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The seventh annual Google I/O developers conference—the most important and hotly awaited Google developer event of the spring—has just launched its Website for the June 25-26 gathering, but this year there are some new rules in store for application developers who might want to attend.
The biggest change, and the one that will be welcomed by some and likely cursed by others, is that this year’s Google I/O event will no longer feature a first-come, first-served registration process. Instead, interested developers will have to apply to attend and wait to learn if they are selected.
The new procedure, along with other early details about I/O 2014, is outlined by Billy Rutledge, Google I/O’s director of developer relations, in a March 26 post on the Google Developers Blog. “A month ago, we mentioned that this year’s registration process would be different,” wrote Rutledge. “You won’t need to scramble the second registration opens, as we will not be implementing a first-come-first-served model this year. Instead, registration will remain open from April 8-10 and you can apply any time during this window. We’ll randomly select applicants after the window closes on April 10, and send ticket purchase confirmation emails shortly thereafter.”
The move essentially will change what has become a huge rush to register the moment the registration Web page opens each year. Many developers have complained in the past about the difficulty of getting in to register under the old system, so Google is trying this new approach this year. In the past, it was like trying to beat the rush when tickets go on sale online for a beloved and famous rock and roll band.
So far, full details of the events, sessions and keynotes for this year’s I/O event are not yet posted or announced, but those holes will be filled as the conference nears.
What is known so far is that 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, according to Google.
As the conference gets nearer, developers can also follow the event on the Google Developers Google+ page and on the Google Developers Blog.
Google Launches Its Google I/O 2014 Developers Conference Website
On-site participants will be able to build, test and deploy new apps with the help of Google staffers, and will be able to explore and play with interactive experiences built with Google technologies in sandbox development areas.
General admission tickets to the event are $900, while academic admission tickets are $300. The registration application process will open at 8 a.m. EDT on April 8, with applications being accepted until 8 p.m. EDT on April 10.
Google “will randomly select applicants after the window closes on the 10th and notify those selected with their ticket purchase confirmations via email. Qualified registration applicants will be selected at random for ticket assignments. The order in which registration applications are received has no bearing on the final outcome.”
The Google I/O events are always awaited by developers, where they can hear the latest news about the company’s innovations and platforms.
At the 2013 Google I/O event, Google’s 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.
Also announced were major updates for Google Maps and Google Search, with Maps receiving a more interactive look and Search gaining speech recognition capabilities that will allow users to “talk” back and forth during searches.
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.