My Experience at Google I/O, seeing Sundar Pichai and visiting California
Visiting the Silicon valley and seeing Sundar Pichai deliver his keynote speech just few feet in front of me are just one of the many surreal experiences, that made this trip to the Bay Area something to remember always. Attending Google I/O was an experience of a lifetime for me for a multitude of reasons.
Google I/O is an annual developer conference held by Google in Mountain View, California. I got the opportunity to attend this developer conference in the year 2019 by being among the top contestants in a coding competition held every year. The top competitors in this contest are awarded a ticket and a stipend to attend to Google I/O.
Google I/O was a three day event(7th May- 9th May 2019) packed with workshops, tech talks, sandboxes, code labs, keynote speeches, band performance, first hand experience at seeing the impressive technologies being implemented. The event started with a keynote speech by Sundar Pichai. It was surreal to see him in person delivering the keynote with so much calm and conviction. Out of all the experiences which are unforgettable for me from that conference, probably this tops everything. Being in California, sipping coffee while hearing the keynote speech by the first ever Indian CEO of Google felt exhilarating. It was followed by several sessions and talks on Tensorflow, Flutter, Android, Artificial Intelligence, Voice Recognition, Live Captioning. Coming from the people who have developed these cutting edge technologies, just listening to these tech talks was so informative.
This trip was memorable for several other reasons too. It was my first trip to the USA and my second international trip abroad. The entire process from getting the visa, to the long travel to San Francisco was very exciting. I had traveled from Patna to Delhi(2 hours), then Delhi to Dubai(4.5 hours), then Dubai to San Francisco(16 hours). But this long journey’s tiredness was gone in a minute when I saw my flight landing on the SFO Airport with Pacific ocean just beside the runaway. I was in the Silicon valley, the place where it all started, the technological revolution. The weather of Bay Area immediately captivates with its light breezy coolness. I stayed in Cupertino, CA from where I used to go to Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, CA where the conference was happening.
Taking Lyft, walking across the streets of California, eating at some fabulous places, visiting the Golden Gate Bridge, Baker Beach, Fisherman’s Wharf, walking across Pier 39, shopping in China Town are some indelible memories. It was also very liberating as I was doing all this alone on the last day of the trip, an Indian Girl in a foreign country, with just internet and tonnes of research on how to make the most of this experience. I remember calling my family from the Golden gate bridge, and it just felt so empowering that I was a long way from home, but I was so confident and making memories to cherish for a lifetime. For the most of the trip, I had a fellow Indian student Namrata with me and we visited so many places like the Apple Headquarters in Cupertino, The Computer History Museum, the Android park. We had dinner at an Indian restaurant when we missed Indian food so bad after eating sandwiches and pizza for days.
All these experiences were very unique and gave me a lifetime of memories.
