Google had a bit of a rough time of it today. While the company unveiled a number of very neat new features for Android (One which even streams music from iTunes to your phone wherever you are, in a direct affront to Apple) the demo gods were not kind. During a lengthy demo of GoogleTV, the company's forthcoming set-top-box, the wireless remote controls they used in the demo went haywire and stopped working.
A new meme was born: "I think we should try the other box," which was uttered over and over again during the 20 minute divergance into broken demo territory.
To make matters worse, Google promised to give its developers free Android devices after the keynote. Of course, there were also talks scheduled for the period immediately following the keynote, and as you can imagine, most of the developers were in the lobby queuing for their free phones rather than upstairs listening to talks.
And then, even worse, the bar-code scanning system used to make sure each developer gets only one free phone broke about 10 minutes into the feeding frenzy. As I write this, the lobby looks like Disneyland, with developers lined up in snaking collumns, grumbling and yet not moving an inch.
But even these snags really can't detract from the conference over all. Google really stepped up its game this year, with a bevy of announcements too numerous to list entirely in our main story. They introduced a font API, a new version of its Maps API, and Google Storage for Developers. That last one is a service, currently in beta, that gives developers 100 GBs of free object storage which is then replicated acorss Google's datacenters.
As conferences go, this is one of the most active and busy I've been to in years. It harkens back to the days of JavaOne, where developers could play with legos and new mobile phones in the same play areas. Even though some of the talks have been a bit marketing heavy, the nitty-gritty conference stuff is executed in a fashion that demonstrates Google's deep understanding of what developers want.
What do developers want? They want the guys writing the tools they use, like GWT and App Engine, to be available for questions. And they are, in a cubicle area set up on the third floor where the major Google software team members hold office hours while the show is open. Developers also want soda and candy. And that's here too. It reminds me of the old stories of Bill Gates and the Microsoft team cranking out BASIC for the Altair fueled by little more than soda-pop and pizza.
Developers don't want long, boring product pitches. They want to talk about code while stuffing red hots into their maw and working on solutions to their daily problems. When you get right down to it, Google is just extending it's employee perks to developers because it knows that such perks are cheap ways to keep people happy.
You'd be surprised what a lack of free soda can do to a workforce. One such company in SF where some friends of mine work used to have free soda for all of its employees. It cost the firm around $10,000 to $20,000 per year. But when budget cuts killed the soda, employees began taking extra long breaks to walk down to the local store and buy their sodas. They also began looking for work elsewhere. It's not just about the soda, you see. It's about the fact that the company decided to take something away from the developers and IT folk instead of searching for a way to save money that didn't impact the little guys at the bottom who actually earn all of the company's money.
It's a very simple formula, really: happy developers are sated, caffinated developers. And even though there may be bumps in the road, or a broken demo or two along the way, bruised egos can quickly be repaired with a cup of coffee and a cookie.
Nowhere is Google's understanding of developers more obvious than in its announcement with VMware. While the long term implications of this partnership will no doubt yield Spring stacks available on Google App Engine, the only fruits of the partnership shown at the conference were the integrations between roo and GWT.
If this was an event for the media or for salespeople, this would not be the demonstration to show. But for developers, it's almost like showing them live sex acts. Roo is a tool that generates boiler plate Spring code and sets up a database for use with that code. Later, if you change some dependencies or expand the database, roo automatically adds the needed code. With the GWT integrations, roo code can now be automatically given a Web interface with GWT.
It was not a sexy demo if you're a suit. But if you're a developer, this is exactly the sort of tool you're looking for. It saves time, it's mostly command-line based (There is a GUI, but that was not demonstrated), and it's super geeky.
And this is why Google's conference stands out. It is relentlessly focused on the really cool programming tools instead of marketing and evangelism.