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Google I/O is an annual developer conference held by Google in Mountain View, California. It brings together developers, Google experts, and tech enthusiasts to showcase Google’s latest developer products. I had the honor of attending this year’s Summit, and it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I will never forget. Let me take you through my journey of attending the Summit.

So what does I/O mean? “I/O” stands for input/output, as well as the slogan “Innovation in the Open.”

I was able to attend Google I/O because I’m a Google Developers Group (GDG) Co-Organizer, a community of Google developers with similar interests in technology. At GDG Manama, our goal is to unite developers across the country and share knowledge. I mostly conduct workshops about machine learning to those who are interested.

Since I’m an avid member of GDG, no words could have expressed my excitement as I learned that I was attending Google I/O. I was looking forward to learning more about Google, get an inside look at their latest products, and improve my technical skills.

I spent the first day attending the GDG Annual summit, I got to meet like-minded community leaders from all over the globe. At the event, many technical and soft skilled sessions were held. It was a great bonding experience.

Attending Google I/O has always been a dream of mine, as we’ve spent all of our time learning how to use these technologies without meeting and discussing it with the teams behind them, and I’m very happy that I got the opportunity to meet the minds behind the technologies I’ve been using and teaching with GDG. Throughout my visit, I learned more about the latest Google technologies, what’s new with TensorFlow and a lot of machine learning. I got to meet Jeff Dean who is the head of Google Brain, We talked about AI and the future of Machine learning and how the beginning of the neural networks came about.

I also got to meet the teams behind TensorFlow and Big Query, and we enjoyed talking about the technical aspects of their work and spent time together at the event.

One of the things that impressed me most at the event was “seamless”, a show where a speaker is asked to present a random topic to the Google I/O live audience without any previous knowledge of the topic or the slides.

Some of the Googlers I met suggested I apply to Google, I suggested they come visit Bahrain and they liked the idea. 

Attending Google I/O was an unforgettable experience, and I hope that I will be able to attend more in the upcoming years. In the meantime, I like to keep busy with GDG Manama, where we host events and workshops for those who are interested in tech, coding, cloud, machine learning and more!

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