It was an exciting day for 70 students from the various IHLs as they were invited to an exclusive “students” only event specially organised by the Google Devfest team who was in town. It was truly an inspiring experience for the students as the Google developers shared interesting anecdotes about working at Google. We are proud to present our guest blogger for the event; Miss Dora Chua, Lecturer from Singapore Polytechnic’s School of Digital Media and Infocomm Technology.

Students eagerly waiting for the start of the event

Deep in discussion..

Panel of Google Developers

Enjoying the wonderful delicacies thanks to Google!

“Don’t ask for approval, just ask for forgiveness.”.

“Launch first and iterate.”

“Failures get promoted at Google.”

These were some of the nuggets of wisdom we learned at the Google Developer Student Event at the Google office on 09 Nov 2011 (Fri).

These words were shared by the staff from the respective Google product teams such as Google+, Chrome, Apps etc, who flew in specially to Singapore for the last week to speak at the annual DevFest on 10 Nov 2011.

The DevFest was heavily oversubscribed but 100 lucky students from the various polytechnics and universities such as SP,NYP, NUS, NTU and SMU had the fortune to meet these experts one day before the DevFest itself. This opportunity came in the chance of a visit to the newly opened Google premises in the posh CBD area and not only did the students get to meet the staff at close-up, they also had a peek at the legendary office setup of the tech giant with free-flow food, hammocks and games tables for its staff to relax as they work!

Unlike the DevFest which was geared towards the general public, this event was specially put together by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) and Singapore Computer Society (SCS) to benefit the student community, so the Google folks took pains to ensure the programme was inspiring and informative for the students who attended by posing student-centered questions to the panel of speakers and to allow the students to find out what are the job or internship opportunities at this tech giant.

The panel of speakers consisted of developer evangelists from all over the world such as Australia, United States and each of them took turns to answer moderated questions like “How do you generate ideas in Google?”, “What is working in Google like?” and even tricky questions and comments from the floor such as “How do you compete with Facebook”, “Do you know the new Gmail sucks?” etc. No matter which questions, the Google staff handled them with ease and enthusiasm, and the audience were equally hyped up and inspired by their creative and often humorous answers.

Many students took the opportunity to network with these professionals, to take photos with them and to get their contacts. Of course, with no surprise, added them on Google+!

Visit Dora’s site to gain an insight into the wonderful world of infocomm!