GDG DevFest Voronezh: virtual kittens, conversations with the speaker and Mannequin Challenge

The Voronezh Google Developer Group, which turned seven years old in November, met for the fifth time at the GDG DevFest Voronezh conference. The conference lasted two days: the first was devoted to reports and speeches, the second to the “iron” workshop.

First, let's watch a short video on how it went.

Bonus: Mannequin Challenge at the conference.

Day One: Theory

The first day was a visit to our co-organizers - Voronezh State University and the Faculty of Applied Mathematics and Mathematics. Those who are often at our conferences, is already feel here at home .

While setting up the equipment, fairies flew around the hall and suddenly dense green thickets grew. The guests did not miss the chance and recorded everything .

Guests also did not miss the opportunity to take pictures with the symbols of the conference.

Puzzles, technical tasks (also peculiar puzzles), and, of course, virtual beasts, for which special thanks to Project Tango, enjoyed success.

Immediately after the opening remarks by the organizers, the scene was captured by two GDEs: Zviad Kardava, Google Developer Expert: IoT, and Denis Neklyudov, Google Developer Experts: Android.

An interesting fact: in total there are now four developers in Russia with the title of GDE. That is, 50% of such experts of the country spoke at our conference!

Denis and Zviad talked about augmented reality with Google Project Tango, showed it, demonstrated the work of the "smart assistant" Google Home.

Any demonstration is remembered, first of all, by incidents. An interesting excerpt from a Google Home demo.

- Okay, Google. Who is the president of Russia?

- The current president of Russia is Vladimir Putin.

- How old is he?

- Kim Kardashian is 36 years old.

Following Denis and Zviad, our own smart home expert, IoT guru Nikolai Khabarov, took the stage. Together with Nikolai, we moved from Tango and Augmented Reality to Daydream and Virtual Reality.

We all know about the bottlenecks of most IoT solutions. The vast majority of them are tied to the availability of Wi-Fi, and refuse to work without a network. Zviad Kardava returned to the scene to share a recipe for solving this problem - Web Bluetooth API. In theory, such decisions will make the “smart home” more reliable. How is this in practice? We are looking for the answer in the speech of Zviad.

"Many of you have heard about the Internet of things, many of you know the Internet of things"
Many of you, perhaps, are the Internet of things #DevFest_VRN

- Pasha and Titanishu (@Titanishu) December 3, 2016

We have a tradition - in recent years we have been discussing watches at DevFest. We look at what is happening with the market, what are the opportunities for developers. This year, the tradition was supported by Denis Neklyudov.

"I got phantom calls not only in my pocket, but also on my wrist" #DevFest_VRN

- Pasha and Titanishu (@Titanishu) December 3, 2016

To the finale of the first day we had in store a speech about the frontend. Alexander Kasheverov, DataArt expert in web technologies, told how to make friends D3.js with the Angular (both versions) and Polymer frameworks.

When the reports were completed, it was time to tell what the "secret announcement" was indicated in the conference program. Elena Fedorova, HRM Director of DataArt in Voronezh, announced the opening of another large international community in our city - Women Techmakers. The purpose of the movement is to help girls find themselves in IT, to provide the resources and knowledge necessary for this, to create a platform for the exchange of experience.

To subscribe to the announcements for the meetings of Women Techmakers Voronezh, send an email to wtm.vrn@dataart.com .    

Day Two: Practice

On the second day, 50 developers gathered already at DataArt's IoT workshop, which was conducted by two cool experts at once: Zviad Kardava and Nikolai Khabarov. Participation required a laptop, programming skills and a desire to change the world for the better.

And we have prepared a whole mountain of various iron, which could be used for our projects.

We intentionally did not begin to establish absolutely no framework and timetables. In the morning, the developers came to visit, received all the necessary devices and got to work - each implemented their own ideas.

For help, you could contact one of the experts.

Participants at work.

В итоге презентовали море крутых проектов: самодельные «умные часы», «умный замок» для холодильника, игровой контроллер, пожарную сигнализацию и многое-многое другое.

В конце воркшопа участники получили подарки, в том числе, и устройства, которые использовали в проектах. Два проекта получили консультации экспертов ФРИИ.

Не обошлось без финального общего селфи. Селфи-палки не нашлось, поэтому ряды участников сомкнулись очень плотно.

Благодарим всех, кто участововал в DevFest. Посмотреть больше интересного о конференции можно в социальных сетях по хэштегу #DevFest_VRN и в личных блогах наших гостей. Фотографии можно посмотреть на Google Plus, а все видео — на YouTube.

Many thanks to our organizers - DataArt, Voronezh State University and the Faculty of Applied Mathematics and Mathematics - and to our partners: Motorro Studios, Creative Science Team, FSU Voronezh State University, Broccoli, Voronezh Downtown Media Portal, Headhunter Job Search Portal, STOLL Business Magazine , LikenGo advisory service, RIA Voronezh news portal, a site for job search in My Circle IT, the IIDF venture capital fund and Google.