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BILL LUAN: My name is Bill Luan.
I'm working for Developer Relations of Google.
I'm the country lead for China and the Great China region.
I'm very glad that you can join us for this very
interesting program, the featured GDGs along with
Google I/O.
And along with me is Sting Chen, the
co-manager of GDG Shanghai.
And today, we will share with you the experience that he is
having by managing GDG Shanghai with many interesting
programs and so on.
So again, I'm very glad that you can join us, and welcome.
And so, hello, Sting, and I'm very glad that you can come to
Google to join us.
What brought you here?
STING CHEN: Thank you.
I'm very glad that you come here and represent GDG
Shanghai to Google headquarters and share some
experience.
BILL LUAN: OK.
We are very glad you are here.
So, we will share with our audience today the
experience you have.
Shanghai GDG is a very
interesting developer community.
They have written many programs, especially in the
past year, that Sting has involved in
organizing many programs.
And let's look at the slides.
Here's a quick introduction of GDG Shanghai.
And so, Sting, could you explain to our audience a
little bit of history of GDG Shanghai?
STING CHEN: GDG Shanghai is created four years before, and
GDG Shanghai is one of the largest GDGs in China.
It has a lot of programs.
We try to share knowledge and connect the people, and also
cooperate with other GDGs, such as Hangzhou and Beijing.
And we hold more events, some of [? ?]
Series event, and have a great brand.
We're also connected to other communities, such as TopGeek,
PMCamp, OpenERP, and more than 10 communities.
BILL LUAN: OK, great, yeah.
And thank you for a lot of hard work.
I know organizing events is not easy, and especially, a
lot of times you depend on volunteers and have to
overcome a lot of difficulties--
logistic, planning, and so on.
Like, myself, with organizing a lot of events for Google, I
know it's a lot of hard work.
So thank you for all the efforts making the developer
community very robust in Shanghai.
In terms of events, let's look at the events you have run.
You have many, many events, as we can see on the slides, and
maybe you can tell us a little bit about all the recent
events, especially showing on the slides.
STING CHEN: Yeah.
We try to understand our audience, what knowledge they
should know, they want to know.
So we have a lot of programs for them.
One of these is Software Engineering Salon.
Every software engineer has a lot of work to do, but if the
management is not so good, the project will delay.
So how to solve this kind of problem is a common problem.
Even you use Python, Java, or other program languages, they
also needed to learn more Google experiences.
So we invited some people from the greater company.
They share some very good teamwork, team building, and
problem solving experience.
BILL LUAN: OK, sounds great.
And the event just happened this past quarter, right?
STING CHEN: Yeah.
BILL LUAN: And was this program run by Shanghai GDG
along with other local communities?
STING CHEN: Yes, right.
BILL LUAN: OK.
And so, that's the first one.
What about the Data Analysis Conference?
STING CHEN: We found out there are a lot of Google Analytics
users, but a lot of people confused, though, with the new
Google Analytics version, because it is more complicated
than before.
I used the Google Analytics about seven years.
I also think the new version is complicated, and I spent
some time to know it.
BILL LUAN: That's awful.
We should do a better job in terms of doing better training
for the users.
I understand this conference is first time you guys cover
about Google Analytics in China?
STING CHEN: Yeah.
BILL LUAN: And among all the GDGs that I have been working
with, we have never done topics on Analytics, so I'm
very glad, actually, that you organized the event and
covered that topic.
How was the users' reaction?
Do they like the content?
STING CHEN: The interesting thing is there are more kind
of audience--
product managers, some operation
managers, and some engineers.
They also like this kind of topic, because they can learn
how to use the new version Google Analytics, and they
also found that there are more programs in their older
version or new version Google Analytics.
They learn more tips.
Very good.
BILL LUAN: OK, yeah.
So, I hope that we can do similar future trainings on
Google Analytics, do more of that in the future.
So again, thank you for organizing that.
And then, as the slides show, everybody can see that they
have a Python conference that Sting have involved organizing
along with the GDG community.
And I thought that was a very interesting one, too.
And you, I understand, are the organizer for the first ever
nationwide Python conference in China, right?
STING CHEN: Yeah.
BILL LUAN: Tell us more about that experience.
STING CHEN: I'm a Python programmer from seven years
before, but we also have a very small community, and we
share knowledge, and we talk about some technologies.
We wish we had a national Python community conference,
but we cannot find some support.
Fortunately, we found Bill Luan tell *** our
[? expectation ?].
BILL LUAN: Yeah.
I actually knew that being the Python inventor, *** Rossum
is also a Googler today, and of course, he was very glad
when I asked him to provide support to your conference.
And I understood he taped a greeting video for you, right?
STING CHEN: Yeah.
[INAUDIBLE]
***.
BILL LUAN: You played his video at
the conference, right?
STING CHEN: Yeah.
BILL LUAN: Was the audience surprised?
STING CHEN: Everybody was so excited to view ***.
BILL LUAN: As the inventor, father of Python, as a
representative Google, give you a talk, right?
STING CHEN: Mm hm.
BILL LUAN: And that Python, I understand that was a long
event, a whole day long, right?
Or multiple days?
One day or two days event?
STING CHEN: Two days event.
BILL LUAN: Yeah, it's multiple days.
Two days event, right?
STING CHEN: More than 700 people come to the conference,
and more than 400 people view online.
BILL LUAN: I see.
Wow.
OK.
So hopefully, you will do that again.
I'm sure I will get more support from ***.
STING CHEN: Oh, we will hold this this year.
BILL LUAN: OK, terrific.
Yeah.
And you also done HTML5 CodeJam, the other programs
that you involved.
Could you maybe a little bit introducing of
these to our audience?
STING CHEN: This is 36 hours event, where there are more
than 10 teams come to one place and
programming by HTML5.
So they submit their product finally, and we'll have some
people to evaluate the products and
give some bonus prize.
Very good.
BILL LUAN: Interesting.
And how about the community managers training?
What's that?
STING CHEN: We found that we don't have very stable
volunteers come to these communities.
Some people want to join the organizers, but they don't
know how to do this.
So we try to tell people, if you want to join the community
organizers, you can learn something from
the successful people.
So, we invite more than 20 community people to share
their experience.
BILL LUAN: I see.
This is a very good, yeah.
STING CHEN: Yeah.
BILL LUAN: Because even I know that working with GDGs across
China, and along with our program managing team, working
with global GDG communities, I know this also always has been
a big challenge in terms of have volunteers continuously
working with the community and organizing enough events.
So, yeah, I'm glad that you organized a training for that.
Very good.
So thank you, again, for a lot of these efforts.
And also, I know you have a lot of things in store for the
second half of this year, right?
And would you please share with our audience some of your
thinking, ideas?
So let's look at slides.
The plan that Sting had with GDG Shanghai, what are you
going to do in the second half?
STING CHEN: Yeah.
We have a very interesting event is about learn seven new
languages in seven weeks, such as Go, Dart, Python, Ruby,
NodeJs, and other languages.
BILL LUAN: Oh, nice.
I even noticed you have Dart on there.
STING CHEN: Yeah.
BILL LUAN: We just launched our new developers.google.com,
our new dev site, this past week or two, right before I/O.
And I know that Dart content and Dart training is one of
the highest viewed material, and lots of interest in the
industry to learning these new languages from Google.
And I'm very glad that you actually [INAUDIBLE]
have Dart training on it.
That's nice.
STING CHEN: I think every [? team ?]
should learn more new languages.
BILL LUAN: Yeah, very nice.
But what about college tour?
STING CHEN: College tour is a very interesting tour.
We tried to share the knowledge in colleges, so we
pick Android technologies.
In Shanghai, there are more greater universities, and we
pick five, one-by-one, to hold the college tour.
In another three months or so, we hold three college events
in three very great universities.
BILL LUAN: OK.
How did you find the connections in those
universities?
Did you work with the students who are interested in Google
technologies, or do you work with the professors there?
STING CHEN: We try to connect to professors.
But we found students is better, so we connected
directly to students.
There are some clubs in colleges.
BILL LUAN: Oh, yeah, OK.
Clubs interested in these technologies, Google
technologies, open web technologies.
STING CHEN: Yeah, and the students are very
[? excited. ?]
We can help them to create a very great event.
So they do everything, such as the poster, the logo design,
and to find a place.
BILL LUAN: Nice.
STING CHEN: Yeah, very good.
BILL LUAN: Now you got a lot of volunteers, right?
Work with you.
Terrific.
And so, I see on your slides, you have a PyCon again
planned, right?
STING CHEN: Yes.
BILL LUAN: And this year, you're going to do more than
in one city?
You're going to have two cities now.
STING CHEN: Yeah.
Well, we think one plan is have this in two cities,
because this has been a two days weekend.
If people work five days and come to conference two days,
then [? working ?]
five days they were very tired.
So we try to use one day in one city, but continually to
view the conference online and expand this event to Beijing.
Beijing has a lot of Python programmers.
BILL LUAN: And they couldn't go to Shanghai last year, so
by doing this this year, hopefully you will reach out
to more people, more developers.
Very nice.
And of course, then, DevFestX.
Globally, Developer Relations work with a lot of developer
communities.
We are organizing events, anything that is more than
half a day long, have at lease three topics, we're branding
them as DevFestX.
And so, hopefully you will organize one for Shanghai GDG.
STING CHEN: OK, no problem.
BILL LUAN: And we will support you as much as we can, and
hopefully it will be successful.
So great, yeah.
One thing I would like to ask you about the events you run,
in terms of you using events, you share the knowledge with
developers.
Maybe you can tell us one or two stories about in these
past events, what really worked well in
terms of shared knowledge.
And maybe you can give us a couple of examples?
STING CHEN: Yeah.
We try to think of what knowledge people need.
So, we use [? knowledge ?]
to attract the people come to a conference or events, such
as we think that they are a lot of people converting from
engineers to product managers, so they also think about our
knowledge, but they cannot find a very good channel to
learn more skills and tips.
So we find Google Analytics is a very good knowledge to
attract the people to come here, and then these connect
them to share knowledge.
So we have the very good Google Analytics event.
This event has more than 150 people come to the conference.
BILL LUAN: And the speakers, they are from where?
STING CHEN: The speakers come to [INAUDIBLE]
for mobile company.
He is a translator for a famous book.
Another is a famous website, [INAUDIBLE]
He's very good.
BILL LUAN: And they have used Analytics before?
STING CHEN: Yeah.
They have more experience.
BILL LUAN: Yeah.
I like it that you leverage the technology experts in
different companies, come to our GDG
community, share the knowledge.
A lot of people see the examples of how other people
did, what other companies use Google technologies.
It should be very good inspiration for them to pick
up new technology, or try.
So, I think that's very good.
In a lot of aspects, it's actually better.
You have these people's personal testimonies, use
their own examples, then a Google speaker to tell the
story, right?
So I really like it that you have the speakers from other
companies to share the knowledge.
One other thing that I'm very interested in is that you do a
lot of things connected with universities.
So, as the slides, we have seen here that you have run
many programs at universities in the past.
Could you introduce a little bit of what did you do in
terms of working with these universities?
STING CHEN: Yeah.
And the first thing is very hard, but we have a very good
channel, because Tonji University has more students
join the compete last year.
They get bigger prizes.
So we connect these people, tell them we need to come
together and have the very good event in Tonji
University.
They say very good, so [INAUDIBLE]
BILL LUAN: This was happening this year, right?
This past [INAUDIBLE].
STING CHEN: Yeah.
BILL LUAN: OK, in April.
And how about Jaio Tong University?
I know that's a very good school.
Lot of computer science students, right?
STING CHEN: Yeah.
BILL LUAN: What did you do there?
STING CHEN: I also come from Shanghai Jaio Tong University.
BILL LUAN: Oh, you graduate from there?
STING CHEN: Yeah.
There are more people who want to learn new technologies, so
we have a half-day event for Shanghai Jaio Tong University,
and we have four speakers in this event.
[INAUDIBLE]
[? Center ?]
have more support for this event.
We tell them why people need to learn mobile development,
why need to choose Android, and how to do develop and
Android, some technologies so the people are very glad.
And we have a long session asking question and answer.
People is very good.
BILL LUAN: And where were the speakers from?
Where did you get speakers for those events?
STING CHEN: It's very interesting.
[INAUDIBLE]
from the training company.
They can describe why you should learn Android.
They describe their dream to students.
BILL LUAN: So they're very professional.
STING CHEN: Yes.
BILL LUAN: They know what to do, yeah.
Are they based in Shanghai, this company?
STING CHEN: Yeah, it's based in Shanghai.
Another is our GDG Shanghai organizer.
BILL LUAN: OK, good.
Right, very nice.
STING CHEN: [INAUDIBLE]
BILL LUAN: The other things I would like to ask you about is
your collaboration with other GDGs in China.
I understand for the very first time, when we were
actually beta testing and launching the Google Hangout,
that you guys in Shanghai and the GDG
Hangzhou collaborate together.
[INAUDIBLE] joined Hangout session, right?
Tell us about that experience.
STING CHEN: Shanghai GDG has a lot of connections with more
communities and experts, but Hangzhou
don't have more speakers.
So sometimes, we try to connect the two places.
We share the knowledge by Google Hangout.
The speakers, such as [INAUDIBLE], he's a very good
Go lang expert.
He has a big Go lang presentation, and we use
Google Hangout to share this knowledge.
Video and audio, too.
BILL LUAN: You mean the Go language?
STING CHEN: Yeah, Go language.
So Hangzhou also can learn this by video.
BILL LUAN: I see.
So [INAUDIBLE]
use Hangout, and your guys' events happen in Shanghai.
The speaker was in Shanghai, but the GDG Hangzhou, they
dial in, they watch online?
STING CHEN: Yes, right.
BILL LUAN: And can they ask questions and your speakers in
Shanghai be able to answer?
STING CHEN: They can ask questions.
BILL LUAN: Live, through video?
STING CHEN: Yeah, live.
BILL LUAN: How's the speed?
How is the quality, the video quality?
I always worry about the cross-city, link together, you
may have a problem.
Did that work at all?
STING CHEN: Unfortunately, we found the quality is not so
good, because our computer is far away from the speaker.
So we use a mobile phone nearby the speaker.
Solved the problems.
And later, we find we shouldn't use audio [? line ?]
to connect to computer.
BILL LUAN: That's a good lesson, right.
It's very important to have good audio equipment connects
to the PC so that the audio is clear, people can hear.
STING CHEN: Yeah, noise is very clear.
BILL LUAN:, So you guys are going to try
again in the future?
This is very interesting.
STING CHEN: Yeah.
In fact, we're trying Shanghai Jiao Tong University in the
college tour for Android development.
BILL LUAN: Using Hangout.
STING CHEN: Yeah, Hangout.
And I invite [? HEIFI ?]
GDG to join.
They just learned how to do this, and it's very good.
I think this audio is very good.
And we published the video to tudou.com.
We use [INAUDIBLE]
BILL LUAN: For audience that don't know what tudou.com that
Sting referred to, it's almost like a YouTube of China, where
people can upload the video clips, so they do that
locally, hopefully getting a better speed, right?
STING CHEN: Yes.
BILL LUAN: In terms of watching the video.
Yeah, so I'm glad that you actually tried that.
Hopefully in the future, we'll do more cross-GDG events, so
that GDG communities in different cities, we can get
them work together, learning from each other.
This would be very good.
One other thing I would like you to talk about is the GDG
community in Shanghai connects with lots of other
communities, right?
As on the slides, everybody can see GDG Shanghai has been
working with many local developer communities.
And a lot of those names are probably not well known
outside of Shanghai or outside of China.
So it's interesting, maybe you can explain to
us, what are these?
STING CHEN: In Shanghai, there are more
communities, such as TopGeek.
I worked for TopGeek community about two years.
BILL LUAN: Is it big?
How many developers there?
STING CHEN: More than 2,000.
BILL LUAN: More than 2,000!
Wow!
OK.
Big community.
STING CHEN: Because [? it ?]
[? has ?]
[? more ?] big conference.
Different areas, so it has a lot of members.
BILL LUAN: And PMCamp, that's the one
you just did Analytic--
no, that's the one you did the programming
model training, right?
STING CHEN: Yeah.
This is a product manager community.
It's also more than 2,000 people in this community.
BILL LUAN: And what about the others?
Any other notable ones?
STING CHEN: Such as CPyUG is a Python community.
ECUG before is Ur lang but now is for Go lang.
BILL LUAN: OK.
So it's Go language.
STING CHEN: Yeah, Go language [INAUDIBLE]
And HTML5 Dream Factory is another HTML5 community.
BILL LUAN: I see.
And what's the AgileTour?
Is that a Agile model thing?
STING CHEN: Yeah.
Agile is a programming model.
BILL LUAN: A programming management model.
STING CHEN: Management model.
BILL LUAN: OK.
Would you be able to invite maybe, say, some of the
speakers in those communities come to Shanghai
GDG to give a talk?
STING CHEN: In fact, more good speakers want to share their
knowledge to more areas and more communities.
You find them and tell them who are you, and why you can
help them to do this.
[? We're allowed ?]
to do this.
BILL LUAN: I see.
So they may be willing to come?
STING CHEN: Yeah.
BILL LUAN: And so if you organize a Shanghai GDG event,
maybe invite some of these from PMCamp, TopGeek, as the
speaker, but speak to the GDG community.
STING CHEN: Yeah.
BILL LUAN: And because we have a huge, like, 700, 800 people
now that you can have those speakers talk to
our members, right?
STING CHEN: Right.
BILL LUAN: And hopefully, you can maybe do some of those.
And we talked about DevFestX.
Maybe in the future, you can do events, combine some of
these communities together.
Do a joint event, make it bigger.
STING CHEN: Yeah.
Well, we try to invite more good speakers from different
communities or different companies.
BILL LUAN: And make things fun, more
interesting, exciting.
STING CHEN: Right, exactly.
BILL LUAN: OK, that's all.
What we're trying to do, make learning technologies,
including Google technologies, fun and exciting.
And hopefully, this little sharing of Shanghai GDG's
experience will be helpful to all of you.
And thank you for your time to come join us.
And Sting, thank you for sharing your experience.
And welcome to Google, and enjoy your stay at Google.