It has been a long time that spring time has marked the moment to get ready for the Google IO developer conference for me. Its been many years since I last went to the conference. It started with IO 2009 and many presentations and lightning talks at AnDevCon conferences for me. The buzz and vibe in these beginning days Android is full of fond memories for me. Now in 2024, and it’s time to go back.
While I am still writing code, mentoring and teaching, supporting open source projects, and document and blog about things, my focus has definitely changed. My Android projects like ksoap2-android, the android-maven-plugin, and many other efforts are basically defunct. These days I am working a lot on the big data analytics SQL query engine Trino. My book writing efforts changed from the Android chapter in Maven: The Complete Reference to Trino: The Definitive Guide, which by now is available in its third iteration and translated into four languages. Testing used to be done with multiple devices attached to my laptop in addition to using Jenkins as CI server. Nowadays most continuous integration is using GitHub Actions. And the final usage of my software moved from mobile phones and to clusters with hundreds of servers.
Looking at the conference schedule it sure looks like there is a lot fo buzz and excitement in the mix again. Android is still shining bright, the web is amazingly powerful, things literally dont work without the cloud anymore, and the promise of AI usage is pretty much overwhelming. I am going to have the usual problem of wanting to be in too many sessions at the same time, while also wanting to catch up and chat with my friends and peers.
But the biggest change in 2024 will be that I am no longer going alone to Google IO. While I met many friends once there, this time around I have a companion travelling down south. I am so proud to be taking my son Lukas Moser to the conference. I still fondly remember when I dragged him with his brothers and mom to Portland for OSCON in 2015 and we did Minecraft modding and other fun classes at devoxx4Kids. It will be mindblowing for my budding software engineer studying at UBC to meet you all at Google IO.
We look forward to see many of you at the Googleplex, and hope all of you can enjoy some of the sessions there or from the comfort of your couch.