayed Ali Alkamel (ML GDE)

Hausa Sentiment Analysis (in local language) link

  • Classify the sentiment of sentences of Hausa Language
  • Hosts: Nuruddeen Sambo, Dattijo Murtala Makama / TFUG Bauchi

TSA Classification (in local language) link

  • We invite participants to develop a classification method to identify early autistic disorders.
  • Hosts: Yannick Serge Obam (ML GDE), Arnold Junior Mve Mve

Let's Fight lung cancer (in local language) link

  • Spotting factors that are link to lung cancer detection
  • Hosts: abderrahman jaize, Sara EL-ATEIF / TFUG Casablanca

Genome Sequences classification (in local language) link

  • Genome sequence classification based on NCBI's GenBank database
  • Hosts: Taha Bouhsine, Said ElHachmey, Lahcen Ousayd / TensorFlow User Group Agadir

GOOD HEALTH AND WELL BEING link

  • Using ML to predict heart disease - If a patient has heart disease or not
  • Hosts: Ibrahim Olagoke, Ahmad Olanrewaju, Ernest Owojori / TensorFlow User Group Ibadan

Preserving North African Culture link

  • We are tackling cultural preservation through a machine learning model capable of identifying the origin of a given item (food, clothing, building).
  • Hosts: elyes manai (ML GDE), Rania Boughanmi, Kayoum Djedidi / IEEE ESSTHS + GDSC ENIT

Delivery Assignment Prediction link

  • The aim of this competition is to build a multi-class classification model capable of accurately predicting the most suitable driver for one or several given orders based on the destination of the order and the paths covered by the deliverers.
  • Host: Thierno Ibrahima DIOP (ML GDE)

Used car price link

  • Predicting the price of an imported used car.
  • Hosts: Armel Yara, Kimana Misago, Jordan Erifried / TFUG Abidjan

TensorFlow Malaysia User Group link

  • Using AI/ML to solve Business Data problem
  • Hosts: Poo Kuan Hoong (ML GDE), Yu Yong Poh, Lau Sian Lun / TensorFlow & Deep Learning Malaysia User Group

Navigating ML Olympiad

You can search “ML Olympiad” on Kaggle Community Competitions page to see them all. And for further info, look for #MLOlympiad on social media.

Google Developers support ML Olympiad by providing swag for top 3 winners of each competition. Find your interest among the competitions, join/share them, and get your part of the swag for competition winners!

DevFest hits ten year milestone and hosts diverse developers worldwide

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

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

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

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

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

Making developer-driven content approachable

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Creating inclusive spaces around the globe:

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

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

Learning together through cross-cultural conversations & coding events

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

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

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