Hello folks!
This post is all about the GDG Devfest that was conducted on 29th and 30th September 2012. Here, bring you the highlights from the awesome event.

DAY1

The GDG team was overwhelmed with the number of people interested in attending the event since it was a beginner to intermediate one. We had to open some more slots to accommodate the inflow (Thanks to the registration team taking up spot registrations!)
The Modern Web track was conducted by Smarth Behl and Uday Sharma on the ground floor of Hotel Queeny. It was a basic code session in which participants churned out a 2D game along with some interesting presentations on HTML5 Graphics  and Dart , a new language by Google.

       http://www.dartlang.org/

On the other hand, Prajyot Mainkar and his team, folks from the Goa Android Users Group, conducted the Android track on the roof top. They gave a basic outline of an app that was previously developed by them. The Android session witnessed some interactive sessions where participants were engrossed in the presentation on Jelly Bean (4.1) and some basic algorithms highlighting the concepts of Data Structures.
The two tracks were followed by a toothsome and mouthwatering dinner for the participants.

DAY2

Day2 was much more fun since it was an overnight event. The event started with a session on Dart, in which Smarth Behl discussed about various features of dart like optional static types,isolates,dart vm followed by a code walk through of dart application.Following that participants were asked to team up. We had a total of 6 teams ready to fire up their code editors and IDE’s.  The session before Dinner was all about ideas and discussions on how to go about with the execution of the respective teams’ plans. Teams began coding their ideas after the dinner which was full of delectable and exquisite dishes!
Around 1am, the following day, there was a mid-session evaluation of the half-baked apps that lasted for around 45 minutes. The remaining teams were asked to rate (assign points) to the presenting team’s work.  Post the mid-session evaluation, teams resumed coding and around 3: 30 am Smarth and Uday demonstrated how to use motion detection and hand movement to control HTML 5 game .It was one big highlight of the entire session with teams admiring the API (since it was a no plugin implementation) and of course the amazing presentation!
Four apps were fully developed by the teams by 5 am.

1. Whiteboard – A HTML 5 version of Draw My Thing.
2. ResQ- An app that safely logs you out of your personal accounts, should you ever lose your droid.
3. Present Pro –A HTML5 driven Presentation App which was pretty interactive.
4. Mupples – A fun HTML5 experiment that produces graphics and sound effects upon user interaction. It was ported to Android using phoneGap.

Finally, on lines similar to the mid-session evaluation, teams were asked to rate each other’s apps. The judges also ranked the apps and the final scores were put up. The team with the Whiteboard app was declared winner of the Hackathon. The team was given free passes to NitroDroid (6th October, 2012)
By and large, it was an enjoyable experience, both, for the participants and the organizers. We have many events lined up in the coming months. For whatever reason, if you could not make it to the event, make sure you subscribe to the blog for more news and registrations for the upcoming events like the one below.

                                                                   Event in pictures


Hackathon in association with QUARK ( Technical Festival of BITS-PILANI GOA CAMPUS )

It is one of the many hackathons to be conducted in association with Quark . It is a follow up event of NitroDroid (an amazing conference with the BEST authoritative speakers on Android), on the very next day, 7th October 2012. The event is invite –only and we have limited slots. Hurry Up!  

Register here!

Event Venue:

LC-101,
BITS- Pilani, KK BIRLA GOA CAMPUS, Near NH-17B,Bye Pass Road,
Zuarinagar, GOA- 403726.

                                                                                                                                                               --Surya Pappoppula

The GDG Goa chapter is an open group of members who continuously learn, develop, share and contribute to Google technologies to satiate their cravings for a better Open Source world.
With developer communities spreads over different regions in and around Goa (thanks to the famous universities here!) the entire ecosystem lacked a certain feeling of staying united and related. To facilitate information flow among the different groups and to bring all the different communities under the purview of a single, large, immensely active group, GDG Goa was established.

GTUGs worldwide have recently evolved into GDGs ( and so did GTUG Goa )  so that the title semantically makes more sense than before. The audience of the community has always been a question and with this change,it is less likely that it would be ambiguous. The new change focuses a lot more on local chapters and events keeping the intended audience the same. The group is as open to developers and designers  interested in web and mobile app development as it ever has been.

After a shameless introduction, we move on to the animal spirits with which we conduct various events spread across different months that maintains a constant buzz everywhere! We have organized many events under the GTUG banner in the past and have a bucket full of events planned for the future too. The kind of events we are interested in, include

1. Live Guest Lectures of prominent delegates from companies that utilize Google technologies or from Google.
2. Special events like Coding Sessions, Hackathons and Bar Camps!
3. National/State Level event like the popular DevFest etc..

all this in addition to the video conferences, install fests and design contests. Hope this gives you an insight into our busy community!

Tired already? Continue below to find more about the upcoming DevFest. (You better be good!)  

A DevFest is a community event for developers interested in Google technologies like the Chrome Project, Calendar API, Google Maps API or the very popular mobile OS Android, to mention a few from the long list of awesome products!

• The Google Developers Group Goa DevFest is a two day event to held at The Queeny(yeah! ) in Vasco Pele .

View Larger Map

• The DevFest would primarily focus on two tracks – Modern Web featuring HTML5, Chrome and Dart and the other one on Android. You can choose the track that suits you best or even better, you can even choose sessions from each track.

• The second day of the fest ( 30th September 2012 ) is an overnight hackathon on the tracks HTML5, Chrome , Dart and Android from 5 in the evening all the way up to 6AM, the next day.

• There would be no registration fee for the event. Well, that just doesn’t mean you can walk in right away. It’s an invite-only event with very limited spots. Audience with very basic coding skills can attend the DAY 1 of the event. Day 2 is restricted only to kick butt programmers and hard core developers (Of course, we get to choose from the list of registrations).

• There would be ample arrangements for food and also we have free goodies for everyone. There are prizes up for grabs too!

Follow the link below for the registration form. We repeat, limited spots are available. So, Hurry Up!
 

Register here

If you would like to have a sneak peak of our future campaigns, thankfully, we have got good number of circles on our calendar. We have many hackathons lined up covering App engine, Geo APIs, HTML5, Android and major events like NitroDroid. We have planned a 72 hour hackathon in association with Quark-the technical fest of BITS Pilani Goa Campus in the first week of February.  These are some of the events scheduled for the coming months.

For more updates regarding our community activities, subscribe to the blog updates!

--
Surya Pappoppula