Tag Archives: Announcements

Celebrating leaders in AAPI communities

Posted by Google Developer Studio

In recognition of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we are speaking with mentors and leaders in tech and who identify as part of the AAPI community. Many of the influential figures we feature are involved with and help champion inclusivity programs like Google Developer Experts and Google Developer Student Clubs, while others work on leading in product areas like TensorFlow and drive impact through their line of work and communities.

On that note, we are honoring this year’s theme of “Advancing Leaders Through Collaboration” by learning more about the power of mentorship, advice they’ve received from other leaders, and their biggest accomplishments.

Read more about leads in the AAPI community below.

Ben Hong

Senior Staff Developer Experience Engineer at Netlify

What’s the best piece of advice you can offer new/junior developers looking to grow into leadership roles?

There is a lot of advice out there on how to get the most out of your career by climbing the ladder and getting leadership roles. Before you embark on that journey, first ask yourself the question "Why do I want this?"

Becoming a leader comes with a lot of glitz and glamor, but the reality is that it carries a huge weight of responsibility because the decisions and actions you take as a leader will impact the lives of those around you in significant ways you can't foresee.

As a result, the key to becoming the best leader you can be is to:

  1. Establish what your values and principles are
  2. Align them to the actions you take each and every day

Because at the end of the day, leaders are often faced with difficult decisions that lead to an uncertain future. And without core values and principles to guide you as an individual, you run the risk of being easily swayed by short term trade offs that could result in a long term loss.

This world needs leaders who can stand their ground against the temptations of short-term wins and make the best decisions they can while fighting for those that follow them. If you stand firm in your values and listen to those around you, you'll be able to create profound impact in your community.

Taha Bouhsine

Data Scientist and GDSCUIZ Lead

What’s the best piece of advice you can offer new/junior developers looking to grow into leadership roles?

Create a journey worth taking. You will face many challenges and a new set of problems. You will start asking a lot of questions as everything seems to be unfamiliar.

Things get much lighter if you are guided by a mentor, as you will get guidance on how to act in this new chapter of life. In your early days, invest as much as you can in building and nurturing a team, as it will save you a lot of time along the road. Surround yourself with real people who take the initiative, get to the action, and are willing to grow and learn, nurture their skills and guide them towards your common goal. Don't try to be a people pleaser as it's an impossible mission.

Your actions will offend some people one way or the other. That’s ok as you should believe in your mission, create a clear plan with well-defined tasks and milestones, and be firm with your decision. In the end, responsibility is yours to bear, so at least take it on something you decided, not something that was forced upon you by others.

Finally, when there is fire, look for ways to put it out. Take care of your soul, and enjoy the journey!

Huyen Tue Dao

Android Developer, Trello

What do you love most about being a part of the developer community?

It has been the most rewarding and critical part of my career to meet other developers, learning and sharing knowledge and getting to know them as human beings.

Development is a job of constant learning, whether it is the latest technology, trends, issues, and challenges or the day-to-day intricacies and nuances of writing specialized code and solving problems in efficient and elegant ways. I don't think I'd have the tools to solve issues large and small without the sharing of knowledge and experience of the developer community. If you're having a problem of any kind, chances are that someone has had the same challenges. You can take comfort that you can probably find the answer or at least find people that can help you. You can also feel confident that if you discovered something new or learned important lessons, someone will want to hear what you have to say.

I love seeing and being part of this cycle and interchange; as we pool our experience, our knowledge, and insights, we become stronger and more skilled as a community. I would not be the engineer or person that I am without the opportunities of this exchange.

Just as important, though, is the camaraderie and support of those who do what I do and love it. I have been so fortunate to have been in communities that have been open and welcoming, ready to make connections and form networks, eager to celebrate victories and commiserate with challenges. Regardless of the technical and personal challenges of the everyday that may get to me, there are people that understand and can support me and provide brilliantly diverse perspectives of different industries, countries, cultures, and ages.

Malak Magdy Ali

Google Developer Student Club Lead at Canadian International College, Egypt

What’s the best piece of advice you can offer new/junior developers looking to grow into leadership roles?

The best piece of advice I can give to new leaders is to have empathy. Having empathy will make you understand people’s actions and respect their feelings. This will make for stronger teams.

Also, give others a space to lead. Involve your team in making decisions; they come up with great ideas that can help you and teammates learn from each other. In this process, trust is also built, resulting in a better quality product.

Finally, don't underestimate yourself. Do your best and involve your team to discuss the overall quality of your work and let them make recommendations.

Now in Android – a new, open source, real-world sample app

Posted by Paris Hsu, Product & Design, Android and Don Turner, Developer Relations Engineer, Android

Now in Android Splash logo

The Now in Android app is now on GitHub!

For two years, 'Now in Android' has been a popular blog and YouTube series, providing you with the latest and greatest developer news from the Android team. Starting today, you can check out the alpha version of the Now in Android app on GitHub! ?

The app has two goals:

Firstly, it showcases best practices, opinionated designs, and solutions to complex real-world problems which other sample apps don’t handle. It does so with an open source implementation of a real world app.

Secondly, it helps you (the developer) keep up to date with the areas of Android development which interest you most. It is a working app planned for publication on the Play Store.

image of Now in Android app screen designs on three phones

Now in Android app screen designs

For this first alpha release, the Now in Android app includes:

As well as these features, we are also documenting the learning journeys we took to certain decisions with the app's design and implementation. Check out our first journey on the app's Architecture here.

image showing how the Now in Android app adapts based on device screen size

The Now in Android screens adapt based on device screen size

Since this is an alpha release, we expect that there will be bugs and missing features, and we would greatly appreciate your feedback. We have some exciting features planned, such as user authentication and loading data from a real backend. We can’t wait for you to check out the app and let us know what you think!

Finally, if you want to learn about the tools we used to build the app and how we target multiple screen sizes, check out these talks from this year's Google I/O:

Helping you build across devices, platforms, and the world

Posted by Jeanine Banks, VP & General Manager of Developer X & Head of Developer Relations

We’re thrilled to be back at the Shoreline Amphitheatre hosting Google I/O this week. It’s great to connect with you all from around the world virtually and in person.

I/O is our love letter to you, the developer. Developers are the engine which enables the information revolution. But more than that, it’s developers who turn information and ideas into code that powers the way we learn, work, communicate, and play.

A few decades ago, building a digital experience meant publishing a static website and reaching thousands of people on their desktops. Today, it means a lightning-fast, interactive experience across browsers, desktops, phones, tablets, virtual assistants, TVs, gaming consoles, cars, watches, and more. People expect new features faster than ever -- all while we respect and uphold the highest standards for privacy and safety.

To help you deal with the complexity and rising expectations, we want to bring simplicity to the challenges you face. This week at I/O, we shared the beginning of a long-term effort to connect our developer products to work even better together, and provide more guidance and best practices to optimize your end-to-end workflow. Here are just a few highlights of what we announced in the developer keynote:

  • The new ARCore Geospatial API, that lets you place AR content at real-world locations in 87 countries without physically being there.
  • Modern Android Development for the best experiences on any screen, including new Jetpack Compose support for WearOS and tablets, an upgrade to Android Studio with Live Edit, and much more.
  • Chrome DevTools’ new Performance Insights panel and support coming in WebAssembly for managed programming languages like Dart, Java, and Kotlin.
  • Flutter 3, our open source multi-platform UI framework, now supports six platforms for building beautiful applications from a single code base.
  • Firebase Crashlytics seamlessly integrated across Android Studio, Flutter, and Google Play for consistent and actionable crash reporting.
  • Cloud Run jobs to execute batch data transformation, administrative tasks or scheduled jobs, and AlloyDB for PostgreSQL, our new fully managed, relational database that’s more than 4x faster than standard PostgreSQL for transactional workloads.
  • Exciting research in AI-assisted coding and the AI for Code (AI4Code) challenge on Kaggle in partnership with X, the moonshot factory.

Watch the developer keynote or this recap video to get a fuller taste of what's new this year across many of our platforms including Android, ARCore, Chrome OS, Cloud, Flutter, Firebase, Google Play, Kaggle, Machine Learning, and Web Platform:

Whether you are looking to build your first app, expand what your products can do, or leverage ML easily and responsibly, we hope you will be inspired by the vast space in front of you to make your ideas a reality and make people’s lives better.

Make the world your canvas with the ARCore Geospatial API

Posted by Bilawal Sidhu, Senior Product Manager, Google Maps and Eric Lai, Group Product Manager, ARCore

ARCore, our AR developer platform, works across billions of devices, providing developers with simple yet powerful tools to build immersive experiences that seamlessly blend the digital and physical worlds.

In 2019, we launched the ARCore Cloud Anchors API for developers to anchor content to specific locations and design experiences that can be shared over time by multiple people across many different devices. Since then, we’ve been listening to developer feedback on how to make it easier to create and deploy AR experiences at scale.

Today, we’re taking a leap forward by launching the ARCore Geospatial API in ARCore SDKs for Android and iOS across all compatible ARCore-enabled devices. This API is available now at no cost to download and opens up nearly 15 years of our understanding of the world through Google Maps to help developers build AR experiences that are more immersive, richer and more useful.

The Geospatial API provides access to global localization — the same technology that has been powering Live View in Google Maps since 2019, providing people with helpful AR powered arrows and turn-by-turn directions. Based on the Visual Positioning Service (VPS) with tens of billions of images in Street View, developers can now anchor content by latitude, longitude and altitude in over 87 countries, without being there or having to scan the physical space, saving significant time and resources.

Using machine learning to compute a 3D point-cloud of the environment from Google Street View imagery

For end users, discovering and interacting with AR is faster and more accurate as images from the scanned environment are instantaneously matched against our model of the world. This model is built using advanced machine-learning techniques, which extract trillions of 3D points from Street View images that are then used to compute the device position and orientation in less than a second. In other words, users can be anywhere Street View is available, and just by pointing their camera, their device understands exactly where it is, which way it is pointed and where the AR content should appear, almost immediately.

We’ve been working with early access partners like the NBA, Snap, Lyft, and more to explore and build applications for different industries, including education, entertainment and utility. For example, micro mobility companies Bird, Lime and WeMo are using the API to remove friction from parking e-scooters and e-bikes, adding pinpoint accuracy so riders know exactly when their vehicle is in a valid parking spot. Lime has been piloting the experience in London, Paris, Tel Aviv, Bordeaux, Madrid, and San Diego.

Bird (left) and Lime (right) use the ARCore Geospatial API to enable more precise location-based AR experiences

Telstra and Accenture are using the API to help sports fans and concertgoers find their seats, concession stands and restrooms at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne, Australia. DOCOMO and Curiosity are building a new game that lets you fend off virtual dragons with robot-companions in front of iconic Tokyo landmarks.


Telstra and Accenture (left) and DOCOMO (right) use the ARCore Geospatial API to create new, entertaining AR experiences

To help you get started, we’re also releasing two open source demo apps to clone and extend into your own applications. Balloon Pop lets people place and use balloons as targets around the world, together and at the same time. Pocket Garden lets you adorn your neighborhood with a colorful AR community garden.


Balloon Pop (left) and Pocket Garden (right) are open source demo apps that showcase the ARCore Geospatial API

With the introduction of the ARCore Geospatial API we're providing the foundation for building world scale AR experiences. Get started today at g.co/ARCore. We’re excited to see what you create when the world is your canvas!

Coral, Google’s platform for Edge AI, chooses ASUS as OEM partner for global scale

We launched Coral in 2019 with a mission to make edge AI powerful, private, and efficient, and also accessible to a wide variety of customers with affordable tools that reliably go from prototype to production. In these first few years, we’ve seen a strong growth in demand for our products across industries and geographies, and with that, a growing need for worldwide availability and support.

That’s why we're pleased to announce that we have signed an agreement with ASUS IoT, to help scale our manufacturing, distribution and support. With decades of experience in electronics manufacturing at a global scale, ASUS IoT will provide Coral with the resources to meet our growth demands while we continue to develop new products for edge computing.

ASUS IoT is a sub-brand of ASUS dedicated to the creation of solutions in the fields of AI and the internet of things (IoT). Their mission is to become a trusted provider of embedded systems and the wider AI and IoT ecosystem. ASUS IoT strives to deliver best-in-class products and services across diverse vertical markets, and to partner with customers in the development of fully-integrated and rapid-to-market applications that drive efficiency – providing convenient, efficient, and secure living and working environments for people everywhere.

ASUS IoT already has a long-standing history of collaboration with Coral, being the first partner to release a product using the Coral SoM when they launched the Tinker Edge T development board. ASUS IoT has also integrated Coral accelerators into their enterprise class intelligent edge computers and was the first to release a multi Edge TPU device with the award winning AI Accelerator PCIe Card. Because we have this history of collaboration, we know they share our strong commitment to new innovation in edge computing.

ASUS IoT also has an established manufacturing and distribution processes, and a strong reputation in enterprise-level sales and support. So we're excited to work with them to enable scale and long-term availability for Coral products.

With this agreement, the Coral brand and user experience will not change, as Google will maintain ownership of the brand and product portfolio. The Coral team will continue to work with our customers on partnership initiatives and case studies through our Coral Partnership Program. Those interested in joining our partner ecosystem can visit our website to learn more and apply.

Coral.ai will remain the home for all product information and documentation, and in the coming months ASUS IoT will become the primary channel for sales, distribution and support. With this partnership, our customers will gain access to dedicated teams for sales and technical support managed by ASUS IoT.

ASUS IoT will be working to expand the distribution network to make Coral available in more countries. Distributors interested in carrying Coral products will be able to contact ASUS IoT for consideration.

We continue to be impressed by the innovative ways in which our customers use Coral to explore new AI-driven solutions. And now with ASUS IoT bringing expanded sales, support and resources for long-term availability, our Coral team will continue to focus on building the next generation of privacy-preserving features and tools for neural computing at the edge.

We look forward to the continued growth of the Coral platform as it flourishes and we are excited to have ASUS IoT join us on our journey.

Google Developer Student Club 2022 Lead applications are open!

Posted by Erica Hanson, Global Program Manager, Google Developer Student Clubs

Image that says become a leader at your university with a photo of students smiling in the top right hand corner

Hey, student developers! If you’re passionate about programming and are ready to use your technology skills to help your community, then you should become a Google Developer Student Clubs Lead!

The application form for the upcoming 2022-2023 academic year is NOW OPEN. Get started at goo.gle/gdsc-leads.

Want to know more? Learn more about the program below.

What are Google Developer Student Clubs?

Google Developer Student Clubs (GDSC) are university based community groups for students interested in Google developer technologies. With clubs hosted in 110+ countries around the world, students from undergraduate and graduate programs with an interest in leading a community are welcome. Together, students learn the latest in Machine Learning, Android App Development, Google Cloud Platform, Flutter, and so much more.

By joining a GDSC, students grow their knowledge in a peer-to-peer learning environment and put theory to practice by building solutions for local businesses and their community.

How will I improve my skills?

As a Google Developer Student Club Lead you will have the chance to…

  • Gain mentorship from Google.
  • Join a global community of leaders.
  • Practice by sharing your skills.
  • Help students grow.
  • Build solutions for real life problems.

How can I find a Google Developer Student Club near me?

Google Developer Student Clubs are now in 110+ countries with 1500+ groups. Find a club near you or learn how to start your own, here.

When do I need to submit the Application form?

We encourage students to submit their forms as soon as possible. You can learn more about your region’s application deadlines, here. Make sure to learn more about our program criteria.

Get Started

From working to solve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to combating climate issues, Google Developer Student Club leads are learning valuable coding skills while making a true difference.

As Leads from clubs around the world put it:

  • Lead from Indonesia - “The best way to learn to be a leader is to be a leader itself, and being a GDSC Lead is the best way to do that.”
  • Lead from United Kingdom - “It's an experience that challenges you to critically think about some decisions and come up with creative and innovative new approaches for things that you thought you know about leadership.”
  • Lead from Uganda - “Becoming a GDSC lead has been an amazing opportunity to learn, engage and meet different new people in my life. It was instrumental in my career development.”

We can’t wait to see what our next group of Google Developer Student Club leads will accomplish this year. Join the fun and get started, here.

*Google Developer Student Clubs are student-led independent organizations, and their presence does not indicate a relationship between Google and the students' universities.

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.

Happening now! #TheAndroidShow: Tablets, Jetpack Compose & Android 13

Posted by Florina Muntenescu & Huyen Tue Dao, Co-Hosts of #TheAndroidShow

We’re just about to kick off another episode of #TheAndroidShow, you can watch here! In this episode, we’ll take you behind-the-scenes with Jetpack Compose, Android 13 and all of the updates to Android tablets. If you haven’t already, there’s still time to get your burning Android tablet questions answered from the team, using #AskAndroid. We've assembled a team of experts ready to answer your questions live!


First, we go behind-the-scenes with Jetpack Compose

First up in #TheAndroidShow, we’ll be discussing Jetpack Compose, Android’s modern, native UI toolkit. Last month, we released version 1.1 of Jetpack Compose, which contains new features like improved focus handling, touch target sizing, ImageVector caching, and support for Android 12 stretch overscroll. Compose 1.1 also graduates a number of previously experimental APIs to stable and supports newer versions of Kotlin. In #TheAndroidShow, we’ll take you behind-the-scenes in the world of animations with one of the engineers who helps build them, Doris Liu. And then we hear from Twitter about how Compose helps them build new features in half the time!


Next: the world of tablets, including the 12L feature drop, now in AOSP

Next up, we’ll jump into the world of tablets, following the big news from earlier this week: we’ve officially released the 12L feature drop to AOSP and it’s rolling out to all supported Pixel devices over the next few weeks. There are over 250+ million large screen Android devices, and 12L makes Android 12 even better on tablets, and includes updates like a new taskbar that lets users instantly drag and drop apps into split-screen mode, new large-screen layouts in the notification shade and lockscreen, and improved compatibility modes for apps. You can read more here.

Starting later this year, 12L will be available in planned updates on tablets and foldables from Samsung, Lenovo and Microsoft, so now is the time to make sure your apps are ready. We highly recommend testing your apps in split-screen mode with windows of various sizes, trying it in different orientations, and checking the new compatibility mode changes if they apply. You can read more about 12L for developers here.

We see large screens as a key surface for the future of Android, and we’re continuing to invest to give you the tools you need to build great experiences for tablets, Chromebooks, and foldables. You can learn more about how to get started optimizing for large screens, and make sure to check out our large screens developer resources.


Tune in now!

Finally, we wrap up the show with a conversation with the director for Android Developer Relations, Maru Ahues Bouza, where we talk about Android 13 as well as some of the broader themes you’ll continue to see from Android later this year.

It’s all happening right now on #TheAndroidShow - join us on YouTube!

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!