I went to Google I/O for the first time this year, and it was amazing. They gave us a free Google Home, and there were all these insane fun tech demos and games and toys, all showing off cool stuff like machine learning and the Google Assistant, and there was a party and free beer, and they got LCD Soundsystem to play a concert for us, and and and and and…

LCD Soundsystem — definitely my most unexpected announcement at I/O.

All of that stuff was great. And when someone asks you what Google I/O was like, you start showing them photos of the cool stuff you saw, or you talk about the announcements in the keynote, or the talks you attended. But none of that is the real reason to go to I/O.

A friend told me a story recently. The Android developers of his company, when they returned from I/O, gave a presentation about their experience there for the rest of the company. At the end, somebody asked a question, “Sure, it looks like you had a lot of fun, but what did we gain from this?”

And no one had a good answer.

Why should we pay for you to go to Google I/O?

Google I/O tickets are hard to get, and they’re expensive. For those attendees who don’t live in the area, it’s even more expensive, because you need to pay for accommodation. And for those attendees who are flying from Ireland (like me!), or Asia, or wherever, there’s the cost of that too. Even if you get a free ticket through one of the GDE, GDG Organiser, or partner organisation routes, the other costs are still there. But it’s OK, because our employers pay for it, right? Through expenses, or conference budgets, or calling it training or professional development, or whatever other gymnastics of accounting they contort it into, they pay for you to go. It seems reasonable to assume that most software developers can’t afford to spend a few thousand dollars on a three day conference, so we rely on our employers to get us there.

Businesses care about money. To greater and lesser degrees, they care about what’s costing them money. To greater and lesser degrees, they care about investing in their employees. Invariably, some employers will question the value of sending you to a conference like Google I/O, when it costs several thousand dollars to do. This question might not be intended harshly. It might be genuine curiosity from someone who is excited by your excitement, and wants to know how it will affect your work and their company going forward. But if you can’t answer that question, and communicate real value gained from your attendance, your employer may reconsider paying for it next year.

“You can watch it all on Youtube!”

Videos of talks from I/O have been going up on Youtube since the first I/O in 2008. (Side note: I know this because I just asked my Google Home when the first I/O was, and it told me. Then I asked if there were any videos on Youtube from I/O 2008. It apologised, and said it couldn’t help me with that yet. So I opened a new tab in Chrome and looked it up myself. Like some sort of cave-dwelling savage.)

The keynote is streamed live. Nowadays, many (all?) of the talks are streamed live. The videos are all up on Youtube afterwards. So, logically, you can get all of that learning without attending the event, right? I disagree. You can get most of that learning without attending. There are still things that happen that can’t be replicated after the fact. You lose the chance to ask questions, for one. You miss the opportunity to speak with the developers sitting next to you (more on that later).

That’s not a strong enough argument though. No profound experiences are guaranteed from attending a talk in person, and you can get most of the value of a talk by watching the video. But that’s not all there is to attending a conference.

The real value of attending Google I/O is not the talks

The real value is the free Google Home they gave us this year.

Just kidding. It’s not the Google Home. It’s not the mocktail a robot made for you because you asked nicely, or the slow-mo Matrix-style rotating video of you and your friends putting on sunglasses at night, or the LCD Soundsystem concert (though that was incredible), or the talks you went to (which you can watch at home).

The real value of going to I/O is all those moments that happen off-camera, between the pictures. I/O gives you direct access to Google engineers and experts in a way you can’t get anywhere else. What with the sandboxes, app review sessions and office hours, there is no better opportunity to talk about the problems you face in your development with someone who can help. In some cases, they’re the people that work directly on the tool/library/framework you’re struggling with. Wondering how you could architect your system on Firebase? There’s a Firebase sandbox, where you can work it out with the experts on a big whiteboard. Having a problem with something in Android Studio? Head to the Android sandbox, find the Android Studio desk, talk to Tor Norbye or one of his team about it. Still have questions about Room or LiveData after the Architecture Components talks? Go find Yigit and the guys at the Support Library stall. They’re waiting there to talk to people just like you, looking for feedback, ready to answer your questions. They even have this weird picture of Chris Banes in front of an explosion, for all your selfie needs.

Making it Real

Have you, or your company, ever partnered with another company in some way? Have you worked on a project where you dealt with people online, but had never spoken to them or met them face to face? It’s so easy to forget that the people on the other side of the screen are people (as seen on The Internet), but when you meet them in person, that changes completely. When you can put a face (not just an avatar image on Github or Slack) and a voice to a name, your working relationship with them undergoes a drastic improvement. Conferences are a great place for these meetings to happen, and I/O is a big conference. There’s a reasonable chance your partners are going to be there.

At Zendesk, my team works on our mobile SDKs. We recently partnered with Fabric to add the Zendesk Support SDK as a Fabric Kit. Naturally this work involved communication with people in Fabric, and naturally most of this communication was done online. We got to meet them at I/O, and finally feel like we really know who they are. I’m already looking forward to our next collaboration.