Tag Archives: developers

How Google Women Techmakers celebrated IWD 2022

Since 2013, Women Techmakers Ambassadors (WTM) have brought people around the world together throughout March and April in celebration of International Women's Day (IWD), hosting events to connect and educate their local tech communities. This year’s theme is #ProgressNotPerfection, the idea of letting go of preconceived ideas of perfection and fears of failure, and instead celebrating progress in its many forms.

I recently spoke with three WTM Ambassadors planning these events to hear what they’re most looking forward to.

WTM Ambassador Maryam Alhuthayfi

For IWD this year, Maryam is hosting tech workshops as well as leading a WTM Saudi #IAmRemarkable session to encourage women to explore technology. “There aren’t as many opportunities for women in tech in Saudi Arabia, so we need to push them forward to be visible, for companies to see that they are capable,” she says.

True to the #ProgressNotPerfection theme, Maryam wants women to be unafraid of mistakes. “You can correct them once you know the best way to do things,” she says. “This is how you get better with time. Be kind to each other; support each other; create positive energy in your communities and personal life.”

WTM Ambassador Anna Nemerova

Growing up in Bulgaria, Anna Nemerova remembers making cards and gifts for her mother and grandmother on International Women’s Day, which is widely celebrated in Eastern Bloc countries. When she moved to the U.S., Anna’s first IWD event was in New York City in 2018, where she gave a talk about using Google Analytics for ecommerce. Anna made a point to connect with attendees there, ultimately making lifelong friends.

A photo of Google Women Techmakers Carolina Castro, Akansha Boaz, Arunima Sharma, Vidya More, Jia Yin, and Gloria Ho at the IWD Summit 2019 at Google NYC.

WTM members Carolina Castro, Akansha Boaz, Arunima Sharma, Vidya More, Jia Yin and Gloria Ho celebrated Women's History Month at the IWD Summit 2019 at Google NYC.

This year, Anna is hosting the New York City IWD event in person again. “As a woman in tech, I’m very often the only woman in the room, and WTM brings this positivity, where women are inspired and empowered to help each other.”

Anna is also hosting the IWD Northeast virtual event, which will include a hands-on NFT workshop. Participants’ NFTs will be sold, and proceeds will go to the Red Cross to aid the people of Ukraine.

A photo of Ingrid Gonzalez, Sales Director at Google Cloud New York, President and Chairwoman at Positive Planet US; Lee Bonvissuto, Communication Coach + Founder at PresentVoices; Anna Nerezova, Women Techmakers Ambassador; and Victoria Fuller, Senior Vice President, Business Development at artnet celebrating International Women's Day at the Inaugural Women in Cloud Executive Symposium at the Manhattan Penthouse on Lower 5th Avenue on March 7th, 2019.

Ingrid Gonzalez, Sales Director at Google Cloud New York, President and Chairwoman at Positive Planet US, Lee Bonvissuto, Communication Coach + Founder at PresentVoices, and Victoria Fuller, Senior Vice President Business Development at artnet celebrating IWD at the Inaugural Women in Cloud Executive Symposium in 2019.

WTM Ambassador Amanda Cavallaro

Amanda Cavallaro has been a co-organizer of the Google Developer Group Cloud chapter in London and a WTM ambassador since 2016.

A photo of the International Women's Day event in London on March 7, 2022.

WTM members celebrating International Women’s Day in London this year.

In the past, she’s hosted an IWD karaoke tutorial (created using Google codelabs) and assisted with virtual events over the past two years. This year, she helped host a GraphQL workshop, roundtable discussions and a hybrid event with six speakers from all over the world. “Most of the speakers were women I mentor, and women who mentor me,” she says. “The WTM truly brings us together.”

Sign up today for Code Jam’s 2022 competitions

Google's longest-running coding competition, Code Jam, is back for its 19th season. Code Jam to I/O for Women is also returning for a ninth year, bringing together women programmers from around the world. In both competitions, developers tackle algorithmic challenges designed by Google engineers — all while building their network, sharpening their coding skills and even winning some prizes.

Want to participate? Read on to learn more about each event and how to sign up.

Code Jam to I/O for Women kicks off March 26

We launched Code Jam to I/O for Women to help build a more inclusive competitive coding community. And it’s grown rapidly over the years, with more than 23,000 registrants last season. This year, the top 150 competitors will receive a stipend and access to virtual Google I/O experiences. Whether you're a seasoned contestant or a brand new competitor, we invite you to register today for Code Jam to I/O for Women. Check out the archive to get a taste of the competition and start practicing with previous problems.

Code Jam returns April 1

At Code Jam, developers of all skill levels compete head to head in multiple online rounds. This season takes place from April to August, ending with a live streamed World Finals event. Competitors must earn enough points to advance to the next round. Out of thousands of participants, only the top 25 will head to the World Finals to compete for the title of World Champion and cash prizes of up to $15,000. And there will be plenty of other prizes to go around — the top 1,000 competitors will win an exclusive Code Jam 2022 t-shirt.

Code Jam registration is now open until the end of the Qualification Round on April 3 at 2:00 UTC — visit our schedule page to find your exact time zone. We recommend warming up with previous problems from the archive to improve your chances of advancing to Round 1.

We hope to see you on the scoreboard this season!

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.

Top news from the Google for Games Developer Summit

This week, we hosted the Google for Games Developer Summit, a free digital event for developers, publishers and advertisers to discuss what’s new in games. And with over three billion global players across platforms, there was plenty of ground to cover. From Android Game Development Kit updates to the new Immersive Stream for Games, we shared the latest tools to help you build your next adventure, find new players and take your game to the next level.

Missed the summit? Here’s a quick recap of the top announcements. For more details, catch the keynote and developer sessions available on demand.

Reach more devices through new tools and platforms

We’re committed to supporting developers of all sizes who are building high-quality Android games. Updates to the Android Game Development Kit simplify the development process, while new data insights in Play Console can help you make smarter business decisions. We’re also enabling games on new screens and devices, including the Google Play Games for PC Beta, so you can meet players wherever they are.

Improve your game growth strategy with ads

Advertisers can now improve target return on ad spend (tROAS) performance with App campaigns by integrating AdMob and third-party ad revenue data into Google Analytics for bid optimization. Publishers can get more visibility into return on investment with impression-level lifetime value in AdMob, also available for app attribution platforms Adjust, AppsFlyer and Singular. Learn more about these product announcements in our recent Google Ads blog post.

Create safe, inclusive gaming experiences with Google Cloud

In partnership with game creators and the open source community, we want to ensure games are social, enjoyable and inclusive for players everywhere. With Clean Chat, a new open source AI framework for games, studios can now proactively detect negative dialogue in both text and voice chat.

Build a direct-to-consumer business with Immersive Stream for Games

Developers and publishers interested in building a direct-to-consumer business can now deliver their titles directly to players with Immersive Stream for Games. Developed by the Stadia team in partnership with Google Cloud, Immersive Stream for Games combines advanced streaming technology with cheaper and easier game porting, powerful discovery features and analytics. Whether you want to offer game trials, full games, subscription bundles or even power an entire storefront, Immersive Stream for Games can help.

Thanks for joining us at this year’s Google for Games Developer Summit — remember to check out the on-demand sessions, and stay tuned for more gaming updates soon. We’re here to help you keep building and innovating your games for players everywhere.

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!

Maria Divina O’Brien takes us inside the Caribbean tech scene

Like many women working in tech in the Caribbean, Women Techmakers ambassador and Google Developers Group co-organizer for Trinidad and Tobago Maria Divina O’Brien has a full-time day job in addition to two several side projects she spends the rest of her time working on. Her business, Design Change, is a design firm focused on social impact projects to improve Caribbean women’s lives. "I'm using what I've learned as an activist to find ways technology can help women and how we can create a community to work on these solutions,” Maria says.

Maria is also the chairwoman of MindWise, a mental health nonprofit focused on digital content creation and curation that Maria co-founded in 2019. MindWise developed FindCareTT.com, a digital directory of mental health services. Maria, a cancer patient, is also working on “Views from the Waiting Room,” a collaborative art project aimed at bringing more attention to women’s health.

When she isn’t working on Design Change, MindWise, or art projects, Maria works for the Corporate Communications Department of the Office of the Parliament of Trinidad and Tobago, where she produces digital design and visual assets and consults on broadcasting design projects. “I get to produce content and solutions that directly impact the democracy of the country,” she says. “For example, I worked on a team that problem-solved how to make democratic functions virtual during COVID.”

Maria connected with the Port-of-Spain Google Developers Group in 2019 and became a co-organizer, and went on to become a Women Techmakers (WTM) ambassador. “Last year, we pulled together 12 major diversity communities for the first International Women’s Day Caribbean Tech Summit,” she says. “Women in Tech Caribbean, Caribbean Girls Hack and four WTM chapters from other Caribbean countries participated, and this year, we’re hoping to get someone from each Caribbean country to represent each country’s current challenges.”

A photo of Maria hosting a virtual International Women’s Day event, with Jerrod Best-Mitchell showing his first ring light.

Maria hosts a virtual International Women’s Day event with Jerrod Best-Mitchell.

In September 2021, Maria launched the Building Sustainable Minds Volunteer Program, a collaboration among MindWise, the Trinidad and Tobago WTM chapter and the University of the West Indies. Maria created a virtual studio where students can create content for a mental health news platform called Open Minds that shares stories about mental health news and the experiences and unique challenges of people in different Caribbean cultures. Maria and her colleagues are training students to do virtual interviews, create design templates and edit their work. All 55 student volunteers plan to continue their work for the rest of the school year.

A photo of Maria supporting and documenting fellow local Women Techmakers at the pioneer LAIKA Stop Motion training programme at the TTAP Factory of UTT, with Camille Selvon, Jessica Yawching and Mindy Bailey.

Maria supporting and documenting fellow local Women Techmakers at the pioneer LAIKA Stop Motion training programme at the TTAP Factory of UTT, with Camille Selvon, Jessica Yawching and Mindy Bailey.

Today, Maria is working on recruiting more Caribbean WTM ambassadors. “We have four chapters in the English-speaking Caribbean, and my goal is to have 15 by the end of this year,” she says. “There is a really exciting generation of influencers and creators building the next Caribbean, and most of them are women. Let’s take a chance on changing the culture.”

Introducing Checks: simplifying privacy for app developers

Can I trust this app with my data? Is this app respecting my privacy rights? These are questions consumers are asking more and more about mobile apps and the developers who create them. In turn, developers are faced with a privacy and compliance landscape that is becoming increasingly more complex. And the path to compliance can be both time-consuming and difficult.

We believe every developer — no matter the stage or size of their company — deserves access to easy-to-use tools that help them achieve their goals, while making privacy compliance simpler.

That’s why today, as part of Google’s in-house incubator Area 120, we’re launching Checks, a new privacy platform. We are on a mission to help simplify privacy and reduce risk for mobile app developers.

A shared passion to help developers succeed

In 2018, as the world prepared for the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we were hearing that mobile app developers were struggling to feel prepared to meet the new privacy expectations under GDPR, and they hoped Google could help. Having previously built tools like Android Vitals to address developers’ technical challenges, we had an idea to use Google’s artificial intelligence and resources to create a new product to help mobile app developers address their privacy compliance needs. Since we worked together for years on Google Play, we knew we could bring this vision to life as a team.

Joining Area 120 allowed us to focus full-time on creating a solution that simplifies privacy for developers distributing on both Android and iOS. Over the past two years, our team has spent time listening to feedback from hundreds of mobile app developers on their approach to privacy, and partnered closely with 40 highly-engaged early adopters to refine our product and roadmap. We believe Checks will help mobile app developers of all sizes save time by replacing complicated processes and providing automated privacy insights.

Greater confidence for app developers

We’ve heard developers say it’s difficult to keep pace with regulatory and app store policy changes, and determine how those changes apply to their apps. Checks helps developers gain confidence to make informed decisions by identifying potential compliance issues, providing clear actionable insights in simple language, and offering links to relevant resources.

Checks scans multiple sources of information including an app’s privacy policy, SDK information, and network traffic to generate a report that indicates the number of Checks performed, new issues, and issues that have been resolved.

Save time and money

Teams are able to better collaborate across legal, business and engineering roles on the Checks platform. Our product provides everyone access to the same unique insights — without the customer having to perform any technical integrations — which helps reduce the number of messages, meetings and documents necessary to track down information. Teams can focus on evaluating what actions to take and respond faster.

Screenshot of Checks’ Data Monitoring report, spotlighting the SDK findings. A list of SDKs that are in use by an app is provided, and any changes in the last 30 days are flagged as new.

Gain visibility

Software Developer Kits (SDKs) can change their functionality at any time, sometimes without the app developer knowing it. Checks helps mobile app developers who use SDKs by detecting when their app’s data sharing practices have changed and then sending them an automated alert. If the change was not intended, the developer can further investigate where the new data is being shared and make necessary changes.

Screenshot of Checks’ Store Disclosure report. A chart indicates what data types may be collected or shared by an app, and if evidence of the data type was found in permissions, network traffic, or an app’s privacy policy.

Help completing Google Play’s Data safety section

Many mobile app developers are still preparing for the launch of Google Play’s Data safety section, which will give end users more transparency into what data apps collect or share and how apps use their data. Checks can help developers get started by identifying what information they may need to declare and the basis for the recommendation. This can help them feel confident as they decide what to include.

Request early access today

We want to help developers build mobile apps that their users can enjoy and trust. We look forward to continuing to work closely with developers to ensure Checks provides solutions that developers need.

If you’re working on privacy compliance for mobile apps, visit checks.area120.google.com to learn more and get started today.

African developers: creating opportunities and building for the future

Every day, African businesses harness ingenuity to empower their communities. African software developers are an engine for digital transformation in local economies across the continent, and there’s no one better to solve challenges than local developers, founders, and entrepreneurs. And as African startup funding reaches unprecedented levels (growing by over 2.5x in 2021 over the previous year), understanding Africa’s developer landscape is key to support the growth of these startups.

For the second year in a row, Google published the Africa Developer Ecosystem report to map Africa’s developer landscape. We expanded this edition of the report to include year-on-year growth analysis, tech ecosystem components and key growth factors. The research was conducted in 16 African markets (Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda) and the findings were extrapolated to the rest of the continent.

Here are the five key takeaways from our study:


1. Africa’s developer population is growing across the continent.

We found that COVID-19 has continued to shape both the tech community at large and the nuances of the developer experience. Despite a contracting economy, the pool of professional developers increased by 3.8% to make up 0.4% of the continent’s non-agricultural workforce. Salaries and compensation also rose, and more developers secured full-time jobs.

2. VC investment in African startups rebounded as the digital economy expanded.

As local businesses transitioned online across the continent, they boosted the need for web development and data engineering skills. African startups raised over $4bn in 2021, 2.5x times more than in 2020, with fintech startups making up over half of this funding. The shift to remote work also created more employment opportunities across time zones and continents for African developers while lifting the pay for senior talent. As a result, international companies are now recruiting African developers at record rates.

3. Learners, junior developers, as well as underrepresented groups including women, need more support.

These groups faced challenges exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Without access to in-person education — or affordable, reliable internet access and at-home equipment — they struggled to make gains last year. This can be seen in how the gender gap between men developers and women developers widened: there are 2.5% fewer women developers in the workforce than there were in 2020.

4. Educators, technology companies and governments are undertaking initiatives to strengthen the developer pipeline.

Educators, tech companies and governments can help developers succeed by improving internet access, education and business support. Bootcamps and certifications, run as part of formal and informal education, are working to bridge the vocational training gap between traditional education and employment moving forward. Global technology companies are investing in digital skill building across the continent to improve job readiness and alleviate the tech talent bottleneck. Governments can also play a vital role in strengthening the developer pipeline by investing in both internet access and education.

5. Nigeria is a striking example of the symbiotic relationship between digital transformation and developer growth in Africa.

The developer ecosystem in Nigeria is thriving, thanks to strong demand for developer talent, significant support from big tech, and Nigerian startups raising the largest total amount of funding on the continent in 2021. Nigeria had the highest number of new developers of all countries surveyed, with 5,000 additional developers joining Nigeria's developer population in 2021. As countries like Nigeria continue to transform, they will unlock more opportunities for developers, who in turn, grow the economy.

To support the continued growth of Africa’s developers, technology companies, educators and governments are tackling local challenges through innovative partnerships and programs. Google is committed to supporting developers at each stage of their journey through regional developer training, community, and mentorship programs, including Google Developer Groups, Google Developer Student Clubs, Women Techmakers and Google Developer Experts.