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When the Google I/O 2014 developer conference begins on June 25 in San Francisco, it’s theme will be all about helping developers to “design, develop and distribute” their applications and innovations using Google tools and resources.
The theme, and the opening of a four-day registration window for the event, was highlighted by Billy Rutledge, director of Google developer relations, in an April 15 post on the Google Developers Blog.
“Whether you’re a developer who’s interested in the latest developments in the Googleverse or someone who wants to build the next billion dollar app, Google I/O is the ticket for you,” wrote Rutledge. “It’s your opportunity to speak directly with us about what’s going on and where apps are headed for 2014.”
The conference theme—”design, develop, and distribute”—will help developers get the information they need to accomplish all of those goals as they create their apps from start to finish, wrote Rutledge. Full details of the events, sessions and keynotes for this year’s I/O show are not yet posted or announced, but those holes will be filled as the conference nears. To register for the event, developers can sign up through 5 p.m. EDT on April 18.
This year’s conference will include more time to talk about code with others, deeper dives into the nuts and bolts of app building and fun after-hours festivities featuring Bay Area food, drink and entertainment, wrote Rutledge.
“If you’re coming in person, the schedule will give you more time to interact in the Sandbox, where partners will be on hand to demo apps built on the best of Google and open source, and where you can interact with Googlers 1:1 and in small groups,” he wrote. “Come armed with your app and get ready for direct feedback on your app design, code, and distribution plan.”
To help developers get more out of the conference for their own apps, a streamlined session schedule will be published in May “featuring talks that will inspire ideas for your next app, while giving you the tools to build it,” wrote Rutledge. “We’ll also be providing self-paced Code Labs that you can dive into while at I/O.”
At the end of each day at the conference, attendees will be able to sample local craft brews in the event’s beer garden while also tasting the delicacies from the city’s illustrious food trucks, all while listening to music being performed by several local indie bands, he wrote.
Registration for the Google I/O conference was supposed to start April 8, but was delayed a week until April 15, according to an earlier eWEEK report. In March, Google had announced that registration for this year’s seventh annual Google I/O event would be different from past years—interested developers now have to apply to attend and wait to learn if they are selected. That means registration for the event is no longer first-come, first-served, with thousands of developers trying to log in at once online and meeting a crush of other registration hopefuls in a war of digital ones and zeroes. In recent years, the old registration process meant the slots for attendance were often filled in just a few minutes.
Registrants are expected to hear from Google on or around April 21 to learn if they were randomly selected to attend the event, according to Rutledge.
Google I/O 2014 Theme Unveiled: ‘Design, Develop, Distribute’
The Google I/O developers conference is arguably the most important and hotly awaited Google developer event of the spring.
Once the event begins, Google will again broadcast a live stream of the conference keynote and its sessions so that developers who can’t attend can still have access to the goings-on. Interested developers will also be able to attend an “I/O Extended” event near them, where groups gather in their own local communities to watch the Webcasts of the conference together. Details on these features will come later, according to Google.
The 2014 conference will be held June 25-26 at the Moscone West Convention Center in San Francisco. As the conference gets nearer, developers will also be able to follow the event on the Google Developers Google+ page and on the Google Developers Blog.
General admission tickets to the event are $900, while academic admission tickets are $300. Tickets must be purchased using a Google Wallet account and sign-in must be done using a Google+ account. Registrants need to provide a credit card number when they sign up, but the card will not be charged unless the applicant is randomly selected for a ticket, according to Google.
At the 2013 Google I/O event, Google unveiled its first-ever Google Play music subscription service that allows users to access all the music in Google’s collection on the fly and add it to their personal collections. Also announced were Google Play game saving and sharing services, new APIs for Android that allow developers to create apps that can be restricted to specific locations, and tools that will help developers improve the sales and marketing of their apps for Android.
In 2012, Google I/O was the stuff of legend, featuring the introduction of Google Glass, with an amazing live-video stunt with parachutists from an airship wearing Google Glass headsets landing on the Moscone West rooftop and repelling, bicycling and running into the conference to the cheers of thousands in order to give the wearable computers to Google co-founder Sergey Brin—who was already wearing one himself. Google also unveiled not one, but two new devices, the Nexus 7 tablet and the Nexus Q home cloud-based home entertainment hub (ill-fated, as it turned out), along with a bevy of new software and developer tools. The 2012 new products included the Jelly Bean version of Android.