I had the pleasure to attend The Google conference for Developers, in San Francisco. This conference is where Google addresses their beloved crowd of external developers.
Part of the successful business model for Google is to create an environment of openness and community where people not affiliated or paid by Google actually develop and contribute to its success. To avoid miscarriages of costly projects they like to hold the ideas and point them in the proper direction before releasing it to the wild. This conference is when new lines are announced and also when part of this transfer to the crowds occurs. They need a happy smart motivated crowd, and they are famous for doing so quite well. Free supplies of sweets, couches, sodas or even costly last generations phones are parts of this strategy. They want (they need) developers to willing to put many many hours, with the phones averages consumers will buy during the next year.
I am not myself a developer, but I am extremely interested in Technology and its communication with Society. I am a strong beliver of the idea that technology is shaping the present and will strongly shape the future. I am also concerned about an increasing paradox. Technology seems to be slowed down not by actual problems of research or development, but by not knowing how to transfer its possibilities into the real life, into the general society. There are so many ways in wich technology is a force multiplier or even force enabler. In this it shares a diagnosis with Science and Research, and how it interacts with Society. The solution for both, I hold this idea, belongs in a common framework . Science and Technology for Society (wich greatly involves education and outreach).
I knew it was worth to attend the session. To hear the coders´opinion. To talk with the VC entrepreneurs. To see the “Don´t do evil” lobbying first hand. It really was worth and I learnt a lot. (And I got 2 phones and green Google socks).
