San Jose Convention Center Hosts Google Developer Day
Google held its annual Developer Day at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center last week and I attended the event. (I’m involved with a project that’s being pitched to the Google Foundation.) I can attest to the fact that the City of San Jose did itself proud last week.
Google’s Developer Day drew around 1,500 people. Google’s co-founder, Sergey Brin, gave a short welcome speech, and then we were all off to attend presentations and listen to speeches from various “Googlers.” (That’s what you call a Google employee or someone who is a heavy user of Google).
I learned quite a bit at the conference. Apparently, the internet is here to stay. And, according to Google, the internet is just in its infancy!
Google has a lot of new bells and whistles coming out. If you go to: code.google.com, you can take a look at some of the new features that Google is offering to make your next search experience more useful and enjoyable. Among the new “tools” being offered by Google are: “Google Gears,” which enables web applications to work offline; “Google Maplets,” which allows for mini-applications to be embedded within the Google Maps site; and something called “Google Mashup Editor,” which allows the user to write code for simple web applications and mashups.
Whoever said, “There’s no such thing as a dumb question,” never attended a Google Developer Day conference. Let me tell you, there were a lot of smart people pacing the halls of the San Jose Convention Center last week. (I was there too.)
Our city and its convention center afforded itself well. The conference was broadcast live worldwide. The event fit perfectly at the McEnery Center, and I didn’t hear one complaint or witness one difficulty throughout the entire day. To top things off, the weather was perfect—the sort of day that makes people want to move here.
Google’s Developer Day was a great success. Let’s be sure to welcome them back here next year.
John McEnery IV is on vacation and will return next week.
It would have been nice if the attendees walked a few blocks and visited our City Hall. I believe the attendees would have been greatly starstruck. Seeing the great architecture and watching a council meeting would be inspiring and motivating. I think Google management could learn quite a lot about vision, leadership and fiscal responsibility from our elected officials.
Thanks for keeping sarcasm and satire alive in J McE IV’s absence.
For the ignorant among us, like me, what is a mashup????
#1,
What are you smoking? Can I have a hit?
As Google matures as a company they need to stay focused. They need to continue to attract youth. Already I’ve seen a change for the worse, too many old people in their late twenties and thirties.
If you read today’s local section, you will see two very similar situations handled quite differently. San Jose and Palo Alto both have very important historic buildings that someone wants to demolish. Preservation groups have taken both cities to court over the issue. Both preservation groups have the same attorney. The same judge ruled that both cities did not follow the law. In the case of Palo Alto, the city has told the individuals that if they want to pursue the issue, they will have to pay the court costs. In the case of San Jose, after losing two legal decisions and being told they have not followed the law, the City has chosen to continue to pay for legal costs rather than putting the financial responsibiltiy onto the developer (Lowes) who wants to demolish the building. Just a note, the city has lost over $40 million in the courts on landuse issues.
Kirk,
Where did you get that stuff?! Are you willing to share?
#1 – In my opinion, our elected officials would be a “good” role model. If Google management wanted a “great” role model, they should pattern their behavior based on the MHC governing board. If Google wants to stay ahead of Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft, then run Google like the MHP.
JM O’C #2:
A mashup is an application (or website) that takes a couple neat technologies and puts them together.
An example would be something that pulls addresses out of the MLS and then uses Google Maps to draw a map of houses for sale in your area. Or maps rents pulled from Craigslist. Or, as you’ve probably seen, maps political donations by zip code.
Yet another mashup could be something that scrapes your email inbox and gives you data on who is sending you email or what email domains you get the most mail from (.edu, .org, .com, etc.).
Basically, it’s the creation of new sites and gizmos using stuff that’s on the shelf and available “API’s,” short for “application programming interface.” In lay-terms, this means the “hooks” that let this application talk to that application. Or the stubs that let you stack this Lego on top of that Lego.
I hope that helps!
—John
San Jose should stop taking bad City Attorney legal advice which causes us to lose in court almost all the time.
Tens millions in taxes have been wasted on lost lawsuit damages which should have been used to improve city services and have no budget deficit
Bad Legal Advise = Millions Wasted Taxes
9 – It’s not just the fault of the City Attorney (CA). Under Gonzo, the advice from the CA was generally ignored by an arrogant and many times ignorant Mayor, Council and City Manager (the weak Borgsdorf). Now, we are experiencing some of the same type of arrogance and ignorance. I don’t know what the CA is telling the Council but once again they seem more interested in going to court than in doing the right thing. I wonder if they would be so wasteful in losing law suits if they were using their own money instead of ours. Just a thought.
What!? Google didn’t hold their Developer Day up at Moscone? I’ve disagreed with many of your posts Mr. Campbell, but this was a good one. Here’s hoping more Silicon Valley company’s hold their conferences in the Capital of Silicon Valley (not in that small, foggy burgh 50 miles to the north).
Council members come and go. Political views meander as the times change. What changes very little is city hall culture. An effective way to change the culture is to hire competent and fiscally responsible city manager, city attorney and city clerk. Per the city charter these positions are –
SECTION 901. Officers and Employees; Appointment and Removal.
The City Manager, the City Attorney, and the City Clerk shall be appointed and may at any time be removed by the Council.
Reed has taken care of the city manager position. The city clerk has done a fine job with the limited staff. The PROBLEM is the city attorney. He has lost the city more money and has slid under the radar unscathed. Why hasn’t the local press exposed him. Rick Doyle needs to go.
Mayor and Council directs City Attorney to find ways to do what they want politically as we saw under Gonzales and now Reed
They have mostly been are sued by others for illegal city acts based on bad legal opinions about laws which courts overturn Good attorney’s give good legal advise not advise that courts ofter overturn and taxpayers have to pay millions
City Attorney’s client is Mayor and Council and has NO legal or other responsibility to public or taxpayers per city charter
john # 8—thanks for the education
Pete,
Nice commentary about the conference. It’s good to see activities like this come to San Jose without the City having to “CHIP-IN” $4 Million Dollars. This brings people and money into downtown San Jose and also gives others around the world an idea about San Jose. Can you imagine that this may attract others to venture here and put on a conference or convention in our city that would bring in revenue for the treasury. How about that——sound like a novel idea.
Concerned Citizen
Concerned Cititzen,
Your correct, google came to san jose and not for a 4 million “chip in”. It was far more!
The convention center has been given countless millions. the operator is given many times 4 million each year; whether they make money or not. The hotels were given millions to build their spaces.
So I’d say 4 million to have a hundred thousands visitors and a huge economic boost is a steal.
Your lucky that there was no fire… Oh that’s right they have no fire alram there!
Pete Campbell shows us that when you write and write about how wonderful Reed is, you will get invited.
What a shill!
Sebastien Bourdais said
“So I’d say 4 million to have a hundred thousands visitors and a huge economic boost is a steal.”
What “huge economic boost ” are you taking about?
The fake $42 million or the fake $23 million ” economic benefit” and as for being ” a steal” we can agree Grand Prix stole the money from San Jose taxpayers
When will we see public accountability about what taxpayers got for our $4.2 million and how much when to ” charity ” Time to open up books and see really what happened to our taxes rather than more spin and fake numbers that only fools and politicians believe
Has The Canary Fund received a dime?