Montclair State Hosts Google I/O Extended Conference
University is only New Jersey site to host worldwide tech event
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Nearly 200 tech fans, entrepreneurs and coders gathered at Montclair State University’s University Hall on June 25 to join others around the world in participating in the global tech conference, Google I/O Extended 2014.
Organized by Google Developers Group (GDG) North Jersey and sponsored by Montclair State’s Feliciano Center for Entrepreneurship, DataStax, Cloud Academy and Google, the daylong conference featured workshops, tech demos, presentations and live streaming of the goings on at Google’s annual I/O developers conference being held simultaneously at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
While Google I/O Extended events were held in hundreds of locations around the world – including more than 60 across the United States – the event at Montclair State was the only one held in New Jersey and the only such large gathering in the New York City/Philadelphia area.
“We viewed this as a very promising opportunity for both Montclair State and the Feliciano Center for Entrepreneurship,” said Dennis Bone, director of the Feliciano Center. “Every entrepreneurial center needs a robust ecosystem of start-ups and developers and this Google conference attracted numerous talented individuals from throughout the region to Montclair State.”
Spearheaded by Todd Nakamura, founder of the newly formed GDG North Jersey, which received Google’s stamp of approval a mere 20 days before the event, the conference ran from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. and gave participants opportunities to see the latest tech innovations from Google, network with other developers and tech gurus, and join in a live-streamed hangout with Googlers and Google Developer Experts at the live site in San Francisco. Google also created a YouTube greeting video especially for the New Jersey participants.
Sessions for the day included keynote speakers, Google tech demos, code labs and code reviews, networking sessions and a moderated panel discussion, among others. The conference also featured a preview of Google’s new smart watch, Android Wear, and an overview of Google Polymer, a new web development framework, which Nakamura termed “revolutionary.”
Workshops and panel discussions exclusive to the event at Montclair State included topics such as women in tech, how to innovate at your company and using Google+ to grow your business. The day’s events concluded with a well-attended after-party at a local Montclair venue.
