Tag Archives: GDE

Taking the leap to pursue a passion in Machine Learning with Leigh Johnson #IamaGDE

Welcome to #IamaGDE - a series of spotlights presenting Google Developer Experts (GDEs) from across the globe. Discover their stories, passions, and highlights of their community work.

Leigh Johnson turned her childhood love of Geocities and Neopets into a web development career, and then trained her focus on Machine Learning. Now, she’s a staff software engineer at Slack, a Google Developer Expert in Web and Machine Learning, and founder of Print Nanny, an automated failure detection system and monitoring system for 3D printers.

Meet Leigh Johnson, Google Developer Expert in Web and Machine Learning.

GDE Leigh Johnson

The early days

Leigh Johnson grew up in the Bronx, NY, and got an early start in web development when she became captivated by Geocities and Neopets in elementary school.

“I loved the power of being able to put something online that other people could see, using just HTML and CSS,” she says.

She started college and studied Latin, but it wasn’t the right fit for her, so she dropped out and launched her own business building WordPress sites for small businesses, like local restaurants putting their menus online for the first time or taking orders through a form.

“I was 18, running around a data center trying to rack servers and teaching myself DNS to serve my customer base, which was small business owners,” she says. “I ran my business for five years, until companies like Squarespace and Wix started to edge me out of the market a little bit.”

Leigh went on to chase her dream of working in the video game industry, where she got exposed to low-level C++ programming, graphics engines, and basic statistics, which led her to machine learning.

Image shows GDE Leigh Johnson, smiling at the camera and standing in front of a presentation screen at SFPython

Machine learning

At the video game studio where she worked, Leigh got into Bayesian inference.

“It’s old school machine learning, where you try to predict things based on the probability of previous events,” she explains. “You look at past events and try to predict the probability of future events, and I did this for marketing offers—what’s the likelihood you’d purchase a yellow hat to match your yellow pants?”

In the first month or two of trying email offers, the company made more small dollar sales than they typically made in a year.

“I realized, this is powerful dark magic; I must learn more,” Leigh says.

She continued working for tech startups like Ansible, which was acquired by Red Hat, and Dave.com, doing heavy data lifting.

“Everything about machine learning is powered by being able to manipulate and get data from point A to point B,” she says.

Today, Leigh works on machine learning and infrastructure at Slack and is a Google Developer Expert in machine learning. She also has a side project she runs: Print Nanny.

Image shows circuit board with fan next to image of its schematics

Print Nanny: Monitoring 3D printers

When Leigh got into 3D printing as a hobby during the COVID-19 shutdown, she discovered that 3D printers can be unreliable and lack sophisticated monitoring programs.

“When I assembled my 3D printer myself, I realized that over time, the calibration is going to change,” she says. “It's a very finicky process, and it didn't necessarily guarantee the quality of these traditional large batch manufacturing processes.”

She installed a nanny cam to watch her 3D printer and researched solutions, knowing from her machine learning experience that because 3D printers build a print up layer by layer, there’s no one point of failure—failure happens layer by layer, over time. So she wrote that algorithm.

“I saw an opportunity to take some of the traditional machine intelligence strategies used by large manufacturers to ensure there’s a certain consistency and quality to the things they produce, and I made Print Nanny,” she says. “It uses a Raspberry Pi, a credit card-sized computer that costs $30. You can stick a computer vision model on one and do offline inference, which are basically predictions about what the camera sees. You can make predictions about whether a print will fail, help score calculations, and attenuate the print.”

Leigh used Google Cloud Platform AutoML Vision, Google Cloud Platform IoT Core, TensorFlow Model Garden, and TensorFlow.js to build Print Nanny. Using GCP credits provided by Google, she improved and developed Print Nanny with TensorFlow and Google Cloud Platform products.

When Print Nanny detects that a print is failing, the user receives a notification and can remotely pause or stop the printer.

“Print Nanny is an automated failure detection system and monitoring system for 3D printers, which uses computer vision to detect defects and alert you to potential quality or safety hazards,” Leigh says.

Leigh has hired team members who are interested in machine learning to help her with the technical aspects of Print Nanny. Print Nanny currently has 2100 users signed up for a closed beta, with 200 people actively using the beta version. Of that group, 80% are hobbyists and 20% are small business owners. Print Nanny is 100% open source.

Image shows a collection of 3D-Printed parts

Becoming a GDE

Leigh got involved with the GDE program about four years ago, when she began putting machine learning models on Raspberry Pis and building robots. She began writing tutorials about what she was learning.

“The things I was doing were quite hard: TensorFlow Light, the mobile device of TensorFlow—there was a missing documentation opportunity there, and my target platform, the Raspberry Pi, is a hobbyist platform, so there was a little bit of missing documentation there,” Leigh says. “For a hobbyist who wanted to pick up a Raspberry Pi and do a computer vision project for the first time, there was a missing tutorial there, so I started writing about what I was doing, and the response was tremendous.”

Leigh’s work caught the eye of Google staff research engineer Pete Warden, the technical Lead of the TensorFlow Mobile team, who encouraged her, and she leveraged the GDE program to connect to Google experts on TensorFlow and machine learning. Google provides a machine learning course for developers and supports TensorFlow, in addition to its many AI products.

“I had no knowledge of graph programming or what it meant to adapt the low-level kernel operations that would run on a Raspberry Pi, or compiling software, and I learned all that through the GDE program,” Leigh says. “This program changed my life.”

Image shows 1 man and three women smiling at the camera. Leigh is taking the photo selfie-style

Leigh’s favorite part of the GDE program is going to events like TensorFlow World, which she last attended in 2019, and GDE summits. She hadn’t travelled internationally until she was in her 20’s, so the GDE program has connected her to the international community.

“It’s been life-changing,” she says. “I never would have had access to that many perspectives. It’s changed the way I view the world, my life, and myself. It’s very powerful.”

Leigh smiles at the camera in front of a sign that reads TensorFlow for mobile and edge devices

Leigh’s advice to future developers

Leigh recommends that people find the best environment for themselves and adopt a growth mindset.

“The best advice that I can give is to find your motivation and find the environment where you can be successful,” she says. “Surround yourself with people who are lifelong learners. When you cultivate an environment of learning around you, it's this positive, self-perpetuating process.”

Source: Google Developers Blog

#IamaGDE: Katerina Skroumpelou (Athens, Greece)

The Google Developers Experts program is a global network of highly experienced technology experts, influencers, and thought leaders who actively support developers, companies, and tech communities by speaking at events and publishing content.

Katerina Skroumpelou, who is based in Athens, Greece, is a Senior Software Engineer at Narwhal Technologies, a consulting firm whose product Nx lets developers build multiple full-stack applications and share code among them in the same workspace. She is a Google Developer Expert in Maps and Angular.

Image shows Katerina Skroumpelou looking straight ahead at the camera. She is seated behind a laptop with a red cover covered in stickers

Becoming a Google Maps Platform developer

Skroumpelou has always had a deep love of maps.

“My father used to have old maps books, and I’ve always been obsessed with knowing where I am and having an understanding of my surroundings, so I’ve always liked maps,” she says.

After learning to code in high school, Skroumpelou decided she wanted to be a programmer and spent a year studying computer engineering at the National Technical School of Athens, but she wasn’t excited about it, so she pursued a Master’s in architectural engineering there, instead. Then she earned her master’s degree in spatial analysis at University College London.

“They have a Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis--everything to do with maps, spatial data, and analysis, which combined my love of maps, space, and programming,” she says. “My master’s combined my passions, and I got into programming and maps--we created them with code.”

Skroumpelou returned to Greece after her master’s and took postgraduate courses at the National Technical School of Athens to get a more solid foundation in programming. She landed a job as a web developer at the National Centre for Scientific Research “Demokritos,” which works on European Union-funded security and safety research projects. Her first project was to build a system to help manage a fire department fleet.

“I had to work with maps and annotate on the map where a fire could break out, and how the fleet would be distributed to put it out, so I started working with Google Maps then,” she says. “For another research project on airport security, I imported information into a Google Map of the airport.”

She also learned Angular on the job. Skroumpelou moved on to several software engineering jobs after that and continued to work with Angular and build Google Maps projects in her spare time.

Getting involved in the developer community

Skroumpelou’s first foray into the Google developer community began when she was learning Angular for her job at the research center and watching conference talks on Angular online.

“I thought, hey, I can do that too, and I started thinking about how to get involved,” she says. “I reached out to the Angular Connect London conference, and my talk was accepted. It wasn’t strictly technical; it was “From Buildings to Software,” describing my journey from architectural engineering to software engineering.”

Since then, Skroumeplou has spoken at Google Developer Groups events, local meetups, and DevFest. She became a GDE in 2018 in Angular, Web Technologies, and Google Maps Platform and finds it incentivizes her to use Google tools for new projects.

“Apart from the feeling that you’re giving back to the community, you gain things for yourself on a personal level, and it’s an incentive to do even more,” she says.

She appreciated meeting other developers who shared her passion.

“I’m a very social person, and it really feels like we have common ground,” she says.

Image shows Katerina Skroumpelou presenting onstage at a conference. Behind her is a podium and a wall covered in a planetary theme

Favorite Google Maps Platform features

Skroumpelo’s favorite Google Maps Platform features are Cloud-based Maps styling, the drawing library, and the drawing manager.

“I used the drawing library a lot when I was working at the research institute, drawing things on the map,” she says. “Being able to export the data as JSON and import it again is cool.”

She used the styling feature while building a friend’s website and styled a map to go with the brand colors.

“It looks neat to have your brand colors on the map,” she says. “You can remove things from the map and add them back, add geometries, points, and other things, and draw it as you want.”

She speaks highly of Google Maps Platform’s out-of-the-box interactive features for users, like the JS repository, which has examples developers can clone, or they can use NPM to generate a new Map application.”

“It makes building a map or using it much easier,” she says, adding, “The Google Maps Platform docs are very good and detailed.”

Image shows a map of London illustrating loneliness in people over the age of 65

Future plans

Skroumpelou plans to stay with Narwhal Technologies for the long term and continue to work with Google Maps Platform as much as possible.

“I really like the company I’m working for, so I hope I stay at this company and progress up,” she says.

Image shows Katerina Skroumpelou looking off-camera with a smile. She is standing behind a podium with a laptop with a red cover covered in stickers

Follow Katerina on Twitter at @psybercity | Check out Katerina’s projects on GitHub

For more information on Google Maps Platform, visit our website or learn more about our GDE program.

Source: Google Developers Blog

Machine Learning Communities: Q3 ‘21 highlights and achievements

Posted by HyeJung Lee, DevRel Community Manager and Soonson Kwon, DevRel Program Manager

Let’s explore highlights and achievements of vast Google Machine Learning communities by region for the last quarter. Activities of experts (GDE, professional individuals), communities (TFUG, TensorFlow user groups), students (GDSC, student clubs), and developers groups (GDG) are presented here.

Key highlights

Image shows a banner for 30 days of ML with Kaggle

30 days of ML with Kaggle is designed to help beginners study ML using Kaggle Learn courses as well as a competition specifically for the participants of this program. Collaborated with the Kaggle team so that +30 the ML GDEs and TFUG organizers participated as volunteers as online mentors as well as speakers for this initiative.

Total 16 of the GDE/GDSC/TFUGs run community organized programs by referring to the shared community organize guide. Houston TensorFlow & Applied AI/ML placed 6th out of 7573 teams — the only Americans in the Top 10 in the competition. And TFUG Santiago (Chile) organizers participated as well and they are number 17 on the public leaderboard.

Asia Pacific

Image shows Google Cloud and Coca-Cola logos

GDE Minori MATSUDA (Japan)’s project on Coca-Cola Bottlers Japan was published on Google Cloud Japan Blog covering creating an ML pipeline to deploy into real business within 2 months by using Vertex AI. This is also published on GCP blog in English.

GDE Chansung Park (Korea) and Sayak Paul (India) published many articles on GCP Blog. First, “Image search with natural language queries” explained how to build a simple image parser from natural language inputs using OpenAI's CLIP model. From this second “Model training as a CI/CD system: (Part I, Part II)” post, you can learn more about why having a resilient CI/CD system for your ML application is crucial for success. Last, “Dual deployments on Vertex AI” talks about end-to-end workflow using Vertex AI, TFX and Kubeflow.

In China, GDE Junpeng Ye used TensorFlow 2.x to significantly reduce the codebase (15k → 2k) on WeChat Finder which is a TikTok alternative in WeChat. GDE Dan lee wrote an article on Understanding TensorFlow Series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3-1, Part 3-2, Part 4

GDE Ngoc Ba from Vietnam has contributed AI Papers Reading and Coding series implementing ML/DL papers in TensorFlow and creates slides/videos every two weeks. (videos: Vit Transformer, MLP-Mixer and Transformer)

A beginner friendly codelabs (Get started with audio classification ,Go further with audio classification) by GDSC Sookmyung (Korea) learning to customize pre-trained audio classification models to your needs and deploy them to your apps, using TFlite Model Maker.

Cover image for Mat Kelcey's talk on JAX at the PyConAU event

GDE Matthew Kelcey from Australia gave a talk on JAX at PyConAU event. Mat gave an overview to fundamentals of JAX and an intro to some of the libraries being developed on top.

Image shows overview for the released PerceiverIO code

In Singapore, TFUG Singapore dived back into some of the latest papers, techniques, and fields of research that are delivering state-of-the-art results in a number of fields. GDE Martin Andrews included a brief code walkthrough for the released PerceiverIO code at perceiver- highlighting what JAX looks like, how Haiku relates to Sonnet, but also the data loading stuff which is done via tf.data.

Machine Learning Experimentation with TensorBoard book cover

GDE Imran us Salam Mian from Pakistan published a book "Machine Learning Experimentation with TensorBoard".

India

GDE Aakash Nain has published the TF-JAX tutorial series from Part 4 to Part 8. Part 4 gives a brief introduction about JAX (What/Why), and DeviceArray. Part 5 covers why pure functions are good and why JAX prefers them. Part 6 focuses on Pseudo Random Number Generation (PRNG) in Numpy and JAX. Part 7 focuses on Just In Time Compilation (JIT) in JAX. And Part 8 covers vmap and pmap.

Image of Bhavesh's Google Cloud certificate

GDE Bhavesh Bhatt published a video about his experience on the Google Cloud Professional Data Engineer certification exam.

Image shows phase 1 and 2 of the Climate Change project using Vertex AI

Climate Change project using Vertex AI by ML GDE Sayak Paul and Siddha Ganju (NVIDIA). They published a paper (Flood Segmentation on Sentinel-1 SAR Imagery with Semi-Supervised Learning) and open-sourced the project with regard to NASA Impact's ETCI competition. This project made four NeurIPS workshops AI for Science: Mind the Gaps, Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning, Women in ML, and Machine Learning and the Physical Sciences. And they finished as the first runners-up (see Test Phase 2).

Image shows example of handwriting recognition tutorial

Tutorial on handwriting recognition was contributed to Keras example by GDE Sayak Paul and Aakash Kumar Nain.

Graph regularization for image classification using synthesized graphs by GDE Sayak Pau was added to the official examples in the Neural Structured Learning in TensorFlow.

GDE Sayak Paul and Soumik Rakshit shared a new NLP dataset for multi-label text classification. The dataset consists of paper titles, abstracts, and term categories scraped from arXiv.

North America

Banner image shows students participating in Google Summer of Code

During the GSoC (Google Summer of Code), some GDEs mentored or co-mentored students. GDE Margaret Maynard-Reid (USA) mentored TF-GAN, Model Garden, TF Hub and TFLite products. You can get some of her experience and tips from the GDE Blog. And you can find GDE Sayak Paul (India) and Googler Morgan Roff’s GSoC experience in (co-)mentoring TensorFlow and TF Hub as well.

A beginner friendly workshop on TensorFlow with ML GDE Henry Ruiz (USA) was hosted by GDSC Texas A&M University (USA) for the students.

Screenshot from Youtube video on how transformers work

Youtube video Self-Attention Explained: How do Transformers work? by GDE Tanmay Bakshi from Canada explained how you can build a Transformer encoder-based neural network to classify code into 8 different programming languages using TPU, Colab with Keras.

Europe

GDG / GDSC Turkey hosted AI Summer Camp in cooperation with Global AI Hub. 7100 participants learned about ML, TensorFlow, CV and NLP.

Screenshot from slide presentation titled Why Jax?

TechTalk Speech Processing with Deep Learning and JAX/Trax by GDE Sergii Khomenko (Germany) and M. Yusuf Sarıgöz (Turkey). They reviewed technologies such as Jax, TensorFlow, Trax, and others that can help boost our research in speech processing.

South/Central America

Image shows Custom object detection in the browser using TensorFlow.js

On the other side of the world, in Brazil, GDE Hugo Zanini Gomes wrote an article about “Custom object detection in the browser using TensorFlow.js” using the TensorFlow 2 Object Detection API and Colab was posted on the TensorFlow blog.

Screenshot from a talk about Real-time semantic segmentation in the browser - Made with TensorFlow.js

And Hugo gave a talk about Real-time semantic segmentation in the browser - Made with TensorFlow.js covered using SavedModels in an efficient way in JavaScript directly enabling you to get the reach and scale of the web for your new research.

Data Pipelines for ML was talked about by GDE Nathaly Alarcon Torrico from Bolivia explained all the phases involved in the creation of ML and Data Science products, starting with the data collection, transformation, storage and Product creation of ML models.

Screensho from TechTalk “Machine Learning Competitivo: Top 1% en Kaggle (Video)

TechTalk “Machine Learning Competitivo: Top 1% en Kaggle (Video)“ was hosted by TFUG Santiago (Chile). In this talk the speaker gave a tour of the steps to follow to generate a model capable of being in the top 1% of the Kaggle Leaderboard. The focus was on showing the libraries and“ tricks ”that are used to be able to test many ideas quickly both in implementation and in execution and how to use them in productive environments.

MENA

Screenshot from workshop about Recurrent Neural Networks

GDE Ruqiya Bin Safi (Saudi Arabia) had a workshop about Recurrent Neural Networks : part 1 (Github / Slide) at the GDG Mena. And Ruqiya gave a talk about Recurrent Neural Networks: part 2 at the GDG Cloud Saudi (Saudi Arabia).

AI Training with Kaggle by GDSC Islamic University of Gaza from Palestine. It is a two month training covering Data Processing, Image Processing and NLP with Kaggle.

Sub-Saharan Africa

TFUG Ibadan had two TensorFlow events : Basic Sentiment analysis with Tensorflow and Introduction to Recommenders Systems with TensorFlow”.

Image of Yannick Serge Obam Akou's TensorFlow Certificate

Article covered some tips to study, prepare and pass the TensorFlow developer exam in French by ML GDE Yannick Serge Obam Akou (Cameroon).

Source: Google Developers Blog

#IamaGDE: Martin Kleppe

#IamaGDE series presents: Google Maps Platform

Image shows Martin Kleppe looking straight ahead at the camera. He is standing against a wooden wall

Martin Kleppe is a co-founder of Ubilabs, a Google Cloud partner since 2012. He is the head of development, responsible for R&D and technical strategy. He talks with customers to understand their challenges and which location technologies will best serve them. He also works with partners like Google to determine the best ways to combine the latest technologies.

Ubilabs – a data and location technology consultancy specializing in product and software development, visualization, implementation, and data management – built the official feature tour and travel app demos for Google Maps Platform at Google I/O 2021.

“We worked with the latest Google Maps Platform APIs to create demos that showcase the combined features,” he says.

Ubilabs also works closely with the Google Earth team, developing content and UI components for its storytelling platform. In addition, they are in close contact with the Google Maps Platform team, giving feedback on the latest products and features before they’re released.

Image shows Martin Kleppe leaning down to look at his computer. He appears to be onstage at an event giving a presentation

Kleppe’s background is in design and coding web applications. At Bauhaus University, Kleppe was in the Media Art and Design program, where he learned the principle of simplicity in design, with a focus on what users want. Students’ projects combined technology and art, and while programming courses weren’t required, students were expected to explain their thinking. Kleppe worked on live blogging platforms using maps and mobile phones, even before popular maps APIs and iPhones came out.

“I was always focused on interactive maps,” Kleppe says. “Before Google Maps, I used NASA satellite imagery and Japanese cell phones with access to the user’s location. That’s how I got into programming and into maps.”

After university, he decided to start a company.

“When the Google Maps API came out, I thought it was a perfect time to make a business out of it,” he said. “We started with a few friends, and then the company took off.”

Kleppe keeps his focus on the value of maps to users: Maps connect virtual users on computer screens to the real world, providing a connection between humans and data, and they provide context around a location.

“Maps, especially Google Maps, make it easy for users to get access to information”, says Kleppe. “With the Google Maps API, it was super easy to put things on a map.”

Image shows Martin Kleppe standing alone onstage. His computer is on a podium in front of him and a large screen is up on the wall behind him.

Getting involved in the developer community

Two different events got Kleppe involved in the developer community. In Hamburg, where he lives, he belonged to a small local JavaScript user group and gave frequent talks that led to group discussions about the Google Maps API and the usability aspects of the Google API. Ubilabs was also invited to talk about Google Maps at a Google technical event. The Google office in Hamburg held different meetups, and Kleppe found himself giving 12 talks a year and organizing conferences with tracks on topics including JavaScript and Google Maps.

When Kleppe’s first child was born, he cut down on his travel and poured his energy into his burgeoning relationships with developer advocates and teams. Around the same time, Kleppe became a Google Developer Expert (GDE).

“I wanted to become a GDE because I’m always eager to share Ubilabs’ latest use of Google technologies and inspire people with showcases of our work, pushing the limit of what’s possible,” Kleppe says. “As a GDE, you’re closer to the development and what’s happening at Google.”

GDEs get previews of APIs, know the people who are working on projects at Google, and give feedback.

“It is very interesting and important for us as a company to be prepared and to know what clients will be able to use in the future,” he says. “And it’s important for me, as well, because I always want to learn the latest things and be on top of tech trends.”

Kleppe enjoys interacting with the other Google Maps Platform GDEs, who live all over the world.

“They are teachers at universities, self-employed developers who work on small apps, and full-time speakers and educators,” Kleppe says. “That’s valuable to me because I work with clients, and I have my own views, but seeing how other people are working on the same thing from other perspectives helps me understand why different aspects of APIs exist.”

These days, Kleppe primarily works with the members of the Google Maps Platform, Google Earth, and Google Cloud product teams who develop new APIs, to provide his expert feedback.

“We work with a lot of different clients and understand what developers, clients, and users need and can pass useful feedback,” he says. “I think there is value to the community in having us test and review the new APIs. We think about new ways to use them, and if we find errors, we can help the Google Maps Platform team address these issues before the APIs are released to the public.”

In 2020, Kleppe found himself even more connected with the Google team when Ubilabs was selected to build the official Google Maps Platform demos for Google I/O 2021, featuring the new WebGL-powered features that are currently in beta release.

Image shows Martin Kleppe onstage behind his podium and laptop. His name is projected onto the screen behind him

Favorite Maps features and current projects

“WebGL is a different way of rendering maps,” says Kleppe. “The underlying technology has huge potential. It uses GPU-accelerated computing, where you use the graphics card in your machine to render 3D buildings and place 3D objects in space. Before this technology was available, your data was an additional layer that covered the map. Now, you have control over how the data is visually merged with the existing map. This will provide the user an immersive experience, like looking at a view of a city.”

Kleppe notes that the Google Maps APIs used to be limited to about a thousand objects, but now it can handle millions of moving points on a map. For him, being able to visualize and analyze large amounts of data is useful to Ubilabs because the company focuses on data visualization and analysis.

“You can visualize, animate, and draw data on the map,” he says. “You can analyze real-time information on maps.”

Kleppe says the best and most interesting feature of the Google Maps Platform APIs is the ability to combine so many data sources – the base map with streets, a layer to draw business info, an extra API to calculate directions, and the ability to draw one’s own information on top of all that.

“You’re not limited to the set of data in the API,” he says. “You’re always free to merge your own data into an abstract view of the world.”

Ubilabs put 3D features on their wish list years ago.

“The 3D feature is the most awaited feature for us,” he says. “Nine years later, it’s finally becoming a reality, so I’m super excited.”

Image shows Martin Kleppe presenting onstage. A large projector screen displays code behind him

Future plans

In his role at Ubilabs, Kleppe is sharpening the company’s strategic goals and adding focus on the field of data analytics with location aspects.

“We can work with clients and enable them to gain insights from their data,” he says. Every dataset has a connection to something in the real world, and if you use that information, you can make decisions about your business.”

His GDE role has allowed Kleppe to try Google Cloud’s data-specific products.

“We combine the visualization power of maps with the power of data analytics in Google Cloud and stream massive amounts of highly dynamic location data; for example, to track ships or analyze movements of assets,” Kleppe says. “We built a cloud team with a clear focus on data analytics on GCP the past three years, to look into how to preprocess data in the cloud, and we see a lot of potential.”

Follow Martin on Twitter at @aemkei | Read more about Ubilabs | Check out Martin’s experiments.

For more information on Google Maps Platform, visit our website or learn more about our GDE program.

Source: Google Developers Blog

#IamaGDE: Diana Rodríguez Manrique

#IamaGDE series presents: Google Maps Platform

Welcome to #IamaGDE - a series of spotlights presenting Google Developer Experts (GDEs) from across the globe. Discover their stories, passions, and highlights of their community work.

Today, meet Diana Rodríguez— Maps, Web, Cloud, and Firebase GDE.

Google Developer Expert, Diana Rodríguez

Diana Rodríguez’s 20 years in the tech industry have been focused on community and making accessible content. She is a full-stack developer with experience in backend infrastructure, automation, and a passion for Python. A self-taught programmer, Diana also learned programming skills from attending meetups and being an active member of her local developer community. She is the first female Venezuelan GDE.

“I put a lot of myself into public speaking, workshops, and articles,” says Diana. “I want to make everything I do as open and transparent as possible.”

Diana’s first foray into working with Google Maps was in 2016, when she built an app that helped record institutional violence against women in Argentina. As a freelance developer, she uses the Google Maps Platform for her delivery services clients.

“I have plenty of clients who need not only location tracking for their delivery fleet, but also to provide specific routes,” says Diana.

“The level of interaction that’s been added to Maps has made it easier for me as a developer to work with direct clients,” says Diana, who uses the Plus Codes feature to help delivery drivers find precise locations on a map. “I’m a heavy user of plus codes. They give people in remote areas and underserved communities the chance to have location services, including emergency and delivery services.”

Getting involved in the developer community

Diana first became involved in the developer community 20 years ago, in 1999, beginning with a university user group. She attended her first Devfest in Bangkok in 2010 and has worked in multiple developer communities since then. She was a co-organizer of GDG Triangle and is now an organizer of GDG Durham in North Carolina. In 2020, she gave virtual talks to global audiences.

“It’s been great to get to know other communities and reach the far corners of the Earth,” she says.

Favorite Google Maps Platform features and current projects

Diana is excited about the Places API and the Maps team’s continuous improvements. She says the Maps team keeps the GDEs up to date on all the latest news and takes their feedback very seriously.

“Shoutout to Claire, Alex, and Angela, who are in direct contact with us, and everyone who works with them; they have been amazing,” she says. “I look forward to showcasing more upcoming changes. What comes next will be mind-blowing, immersing people into location in a different way that is more interactive.”

Of the new features released in June 2020, which include Cloud-based maps styling and Local Context, Diana says, “Having the freedom to customize the experience a lot more is amazing.”

As a Maps GDE in 2021, Diana plans to continue working on open source tech projects that benefit the greater good, like her recently completed app for Diabetes users, ScoutX, which notifies emergency contacts when a Diabetic person’s blood glucose values are too high or too low, in case they need immediate help.

She envisions an app that expands connectivity and geolocation tracking for hikers in remote areas, using LoRaWan technologies that can withstand harsh temperatures and conditions.

“Imagine you go to Yellowstone and get lost, with no GPS signal or phone signal, but there’s a tracking device connected to a LoRaWan network sending your location,” Diana says. “It’s much easier for rescue services to find you. Rack Wireless is working on providing satellite access, as well, and having precise latitude and longitude makes mapping simple.”

In the future, Diana sees herself managing a team that makes groundbreaking discoveries and puts technologies to use to help other people.

Follow Diana on Twitter at @cotufa82

Check out Diana’s projects on GitHub

For more information on Google Maps Platform, visit our website.

For more information on Google Developer Experts, visit our website.

Source: Google Developers Blog

#IamaGDE: Diana Rodríguez Manrique

#IamaGDE series presents: Google Maps Platform

Welcome to #IamaGDE - a series of spotlights presenting Google Developer Experts (GDEs) from across the globe. Discover their stories, passions, and highlights of their community work.

Today, meet Diana Rodríguez— Maps, Web, Cloud, and Firebase GDE.

Google Developer Expert, Diana Rodríguez

“I put a lot of myself into public speaking, workshops, and articles,” says Diana. “I want to make everything I do as open and transparent as possible.”

“I have plenty of clients who need not only location tracking for their delivery fleet, but also to provide specific routes,” says Diana.

Getting involved in the developer community

“It’s been great to get to know other communities and reach the far corners of the Earth,” she says.

Favorite Google Maps Platform features and current projects

Diana is excited about the Places API and the Maps team’s continuous improvements. She says the Maps team keeps the GDEs up to date on all the latest news and takes their feedback very seriously.

Of the new features released in June 2020, which include Cloud-based maps styling and Local Context, Diana says, “Having the freedom to customize the experience a lot more is amazing.”

She envisions an app that expands connectivity and geolocation tracking for hikers in remote areas, using LoRaWan technologies that can withstand harsh temperatures and conditions.

In the future, Diana sees herself managing a team that makes groundbreaking discoveries and puts technologies to use to help other people.

Follow Diana on Twitter at @cotufa82

Check out Diana’s projects on GitHub

For more information on Google Maps Platform, visit our website.

For more information on Google Developer Experts, visit our website.

Source: Google Developers Blog

#IamaGDE: Homing Tam

#IamaGDE series presents: Google Maps

Welcome to #IamaGDE - a series of spotlights presenting Google Developer Experts (GDEs) from across the globe. Discover their stories, passions, and highlights of their community work.

Homing Tam is a product manager at Lalamove, an on-demand logistics company. He started at the company as a product manager focusing on location-based systems, talking with developers and business users to enhance the company’s mapping solutions, before moving into product management. Now, Homing handles corporate solutions; takes care of people who want to integrate with his company’s systems; handles the API side of things to help make integration easier; and provides recommendations for developers and other technical teammates.

Becoming a Maps developer

Homing studied geomatics and computing at university, and his 2009 thesis was based on Google’s API backend. His dissertation focused on using the Google Maps API to perform mapping and overlay. His first full-time job was as a GIS analyst at Esri, the largest private software company in the world. A year and a half later, he became a solutions consultant for a different company, helping customers interested in integrating Google Maps with their software.

Getting involved in the developer community

After Homing got involved in the Google Technology User Group (now known as Google Developer Groups), his boss at the time told him about the Google Developer Experts program. For his interview, Homing presented a product using the Google Maps APIs. When he became a GDE, he gave presentations and talks in the greater China region as a surrogate for the Google Maps Platform team. Homing is currently one of the organizers for GDG Hong Kong, organizing and giving community talks.

Favorite Maps features and current projects

Homing says the Maps Styling Wizard, the precursor to the newer Cloud-based Maps Styling features, is one of his favorite features.

“Cartography, which I studied in college, matters a lot, especially to a simple black and white schematic map, or when matching the theme of a map to a site,” he says. “I like that feature a lot.”

In 2020, Homing gave one talk on Android in the Android 11 Meetup and another talk on Maps at the first-ever virtual Hong Kong Devfest, and he’s ready to do more speaking.

“It had been a while since I gave a talk on maps, and the launch of Cloud-based Maps Styling is so exciting that I feel like it’s time to do some presentations and let the community know more about it. Beyond knowing how to use the API, you need to know how you can make the most of the API.”

Homing notes that this year, in particular, more small business owners need to know how to collect customer addresses, allow customers to place on-demand delivery orders, and update customers.

image from GDG developer community meetup in Hong Kong

In 2021, in addition to giving more talks, Homing hopes to work with the GDG organizers in Hong Kong to plan a hackathon or otherwise teach community members more about the new Maps features.

“Can we make an MVP or a really initial stage cycling app to use as a base to explore the new features and use different Google components?’

As his career continues, Homing says he has two priorities: progressing as a product manager and leveraging technology, including maps, to improve lives.

“This year was a year for everyone to become digitally literate,” he says. “With the extra time we spend on technology, we should make good use of technology to make life better.”

For more information on Google Maps Platform, visit our website.

For more information on Google Developer Experts, visit our website.

Source: Google Developers Blog

#IamaGDE: Josue Gutierrez

Posted by Alicja Heisig

#IamaGDE series presents: Google Maps

The Google Developers Experts program is a global network of highly experienced technology experts, influencers, and thought leaders who actively support developers, companies, and tech communities by speaking at events and publishing content.

Meet Josue Gutierrez — Maps, Web, Identity and Angular Google Developer Expert.

Josue currently works at the German company Boehringer Ingelheim and lives near Frankfurt. Before moving to Germany, Josue was working as a software engineer in Mexico, and before that, he spent almost a year in San Francisco as a senior front-end developer at Sutter Health.

Josue Gutierrez

Josue studied computer science and engineering as an undergraduate and learned algorithms and programming. His first language was C++, and he learned C and Python, but was drawn to web technologies.

“When I saw a web browser for the first time, it stuck with me,” he says, “It was changing in real time as you’re developing. That feeling is really cool. That’s why I went into frontend development.”

Josue has worked on multiple ecommerce projects focused on improving customers’ trade experience. He sees his role as creating something from scratch to help people improve lives.

“These opportunities we have as developers are great — to travel, work for many verticals, and learn many businesses,” he says. “In my previous job, I developed tech-oriented trade tools for research companies, to manipulate strings or formulas. I was on the team involved in writing these kinds of tools, so it was more about the trade experience for doctors.”

Getting involved in the developer community

Josue’s first trip outside Mexico, to San Francisco, exposed him to the many developer communities in the area, and he appreciated the supportive communities of people trying to learn together. Several of the people he met suggested he start his own meetup in Mexico City, to get more involved in Google technologies, so he launched an Angular community there. As he hunted for speakers to come to his Angular meetup, Josue found himself giving talks, too.

Then, the GDG Mexico leader invited Josue to give talks on Google for startups.

“That helped me get involved in the ecosystem,” Josue says. “I met a lot of people, and now many of them are good friends. It’s really exciting because you get connected with people with the same interests as you, and you all learn together.”

“I’m really happy to be part of the Google Maps ecosystem,” Josue says. “It’s super connected, with kind people, and now I know more colleagues in my area, who work for different companies and have different challenges. Seeing how they solve them is a good part of being connected to the product. I try to share my knowledge with other people and exchange points of view.”

Josue says 2020 provided interesting opportunities.

“This year was weird, but we also discovered more tools that are evolving with us, more functionalities in Hangouts and Meetup,” Josue says. “It’s interesting how people are curious to get connected. If I speak from Germany, I get comments from countries like Bolivia and Argentina. We are disconnected but increasing the number of people we engage with.”

He notes that the one missing piece is the face-to-face, spontaneous interactions of in-person workshops, but that there are still positives to video workshops.

“I think as communities, we are always trying to get information to our members, and having videos is also cool for posterity,” he says.

He is starting a Maps developer community in Germany.

“I have colleagues interested in trying to get a community here with a solid foundation,” he says. “We hope we can engage people to get connected in the same place, if all goes well.”

Favorite Maps features and current projects

As a frontend developer, Josue regards Google Maps Platform as an indispensable tool for brands, ecommerce companies, and even trucking companies.

“Once you start learning how to plant coordinates inside a map, how to convert information and utilize it inside a map, it’s easy to implement,” he says.

In 2021, Josue is working on some experiments with Maps, trying to make more real-time actualization, using currently available tools.

“Many of the projects I’ve been working on aren’t connected with ecommerce,” he says. “Many customers want to see products inside a map, like trucking products. I’ve been working in directories, where you can see the places related to categories — like food in Mexico. You can use Google Maps functionalities and extend the diversification of maps and map whatever you want.”

“Submission ID is really cool,” he adds. “You can do it reading the documentation, a key part of the product, with examples, references, and a live demo in the browser.”

Future plans

Josue says his goal going forward is to be as successful as he can at his current role.

“Also, sharing is super important,” he says. “My company encourages developer communities. It’s important to work in a place that matches your interests.”

Follow Josue on Twitter at @eusoj |Check out Josue’s projects on GitHub.

For more information on Google Maps Platform, visit our website or learn more about our GDE program.

Source: Google Developers Blog

Celebrating International Women’s Day with 21 tech trailblazers

Posted by The Google Developers Team

GIF of International Women's Day 2021 header

Today we are celebrating International Women’s Day by highlighting a series of 21 tech trailblazers who are making significant strides in the developer community.

Many of the women we interviewed are directly involved with our educational outreach and inclusivity programs like Google Developer Groups and Women Techmakers while others are Google Developers Experts or Googlers who are doing amazing work around the globe.

While all of the women featured here have unique stories around their journey into tech, a commonality among all of them is the dedication to making the developer community more inclusive for all future generations of women to come.

We are honored to celebrate #IWD2021 with them.

Annyce Davis

Laurel, MD, United States ??

Android and Kotlin GDE

Photo of Annyce Davis

Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.

I work as Director of Engineering at Meetup. I'm currently working on moving our native applications into the future. It's exciting to take a product that I've used for so many years and help transform it into a modern application that millions of users rely on each day.

Tell us about your path into tech.

I think my path was pretty traditional. I've been interested in tech from a young age. I went to a Science and Tech high school and ended up getting my degree in Computer Engineering. But when I started out my career it was a slow start.

My first job out of college was as a Help Desk Technician. I managed to do that for 6 months before I realized that it wasn't for me and I needed to be coding. That's when I moved into Web development. From there, I spent a few years developing web apps and working on APIs. Finally, I found my true passion, Android development. I loved how I could write code that powered the tiny device I carried around in my purse.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?

Grow your professional network early in your career. Spend time getting to know others in the industry. Establish your own "mentor" by reaching out and asking questions of others who are where you want to be. Having a network is invaluable. It exposes you to know opportunities and highlights areas for growth.

Florina Muntenescu

London, United Kingdom ??

Developer Relations Engineer, Android

Photo of Florina Muntenescu

Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.

I’m an engineer in the Android Developer Relations team. I focus on architecture, Jetpack and Kotlin. I give talks, write blog posts and samples and provide feedback on our products.

Recently I worked on architecture guidance in Compose and on #AndroidDevChallenge

Tell us about your path into tech.

When I was 9 years old, my mom took me to computer classes (we didn’t have a computer at home back then) and I just loved it. That’s when I decided I want to “work with computers” when I grow up. I studied computer science in high school and university and in my last year of university, I got hooked on Android.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?

You have something to say—share it with the world! Share your passions and be yourself. People will respond and can tell if you really care about something.

Huyen Tue Dao

Denver, CO, United States ??

Android and Kotlin GDE

Photo of Huyen Tue Dao

Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.

I am a senior Android developer working on the Trello Android app at Atlassian.

Tell us about your path into tech.

In high school, I dreamed of being a journalist. To graduate, we had to take one full credit of "technical classes." Since I wanted to be a journalist, I figured, "Hey, I'll probably be typing a lot. Let me take the typing class." Unfortunately, the typing class was just a half-credit so I needed one more class. Just because some of my friends were taking it, I ended up selecting "Introduction to Programming." That was the happiest happenstance. I fell immediately and deeply in love with programming. I kicked ass and afterward knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I majored in Computer Engineering at the University of Maryland and have never looked back.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?

It can be tough but always ask questions. Ask questions when you need clarification. Ask questions when you don't agree with something. At the start of my career, I was deathly afraid of asking questions; I didn't want to seem incapable, and I didn't want to be "bothersome." Doing this, I missed out on so many opportunities and made things a bit harder on myself. Asking questions because you need clarification just makes sense and is necessary. For sure, sometimes people are not patient, but it's more important for you to get the information you need so you can do your best work. Asking questions because you don't agree with something can be really hard and may not always bring you the results that you want, but one of the biggest skills we have to constantly nurture as developers is critical thinking and the ability to communicate that thinking. Now that I'm a senior developer, I think I am most inspired and energized when other developers ask me great questions, clarifying or critical. It's not easy. It's often scary. It's a skill. But practice it and develop confidence in your right to ask questions.

Diana Rodríguez Manrique

Durham, United States ??

Firebase, Google Cloud, Google Maps Platform, and Web Technologies GDE

Photo of Diana Rodríguez Manrique

Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.

I’m transitioning between roles in developer advocacy. Currently working on many projects being one of them a diabetes monitoring tool with GPS tracking.

Tell us about your path into tech.

I started coding when I was 6 years old in a c64 and ever since then transitioned through different roles and languages being my strengths in infrastructure and Python. I’m a self taught developer with 20+ years experience

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?

Keep moving! Keep going forward. We have paved the way for other women to move forward and we need you!!

Laura Morinigo

London, United Kingdom ??

Firebase GDE

Photo of Laura Morinigo

Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.

I am a Web Developer Advocate for Samsung Research UK, therefore I work for developers. My projects include helping developers and entrepreneurs make better decisions around tech, especially the web, by creating resources and demos, spreading the word about best practices, speaking at events, and contributing to a more diverse tech scene.

Tell us about your path into tech.

I started during my early years and learned how to code during high school. Later on, I decided to study Software Engineering which led me to start working as a developer. At the same time - I was also teaching and getting involved with the tech community, participating in events which guided me to public speaking and creating resources so others can learn from my experience. Thanks to this contribution I became a GDE on Firebase.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?

To my fellow women developers: Work on yourself, in discovering your inner worth and remove a lot of beliefs that society shows you. Surround yourself with people that support you during your journey, find your community, and once you get there, open the door to other women that need guidance.

Rihanna Kedir

Rome, Italy ??

Flutter GDE, Women Techmakers Ambassador, GDG Rome Co-Lead

Photo of Rihanna Kedir

Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.

Currently, I am working as a Software Engineer and I am so excited that a few months ago I joined the UN World Food Programme. Apart from that, I am GDE in web, Flutter and Dart, as well as a Women Techmakers ambassador and GDG organizer.

Tell us about your path into tech.

I ended up in the tech industry just out of curiosity. I always wanted to enroll in a scientific field. I grew up in Ethiopia and back in high-school I had very limited internet access and almost no information about Computer Science. As I graduated, I tried to enroll in the University, unfortunately, my Italian high school Diploma was not accepted in Ethiopian Universities back then.

My family was against me going abroad alone for studying. So I started working as an Accountant. Meanwhile, I took art and fashion design courses and started my own fashion business side by side. Once that I was economically independent I started to feel the urge to follow my dream, so I moved to Rome and started my computer science degree.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?

Always stay passionate and never stop learning. You should always learn technical skills but you should keep in mind that soft skills are also important. Never be discouraged but try to expand your horizons as much as you can. At the same time, you should never compare yourself with others; focus on your own progress. Think about how much you’ve accomplished and where you want to go next. Always believe in yourself and speak up whenever you need to.

Mais Alheraki

Medina, Saudi Arabia ??

Flutter GDE

Photo of Mais Alheraki

Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.

I currently work as a lead developer in a tech startup, building a medical appointments application in Saudi Arabia, called Mawidy, all made with Flutter and Firebase, it helps patients get remote consultations with our doctors through the platform in voice and video. We also use Flutter web to give clinics access to all details of their doctors and provide appointments and services through the app, either remotely or by physical bookings.

We have over 3000 successful appointments, and counting, since we started, and we helped over 2500 patients get free medical consultations during the pandemic.

Tell us about your path into tech.

I was still in elementary school when my passion with computers started, I always knew I wanted to be in tech. My father was a programmer, I learned the basics when I was 14 y.o. After high school, I undoubtedly chose to major in IT, during college, I learned web development alongside UI design and built several small websites. I got to know Flutter & Firebase in a study jam in January 2019 and built my senior year project with them. Then I chose to continue diving deeper into application development, both as a UI designer and a Flutter developer, I released 2 free Flutter apps as personal projects in 2019 and still maintaining them, and got a base of active users.

Meanwhile, I helped in building the Women Techmakers community in Saudi Arabia, as a lead, organizer and speaker. We have helped thousands of women in the MENA region and Saudi Arabia to be more visible, learn more and get broader opportunities.

In the middle of 2020, I found my first job in tech, as a UI/UX designer. After that, within 3 months I got my current job as a Flutter developer.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?

A tip I give to my fellow women developers is: have the courage to create your own opportunities, and never wait for it, build apps no matter how small they are, write tutorials, and teach what you learn.

Katarina Sheremet

Zurich, Switzerland??

Flutter GDE

Photo of Katarina Sheremet

Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.

I am a Google Developer Expert in Flutter and Dart, Women Techmakers Switzerland co-organizer, and Flutter Zürich Meetup co-organizer. I run my own company that is called FutureWare. I consult companies and Start-Ups about Flutter development, architecture, testing, and more. I also work on my own projects. One of the projects is Delern Flashcards. It is a mobile app that helps to learn anything, which is published on Google Play and App Store and has more than 3000 installs. I also organize events about technologies, gives talks, and writes articles about Flutter and Dart.

Tell us about your path into tech.

I started programming when I was 15 years old. My first programming language was Pascal. Since then, I fell in love with programming. I took part in the programming and algorithmic competitions and was also a prize-winner of regional competitions in Belarus.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?

Enjoy what you are doing and be curious. It is very important to have fun and enjoy development. Curiosity will help you to dig deep into details. Knowing details is required to become an expert in your area.

Adriana Fernanda Moya

Bogotá, Colombia ??

Google Cloud GDE

Photo of Adriana Fernanda Moya

Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.

Currently I work in a company that is listed for the NYS, called Globant, my role is Cloud Engineer and from my position I am dedicated to supporting a global entertainment company in cloud architecture and the implementation of large-scale growth strategies for its applications around the world.

Tell us about your path into tech.

I started my career as a software developer where I had many challenges, I suffered from the imposter syndrome, I was also always the only woman on the team. I was fortunate to have a great mentor, who always inspired me to study on my own and thanks to him I was able to meet technology communities in my city, it was a great time in which I had moments of all kinds. After some years of work as a developer I decided to make the decision to change my career path and orient it towards Cloud Computing, I was very excited to be able to translate architecture problems into new opportunities for large-scale improvement, so I did it and I do not regret it.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?

I would advise her not to be afraid to think big, every small step they take will lead them to their goal, do not feel intimidated but always think that they are strong and they are going to achieve it.

Luz Maria Maida Claure

Mexico City, CDMX, Mexico ??

Google Cloud GDE, Women Techmakers Lead and Organizer for GDG Cloud MX

Photo of Luz Maria Maida Claure

Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.

I'm a Software Engineer and right now I'm focused on an Ecommerce project. I take care about the web performance and infrastructure implementation using different Google Cloud Products, also I integrate analytic metrics from GMP to ensure that this measure is displayed in a way that the final customer can understand through different visualization tools.

Tell us about your path into tech.

I decided for this career when I was 7 years old, the first time that I saw a computer was while I was watching a TV show named "Where in the world is Carmen San Diego", from there the interest for the technology grew inside me, so in the college I decide to take programming lessons, with doubts but also with a lot of energy and passion to learn, I discovered my passion for the web development and infrastructure.

After the University I face different challenges, like being part of the only two women working in a company or having the Impostor syndrome while I was doing my activities, at the end, I understand that diversity is important inside the teams and don't give up no matter the circumstances. So with that in mind, I participated as a volunteer in a Women Techmakers event happening in Cochabamba, Bolivia. I'm very grateful for that experience because that allowed me to teach other people some concepts about Computer Science, and I felt awesome to help other women in the same field.

This experience encouraged me to send my first conference proposal to a Tech Conference, this action opened the door to meet more people with the same interests and also to take a look outside my country, I applied and was selected to be part of a Google Partner in Mexico City.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?

Trust in yourself, for me is the most important thing! Even if you don't feel in that way or even in adverse circumstances, you need to be brave to create whatever you want and how far your imagination drives you, teach, share and don't forget to be happy.

Archana Malhotra

Sunnyvale, United States ??

Google Pay, Technical Engineering Manager

Photo of Archana Malhotra

Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.

I’m a technical Engineering Manager leading Google Pay Online Payments

Project. The current project I’m working on is to bring Offers to Autofill! It's about surfacing a user activated offer from the Google Pay app in Autofill. This helps the user identify and select the offer linked FOP (form of payment).

Tell us about your path into tech.

I was fascinated by computers at an early age, I started learning coding in elementary school and pursued my Bachelors and Masters in Computer Science.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?

Carve out time from the busy schedule to add value to yourself. Block time on the calendar to stop, think and review and identify what you want to polish, learn, and apply.

Nalini Sewak

San Francisco, United States ??

Google Pay, Product Solutions Engineer

Photo of Nalini Sewak

Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.

I work as a Product Solutions Engineer in Google Pay. My role is an interesting mix of external and internal engagements which I love! I work directly with our partners (say Doordash or Lyft) to help them integrate with our APIs. These partners allow their users to checkout using Google Pay on their platforms. I also collaborate internally with our business development, product and engineering teams to ensure we can test, launch and support new features and scale existing products and processes so more developers can easily integrate with Google. I'm currently analyzing data to determine where developers drop off in our integration path to improve our offering.

Tell us about your path into tech.

I had a pretty cursory interest in tech during my high school years in India, and wasn’t certain it would be my path. My sister thought it would be a great fit for my skills and really encouraged me to pursue tech. Turns out she was right! I really enjoyed a user research course which motivated me to focus on user journeys in products, I was hooked! I immigrated to the US to get my MS in CS at Santa Cruz. It was incredibly fulfilling to do research and TA for amazing professors and I really thrived amongst the redwood forests. Go Slugs!

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?

Dont be afraid to ask questions or seem stupid, it makes you get stuck longer. Ask the questions, learn from it and you will be better faster! Create a network of people who support you that you can seek advice from, find mentors and sponsors in your career and you will progress more quickly. And be sure to extend the same advice or support to others who need it. Use your voice to bring your opinion into product roadmaps and strategy. After all, tech products need to be just as useful to women; nothing about us without us. We can drive systemic change and once we have critical mass in tech, it can be a green field for the next generation of women.

To stay updated on Google Pay technical updates, and news follow @GooglePayDevs on Twitter.

Rayan AL Zahab

Dubai, UAE ??

Google Workspace Product GDE, GDG Coast Lebanon and Women Techmakers Lebanon

Photo of Rayan AL Zahab

Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.

I am the founder and CEO of BambooGeeks, a startup with the aim to make the MENA region a tech talent hub by training fresh tech talents and startups on market relevant technologies (ML, AppScript,..) and methodologies (Design thinking, agile, devops,..) with a focus on communication skills and the power of the tech community.

I am also a Google Workspace GDE, the first female GDE in the MENA and have been one of the most active GDEs worldwide since 2019.

I am a Women Techmakers ambassador and Google for Startups Accelerator MENA lead mentor and trainer.

Tell us about your path into tech.

Building and creating has always been a passion of mine. Inspired by my father, I wanted to be an electrical engineer, but then grew an interest in computers and decided to go for software engineering as it was more suitable for a woman for my family.

I started working since my second year university and was always fond of the tech ecosystem based on open source and community, made sure to participate in every event and hackathon no matter how far from my city it was.

I started my career in Lebanon in data entry and QA as an intern, then became an application developer and worked for several companies including Delteck and UNICEF innovation Lab before moving to Dubai to join McKinsey & Company as a senior digital consultant. At McKinsey, I was an Agile trainer and product management adviser where we worked with government entities and banks across the Gulf.

In early 2020 I decided to take a leap of faith and start BambooGeeks only a month before the pandemic! Considering we provide in person bootcamps and trainings, we had to pivot. We restructured all our training and materials to be completely online and launched.

In less than a year we have trained over 200 startups on design thinking from all MENA and 800+ individuals on Employability skills, Agile Development and Design thinking with a target audience of DSC leads, GDG members and Women Techmakers Ambassadors.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?

Early in my career I have been told to be realistic and lower my ambitions because being a hijabi woman in Tech imposes limits on what I can achieve in the field. They said look around it isn't possible, you will never find a successful hijabi woman in tech.

And it was true, there wasn't anyone who looked like me, and it was true I got rejected for countless jobs because I'm a woman and a hijabi, and was asked to remove my hijab for other jobs.

But, I never looked at it as a barrier! With every rejection I was grateful for my hijab and for being a women, they acted as my personal "sexism and religious discrimination" sensor which protected me from working in a culture that doesn't fit my values.

There is no ceiling for your dreams! Dream as big as you wish, and you have the right to maintain all your values!

And When you don't find the role model to look up to, be that model for future generations.

In addition, Being a women in tech comes with many challenges, fortunately for us today it also comes with few extra opportunities, Tech companies understood the need of women in the industry and are creating programs and initiatives to support you, such as the Women Techmakers from Google, the TechWomen exchange program from the state friends and many others.

Seek these opportunities! Leverage the community.

Cleo Espiritu

Vancouver, BC, Canada ??

Google Workspace GDE

Photo of Cleo Espiritu

Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.

I'm a Technical Product Manager at Plenty of Fish for the Platform and Payment squads, where we design and build the infrastructure, libraries and backend services that keep our apps running smoothly for our members. Recently we've launched our CRM (Customer Relationship Management) services which expanded our capabilities and significantly reduced our development time to engage and communicate with members through multiple channels.

Tell us about your path into tech.

Going into high school, I randomly chose a computer programming course despite knowing nothing about it at the time. That led to me learning HTML to make websites on my own, as well as a summer research job with the Computing Science department at the University of Alberta. I decided to keep at it, got my degree in Computer Science, started as a developer and was fortunate enough to have the opportunities to experience different roles in software development, such as UI designer and Product Manager.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?

Learn to recognize your strengths and build your confidence around it. Also learn to recognize your weaknesses and gaps, and see those as opportunities to grow and learn.

Alice Keeler

Fresno, United States ??

Google Workspace GDE

Photo of Alice Keeler

Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.

Along with teaching geometry, I create innovative solutions for teacher workflows that save them significant time and/or allow teachers to use workspace more effectively with their students.

Tell us about your path into tech.

I got into tech because as an educator, I am always excited to find new ways to make learning more awesome! Messing around with new tools that can, increase engagement, spark curiosity, foster collaboration, or increase efficiency is always something that I dive into. Over time I found the joy of coding those tools myself, to make them even better.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?

Don’t be afraid to fail often! Failing and making mistakes is where the learning magic happens.

Louise Macfadyen

Portland, United States ??

Design Advocate

Photo of Louise Macfadyen

Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.

I recently joined the Material Design team as a Design Advocate, so a lot of my work involves connecting with the design community and helping designers and developers create beautiful experiences using Material.

I’m currently recording a video series called Material Made which highlights the three winners of the Material Design awards. We just wrapped up an episode which will feature Epsy, who won the award for Material Motion. Their app aims to better the lives of those living with epilepsy, and the episode highlights how they guide users through critical tasks to better their quality of life, like logging triggers, taking medication, and reducing the feeling of isolation. We talk about how they use motion stylistically as a component of their brand expression, while also providing users with a great, meaningful experience.

Each episode dives into the way the experience was brought to life with Material Design, and we also speak to the designers who worked on the projects to hear more about their process. There will be three episodes in total, and they’ll be coming out this year - stay tuned and check out the Material Design YouTube channel here.

Tell us about your path into tech.

I graduated with a degree in English, so I thought I’d go into publishing or journalism. But this was 2012 and none of those jobs existed any more, so I ended up teaching myself how to code Wordpress sites.

I started freelancing for small galleries and studios and eventually realized that I was more drawn to the design side. I sort of pieced together a design education from a number of sources, and made a portfolio. I eventually got my foot in the door at a small shop, and everything went from there.

Working at Google was a long time aspiration, as the initial launch of Material Design guidance showed that orgs were opening the door for people like me, with non-traditional backgrounds, to benefit from their design systems and research. It’s what makes me excited to connect with other designers and developers to support them and give them a voice that previously they hadn’t had.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?

For a long time, I think careers have been perceived in a linear way, as a slow climbing of the stairs up to seniority. My career hasn’t been like that, and I feel like largely the nature of the “career” is changing.

There’s less of a sense of climbing towards that north star. Instead I associate much more with this feeling of being in a forest, observing the abundance around me, tending to my skills and interests and seeing where that path leads. I find it’s important to always have an open mindset. And wear sensible shoes ?

Yasmine Evjen

San Francisco, United States ??

Lead, Material Design Advocacy

Photo of Yasmine Evjen

Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.

I lead the Material Design Advocacy team at Google. We’re a team of designers and developers helping others build beautiful, human-centered experiences with Material Design.

Material is a design system, created by Google and backed by open-source code, that helps teams build high-quality digital experiences. My team helps designers and developers build with our guidelines, code components, and tools through education, resources, and hands-on partner engagements. Some days are spent writing blog posts, creating a talk, or filming for our YouTube channel. Other days are spent creating resources, such as interactive examples and tools to help make it easier to build beautiful UI on Android, the Web, or Flutter. We also work directly with external partners and internal teams across Google to help them implement and gain actionable feedback on how we can improve. And we get paid to tweet.

Tell us about your path into tech.

When I was in college I took a Flash class because I needed to complete a computer science course prerequisite, and my instructor said, “You’re really good at this, have you considered this as a career?” I did some research and learned about web development, which led to me pursuing a career as a front-end web developer, and later evolved into designing apps as a UX designer.

I’ve always been a huge fan of Android, and as an app designer, Material Design has always been a dream of mine to work on. My Google journey started with a podcast which focused on Google and Android. We talked about new products and technology coming out of Google and what we could do with it. Starting the podcast gave me an opportunity to communicate and connect with the community and be able to use my design expertise - that's what landed me in my role as a Design Advocate which later evolved into managing a team of developers and designers advocates.

Material Design is there to help both designers and developers to build beautiful digital experiences, and I look forward to continuing the exploration with my team to learn how we can bridge the gap between design and development.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?

Don’t allow yourself to be limited or solely defined by a job title. Design, development, and other roles in tech are so entwined where you don’t have to be one specific thing in order to be successful. Starting off as a front-end developer, and evolving into a UX designer led me to the question: What exactly is my path? A developer or a designer? While keeping my path open to possibilities, my path has led me to a unique position where I can manage both developers and designers. If you’re leading a team like Material Design Advocacy - both are needed. If I could tell developers one thing, it would be - don't be afraid to get into the design details, and for designers the same - don’t be afraid to code. The more we can work together and demystify our roles, the better experiences we can create because we’ll be less focused on what our role is and more focused on delivering something beautiful.

Lea Truc

Atlanta, United States ??

Women Techmakers Ambassador

Photo of Lea Truc

Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.

I lead Women Meet Tech, a STEM program funded and endorsed by the U.S. Consulate General - Ho Chi Minh City around tech and women empowerment. I’m also a Women Techmaker ambassador with technical knowledge in front-end development, co-leading Google Flutter community in Sydney and a former mentor at Women Developer Academy by Google Developers.

Amidst COVID-19 pandemic, I have builded a pilot GP-Patient Support platform to provide easier access to medical reference info for patients while assisting social-distancing in clinical visits in Australia.

I’m very glad that my works have inspired young professionals in multiple tech seminars, hackathons and international collaborations in Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, the US and Vietnam.

Tell us about your path into tech.

A college professor in Boston turned tech advocate. I once was told I would never be successful if pursuing my path in tech. I proved that wrong. That’s why I want to inspire others to have the courage to overcome social pressures, fears, obstacles to pursue their own path. I want to empower many other women and minorities through technology and education. I’m a strong believer that a person’s capability is not based on the gender one was born with.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?

'What I cannot create, I do not understand.' - Richard P. Feynman.

Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. Just try, fail a lot, and be persistent. That’s how you can understand things at the core. That’s how you can grow.

Margaret Maynard-Reid

Seattle, United States ??

ML GDE, GDG Seattle Lead, Women Techmakers Seattle

Photo of Margaret Maynard-Reid

Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.

I’m an ML research engineer and avid artist - check out my artwork made with traditional, digital and AI tools. One community project that I’m currently working on is to help launch the ML GDE (Google Developer Experts) YouTube channel with my fellow ML GDEs. Be sure to subscribe to our channel which will be launched soon with unique content created by ML GDEs worldwide.

Tell us about your path into tech.

Most of my career has actually been in the tech world. Starting from a business background with an MBA, my journey goes from managing software development releases, to Android application development, to ML research and engineering, to becoming an artist. Instead of a linear path, I have shifted my career a few times in pursuit of my various passions.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?

My one tip for developers in general is - it’s never too late to learn anything! Put your mind into it and you can become an expert at it one day. Read a book, take an online class, learn from your colleagues and friends. Sharing your knowledge is also a great way to learn: give a talk, write a blog post or contribute to an open-source project. Never be afraid of being a beginner, keep learning, and you may discover a talent you never realize that you have.

Bianca Ximenes

Recife, Brazil ??

Machine Learning GDE

Photo of Bianca Ximenes

Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.

I am a Product Manager in Artificial Intelligence at Gupy, the biggest HRTech in Brazil.

Right now, the project that excites me the most is the integration of a Deep Learning model for Named Entity Recognition (NER) to our Machine Learning stack, which will allow us to help companies write higher quality job descriptions focused on the candidate, and help candidates upskill by suggesting related content to the expertise they have and positions they want to achieve.

Tell us about your path into tech.

I started out in Economics, where I got a solid formation in Mathematics, Statistics and analytical thinking. I loved all things Economics, but felt that job opportunities didn't really demand a lot of my skills, and as a person I wasn't as valued in companies where I worked, compared to my friends who were in Computer Science.

I started working in small startups and the idea of Agile, continuous improvement, and development projects really resonated with me. I liked having a finger in every pie, because I am quite curious and like understanding (and explaining) how things work. So I decided to do an MSc in Computer Science to acquire some technical skill and understanding. After that, I worked managing projects that ranged from mobile development to augmented reality, until I finally realized I really liked making Products more than Projects, and since I had an extensive background building products and managing startups, I became a Google Developer Expert in Product Strategy. A little while later, I started my PhD in Computer Science, also working for a startup where I saw up close the challenges and excitement of AI projects in real life, as well as the dilemmas of building AI applications that made decisions for thousands of people.

Working with Machine Learning allowed me to use the mathematical and statistical foundation I had, and I started researching Ethical Machine Learning, eventually migrating to the Google Developer Expert program in Machine Learning and joining Gupy and a specialized Product Manager focused on AI - something I want to do for life. That way, I was able to bring together all of my career passions: Product, AI, research, and being an active part of the developer community.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?

In Tech, no-one's path is like any other. We have more liberty to change and innovate, and everything can have an impact really quickly. So always be mindful of what you're doing or your responsibility, and try as best you can not to compare what you do and your path with others'. Tech is everywhere, we do so many different and exciting things! Find a way to deliver value that works for real people and make it your own. Be proud of your history (:

Sharmistha Chatterjee

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India ??

Machine Learning GDE

Photo of Sharmistha Chatterjee

Tell us about your current role and a project you’re working on.

I work as a Senior Manager of Data Sciences in Publicis Sapient. I am currently working on different algorithms for Ethical AI solutions, one of which is Federated learning.

Tell us about your path into tech.

Starting from my school days, I have always been curious about Programming Languages like Basic and Logo, and used to try out new kinds of stuff. In those days (25 years back) the computer was just getting introduced in very few schools. Even during my high school and college days, I tried to build my own projects like A User Interface for a Retail System, an Interactive Quiz Simulator, and so on. I remember the days when there were no python libraries and instead I had to code libraries using C/C++ for my thesis.

The curiosity to solve unsolved problems, and the desire to wait and see new results coming up, have always kept me going and motivated to transfer this characteristic to other women. Hence blogging (my own platform techairesearch.com), and giving talks in meetups or conferences energizes me and helps me to learn and evolve in the process.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers?

Always ask why and be bold to question, and showcase your talent by giving talks, participating in hackathons, open-source projects.

I think it's time to give back to the community by mentoring more young women who can get more visibility and become leaders in STEM. As women's representation in STEM is lacking, this is a great avenue to encourage young talented women to showcase their skills in different technologies (Android, Web, Flutter, AI, Cloud, etc) and become experts and gain visibility in the tech community. Once they become more active in open source contributions, giving talks, and blogging, other career paths for progression would automatically open, which would enable them to become recognized leaders in their domain. Since Google is already providing an avenue to young women to seek mentorship and become experts, it's time that women feel highly encouraged and come forward and make the best use of it.

Interested in becoming a part of the Google developer community? Here’s more information on the programs we’ve shared above:

The Google Developer Groups program gives developers the opportunity to meet local developers with similar interests in technology. A virtual or in-person GDG meetup event includes talks on a wide range of technical topics where you can learn new skills through hands-on workshops. The community prides itself on being an inclusive environment where everyone and anyone interested in tech - from beginner developers to experienced professionals - all are welcome to join.

Join a Google Developer Group chapter near you here.

Apply to become a Google Developer Group organizer here.

Follow Google Developer Groups on Twitter here.

Subscribe to the Google Developer Groups YouTube channel here.

Founded in 2014, Google’s Women Techmakers is dedicated to helping all women thrive in tech through community, visibility and resources. With a member base of over 100,000 women developers, we’re working with communities across the globe to build a world where all women can thrive in tech. Our community consists of over 1000 Women Techmakers Ambassadors across over 100 countries. These Ambassadors are the north star of our movement. They are leaders committed to their communities, using Women Techmaker resources to build space and visibility so that all women could thrive in tech.

Become a Women Techmakers Member here.

Follow Women Techmakers on Twitter here.

The Google Developers Experts program is a global network of highly experienced technology experts, influencers and thought leaders who actively support developers, companies and tech communities by speaking at events, publishing content, and building innovative apps. Experts actively contribute to and support the developer and startup ecosystems around the world, helping them build and launch highly innovative apps. More than 800 Experts represent 18+ Google technologies around the world!

Learn more about the Google Developers Experts program and its eligibility criteria here.

Follow Google Developers Experts on Twitter here and LinkedIn here.

Source: Google Developers Blog

Celebrating International Women’s Day with 20 tech trailblazers

Posted by Google Developer Studio

Today is International Women’s Day and we’re kicking off the celebration with a profile series featuring 20 tech trailblazers who have made significant contributions to the developer community. Many of the women we spoke to work directly with some of our educational outreach and inclusivity programs like Google Developer Groups and Women Techmakers, while others are Google Developers Experts or Googlers who do amazing work around the globe. One thing they all have in common is a dedication to making the developer community more approachable and inclusive for generations of women to come.

Read the interviews below to learn more about these amazing individuals whose passion and drive contribute to a better workplace and world.

We’re proud to celebrate #IWD2020 with them.

Garima Jain

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India ??

Android GDE
Photo of Garima Jain

Photo of Garima Jain

Tell us about something you’re working on?

I am currently working on learning OpenGL for my next task on Over’s Android application, i.e. porting image filters to use OpenGL. Last time, when I implemented filters, I used RenderScript with Lookup Tables (LUTs), which was an educational journey in itself. The team recently migrated to use OpenGL for some other features on the application and I am excited to learn and apply it to port image filters. This could then be extended and will act as a building block for video filters in the future. Personally, I am exploring Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) as I believe multi-platform is the future and looks quite promising for it.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers or developers in general?

My suggestion to fellow developers is to believe in yourself and focus on positive things. The world is full of both enablers and disablers, do what is best for you :)

Do you have any special interests, hobbies, or other fun facts you’d like to share?

I love watching TV shows, dancing, and playing basketball. Recently, I have a new hobby of creating and sharing videos on TikTok :P

Moyinoluwa Adeyemi

Lagos, Nigeria ??

Android GDE, Women Techmakers Ambassador, GDG Lagos Photo of Moyinoluwa Adeyemi

Photo of Moyinoluwa Adeyemi

Tell us about something you’re working on?

I’m currently preparing to give two talks. The first one will introduce two programming concepts to beginner Android developers. I’ll also teach them how to build a portfolio which will come in handy when they are job hunting. The other is a Keynote Address for a developer festival focusing on my journey to becoming a GDE.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers or developers in general?

Keep learning. That’s probably the only task that’ll remain constant throughout the span of one’s career.

Do you have any special interests, hobbies, or other fun facts you’d like to share?

Ich lerne Deutsch and I run marathons for fun.

Amanda (Chibi) Cavallaro

London, United Kingdom ??

Assistant GDE, Women Techmakers Ambassador, GDG London

Photo of Amanda (Chibi) Cavallaro

Tell us about something you’re working on?

I’ve been currently working on presentations about Actions on Google, Firebase and web technologies to give presentations and share the knowledge.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers or developers in general?

If you’re a beginner in tech, one thing I wish I knew before is how to study, model and understand the problem and then try to code it - ask ‘why?’ and ‘what if?’. To practice as much as I could. Not just read books and other resources but to challenge myself into practising more.

Do you have any special interests, hobbies, or other fun facts you’d like to share?

I’m an aikidoka and practicing martial arts helps me both physically and mentally. I’ve also created an action about aikido you can check it out here.

Eliza Camberogiannis

Utrecht, Netherlands ??

Assistant GDE, Women Techmakers Ambassador, GDG Netherlands Photo of Eliza Camber

Photo of Eliza Camber

Tell us about something you’re working on?

As I work for a creative tech agency, most of the apps and tools we develop are under NDA, so, unfortunately, I can't share something specific. I am lucky enough to work somewhere I have the chance to play with all the different Android and AoG SDKs, and not only! From pilots to doctors and from athletes to anyone that takes a bus, seeing something you've built making someone's life easier or better is priceless.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers or developers in general?

To ask themselves every day: if not you, then who? Sometimes we assume that someone that "knows better" will reply to that Stackoverflow question; that someone else can give that talk because "I don't have something interesting to say"; or that someone else will raise their voice about the lack of inclusion in the tech world because "what do I know about this"? And at the end, we end up with dozens of unanswered questions, or only a handful of people talking about diversity, because everyone made the same assumption.

Do you have any special interests, hobbies, or other fun facts you’d like to share?

I'm a person with 100 hobbies! I get easily bored so I try to learn and do as many things as possible. One day I'll be learning how to knit, the next how to box, the other one how to decorate cakes and it goes on and on. The only two hobbies that I have since I can remember myself are books and puzzles.

Evelyn Mendes

Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil ??

Firebase GDE, Women Techmakers Ambassador Photo of Evelyn Mendes

Photo of Evelyn Mendes

Tell us about something you’re working on?

Today I am a mobile architecture consultant and software engineer, helping my team improve the software we develop, both in the back-end and front-end and, of course, implementing Firebase in mobile applications.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers or developers in general?

For women, never give up. I know, sometimes it's hard to wake up every day and fight something that never seems to end, facing people who never appear to learn that we just want a place to work like anyone else without worrying about harassment, sexism, prejudice or other kinds of discrimination. Together we will end these places and create more and better places, not just for women, but for all people, because I believe this is equity, this is the future, and we just want to be respected, happy and welcome where we work.
Always remember, we are together, we fight together, we win together! <3

Do you have any special interests, hobbies, or other fun facts you’d like to share?

I always pay attention to what happens in the IT world when it comes to Trans issues and about how companies and people are dealing with it. I work a lot for inclusion and diversity. After all, for me, it's not just values and attitudes. They are part of my life, my struggle, and represent who I am.
I love to find new ways, new technologies, to teach people the things I know, and even express myself better to make the learning experience more pleasurable.
I don't know if I have a fun fact. I consider myself so boring. I spend most of my time in front of the computer or watching series, or, of course, defending my girlfriends on the internet =D

Niamh Power

Wrexham, United Kingdom ??

Firebase GDE Photo of Niamh Power

Photo of Niamh Power

Tell us about something you’re working on?

I currently work at the bank, Monzo, in the UK. Mainly on iOS, but occasionally on Android tasks that pop up too. I’m in the borrowing team, so I work on the flows for applying for a loan, managing it, and making the experience as delightful as possible. We’re also working on some new tools to help our users understand their credit scores, which is really exciting.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers or developers in general?

I think a tip that I would give would be to never be afraid to be wrong and to ask questions. I spent a lot of time in my first few years worrying about what others would think, which only slowed down my own development. Another one would be to get involved in the community side of things - pursuing the GDE program. Speaking and participating in events helped my networking massively and it’s really boosted my career progression.

Do you have any special interests, hobbies, or other fun facts you’d like to share?

I work remotely, living in North Wales, so I get to go on hikes and mountain bike rides straight after work or even at lunchtime. Working in an industry which offers such flexibility is fantastic and not having to commute is such a game changer! I’ve also just returned from a month long skiing holiday in the alps, and hoping to go back again for three weeks in the summer for some mountain biking!

Joannie Huang

Taipei City, Taiwan ??

#Flutterista Photo of Joannie Huang

Photo of Joannie Huang

Tell us a bit about something you’re working on?

I’m now mainly working on the EdTech, teaching kids coding like Scratch and Python basics. I enjoy cultivating a new generation with tech ability through my computer science background. I've also run the Flutter Taipei with some passionate female developers since 2018 and just officially established the local branch in 2020 in order to encourage people to start using/learning Flutter!

What is one tip you would give Flutter developers?

Flutter has a strong and friendly community around the world. I would recommend searching meetup.com to see if there are any local workshops in your city. And just walk in to meet people! People always tell us that following the examples on the flutter.io is a good way to start.

Do you have any special interests, hobbies, or other fun facts you’d like to share?

I love walking in the alleys in Taipei and seeing the combination of old and modern. You might discover unique coffee or noodles from a generational street vendor. You won’t get bored while living in Taipei, a small but energetic city.

Nilay Yener

Sunnyvale, United States ??

#Flutterista, Program Manager

Photo of Nilay Yener

Tell us a bit about something you’re working on?

I work for the Flutter Developer Relations team as a Program Manager, specifically working on community programs. Community is an important part of Flutter. The goal of our community programs is to build, support, and foster the communities around Flutter and make the Flutter developers successful. Some of the programs I work on are, Flutter Google Developer Experts (GDEs) and Flutter meetups.

What is one tip you would give Flutter developers?

I encourage Flutter developers to contribute to Flutter. This has many benefits like improving the technology you work with, as well as improving your existing skills, meeting other people and giving back to the community. Flutter is an open source project and there are many ways to contribute. Flutter has a great team that welcomes everyone to join the project. You are very welcome to contribute to Flutter's code via pull requests, filing issues on Github, adding to documentation, or contributing to packages and plugins. You can help other people by asking questions in the chat channels. You can join Flutter's community programs, be a GDE, and give talks or run a Flutter meetup in your city to help other developers locally.

Do you have any special interests, hobbies, or other fun facts you’d like to share?

Before joining Google, I was one of the Google Developer Groups organizers and ran a Google meetup as a "hobby". Years later, I joined Google and now Google pays me for what I did as a hobby.

Shoko Sato

Tokyo, Japan ??

GDG Tokyo Lead, Women Techmakers Ambassador Photo of Shoko Sato

Photo of Shoko Sato

Tell us about something you’re working on?

Hi! My name is Shoko, I'm one of three organizers of GDG Tokyo and I host various types of meetups, hands-on workshops, codelabs, and tech conferences. I was also involved in the management of Women DevFest Tokyo which focused more on the career of women engineers. I like promoting activities that support women in different industries related to IT as an engineer. I feel that our tech conferences and others need to be gender-balanced. To achieve this, I have been working to arrange a daycare center at the venues, share information on events to ensure psychological safety before the event, increase the number of women involved, and focus on creating easy access to the event.
I believe an event that women can easily participate in can be one, where anyone, regardless of being a man and a woman, is welcomed. Therefore, I am taking the initiative to create a community where people can easily join.
In my private time, I spend a lot of time planning and going to activities for GDG Tokyo. Professionally speaking, I actually work in Developer Relations at an IT company in Tokyo to support engineers; including technical public relations and tech conference management. I would like to support both the minority and majority, regardless of gender, age, nationality, corporate history, and all types of attributes and layers, working to create a place where each one of engineers can shine.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers or developers in general?

You don't need to compare gender, age, nationality, company history, career, and so on to others.
"I'm sure you’re doing great! You should have confidence and believe in yourself."
If there are 100 people, there are 100 ways of living. It may be important to look for a role model thinking, "I want to be like that person in the future." You don't have to think you are inferior, compared to others. What really matters to you? It’s that “you have confidence and you believe in yourself.”
I would say you should work on what you like with confidence. And have a diverse group of friends. If you have any concerns, your friends will help you.

Do you have any special interests, hobbies, or other fun facts you’d like to share?

I spend a lot of my time and work planning activities related to "engineers’ empowerment." The purpose of those activities is different but the basic idea is the same. I have experienced many kinds of jobs and setbacks before. They often told me in the past that life would be difficult because I’m a woman, so I constantly wished I was born as a man. It was an unpleasant experience and I do not want the next generation to experience that.
A lot of people see things in their culture following their experiences, so I think it's inevitable that there is an unconscious bias. This is why I would like to change that bias. I am keen to create organizations and communities where a wide variety of engineers can spend time together. I will continue to work in such a manner so that my work and my personal life can be linked to different activities, leaving eventually a positive impact on the entire IT industry.

Neem Serra

Missouri, United States ??

Women Techmakers Ambassador, GDG St. Louis Lead

Photo of Neem Serra

Tell us about something you’re working on?

I just finished working on a chapter for the Swift For Good book! All revenue from the book goes to Black Girls Code. I wrote my chapter on extensions in Swift, and examples of how a mommy class would interact with a baby class. I plan on writing more things in the future that use real-world examples to make complicated technical topics more understandable.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers or developers in general?

Find a safe group of friends that will act as your board of advisors and help you grow towards your best self. Some days, it feels like there can only be one person that can succeed, but it's not true! Every time you feel the urge to tear someone down, try to instead find someone to help out instead.

Do you have any special interests, hobbies, or other fun facts you’d like to share?

I thought that I would have to take a step back after having my baby, but I've learned that I've become laser focused on doing what I want to do. I was able to write a new technical talk with a mommy class learning how to handle a baby class and I even brought my baby on stage while giving the talk at a conference.

Lynn Langit

Minneapolis, United States ??

Google Cloud GDE Photo of Lynn Langit

Photo of Lynn Langit

Tell us about something you’re working on?

I have been contracting with bioinformatics research groups, providing guidance and artifacts as they adopt public cloud for analysis.
Projects included reviewing, creating and delivering cloud pipelines and training materials. Clients include The Broad Institute, CSIRO Bioinformatics and Imperial College of London. As part of this work, I created an open source course on GitHub `GCP-for-Bioinformatics'.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers or developers in general?

Build and iterate often. Get feedback from actual customers. I also say this as `MVP-often`. For my team, this has meant building minimum viable genomics pipelines. I wrote about one example of this, using the `blastn` analysis tool, on Medium.

Do you have any special interests, hobbies, or other fun facts you’d like to share?

I learned Calculus at age 51 from Khan Academy and 3Blue1Brown (Grant Sanderson). I love math.

Daniela Petruzalek

London, United Kingdom ??

Google Cloud GDE Photo of Daniela Petruzalek

Photo of Daniela Petruzalek

Tell us about something you’re working on?

I’m currently working on a follow up project to my Pac Man from Scratch tutorial. I’ve built this tutorial to teach the Go programming language using game development as a background. Now the next phase will be to make a second game that will be used to teach about cloud technologies and streaming using WebRTC.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers or developers in general?

Make a list of the things you hate and study those, and try to understand them to the best of your capabilities. The things that we love are usually easy to learn, but the things that we hate are our weaknesses. You don’t need to become an expert in any of them, but by just understanding you will be able to overcome your weaknesses and maybe even start to love them, at which point they become less of your weaknesses and start compounding to become another part of your strengths.

Do you have any special interests, hobbies, or other fun facts you’d like to share?

I really love video games, and they are the main reason I’ve started my career in IT. I never became a game developer, but I really like how games challenge you to solve cool problems while also allowing your creativity to run free. Nowadays I’m slowly starting to introduce game development as one of my hobbies and I still dream of someday publishing my own indie game. When not working on game development, I’m really into playing classic games from the 8 and 16-bit era.

Katerina Skroumpelou

Athens, Greece ??

Google Maps Platform GDE Photo of Katerina Skroumpelou

Photo of Katerina Skroumpelou

Tell us about something you’re working on?

Right now, I'm working on an enterprise application using Angular and the Google Cloud. I usually have a side project running, and at the moment my side projects include experimenting with features of the Google Maps Platform!

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers or developers in general?

I don't know if that feeling exists because I am a woman, or if everyone feels the same, but here it goes: I have most usually worked in teams where there are no other women developers. So I have always felt like I have to push myself and constantly work harder to prove I am worthy of that position "despite being me/despite being a woman". Well, don't do that. Work hard and push your limits if you want to and if it makes you happy. But do it for yourself, if you want to. Don't do it for others. Nobody is in any position to judge you or measure you or question your worthy-ness.

Do you have any special interests, hobbies, or other fun facts you’d like to share?

I love walking and hiking. It clears my mind, and it's one of the few places I really feel "at home". I also like to pole dance, and I have a quest to visit as much of the world as I possibly can. I have an actual paper map, and I pin actual metallic pins on it with all the places I've visited! Fun fact, though, I've lived in the same neighbourhood for all my life, with cats all around me.

Kristina Simakova

Oslo, Norway ??

Google Maps Platform GDE

Photo of Kristina Simakova

Tell us about something you’re working on?

I have recently started working on a side-project: wall decoration AR app. When I moved to a new place, I was struggling with trying to imagine how and where I should place wall decorations, so I hope to solve it with AR.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers or developers in general?

Be an expert in your field but keep an eye on other technologies. Challenge yourself, experiment and keep learning. Are you an Android developer? Do Flutter Codelabs, learn about actions for Google Assistant.

Do you have any special interests, hobbies, or other fun facts you’d like to share?

Fun facts:
I have been on a research expedition for 7 days on an icebreaker ship somewhere between Greenland and Svalbard studying ice :)
I made the “Around the World” trip alone.
Hobbies: travel, reading stories about startups, trying to cook Asian cuisine, making cakes when I cannot solve a problem in my code.

Moonlit Beshimov

Mountain View, United States ??

Partner Development Manager, Google Play Games, Google Photo of Moonlit Beshimov

Photo of Moonlit Beshimov

Tell us about something you’re working on?

I am a Business Development Manager on Google Play's Games business development team. My baby brother thinks that this means that I can play mobile games all day long, which is half true. :) I partner with the best-in-class mobile game developers to help them grow their businesses on Google Play, working together on new games' go-to-market strategies as well as evolving their business models and monetization designs. Representing the world's largest mobile gaming platforms, I often share market and industry level insights that help all developers grow. At the same time, representing the complex ecosystem of mobile game developers, I work with Google Play's product teams to ensure developers' feedback, pain points and needs are addressed by us!

In the past two years, I've been leading a global initiative to boost growth and adoption of a recent monetization innovation in the mobile gaming industry: in-game subscriptions. I partnered with the early innovators to teach other developers, and also consulted developers on how to incorporate the new model into their existing design. Rising tide raises all boats. I love my job because even though the mobile gaming industry is competitive, there are tons of opportunities to learn from each other, build on each other's ideas, innovate and grow together. As leaders of the industry, we also discuss difficult questions such as digital well-being in the context of mobile gaming. More to come on this, let me know if you have ideas!

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers or developers in general?

Your most valuable asset is your unique perspectives and crazy ideas. Women developers are still the minority in the workforce, but women consumers are a major business opportunity. Your ideas and points of view, especially the ones that no one else seems to have thought of, are the ones that will make the biggest difference. So confidently offer your most unique perspectives and craziest ideas, speak up. Be brave, not perfect!

Do you have any special interests, hobbies, or other fun facts you’d like to share?

I love challenging myself with hobbies that I'm not naturally good at, such as public speaking and athletics. I've been doing Toastmasters to overcome my fear of public speaking. I shared this journey in my recent TEDx talk. I was also that chubby kid growing up, so I signed up for Tough Mudder, Spartan races with my friends and colleagues (peer pressure is the best motivator to work out regularly!) and picked up rock climbing. However, mostly recently, my new found love is my three-months old daughter! Motherhood is probably the most challenging activity I've ever done. Hats off to all the working moms out there!

Vesna Doknic

London, United Kingdom ??

Strategic Partner Manager, Google Play - London, Google Photo of Vesna Doknic

Photo of Vesna Doknic

Tell us about something you’re working on?

I am currently working as a Strategic Partner Manager on Google Play, helping developers from all over Europe be more successful on Android. I have been in the mobile space for most of my career, working in Mobile Product Management before joining Google.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women Product Managers or Product Managers in general?

Product management work is extremely cross-functional, and it pays to remember that relationships are everything. Making sure all the pieces fit together calls for master planning and lots of trust, so make sure you invest and nurture your key working relationships.

Do you have any special interests, hobbies, or other fun facts you’d like to share?

My other great passions in life are food (I run a culinary blog and have a robust appetite), cinema and its history (Mark Kermode = god), music and festivals (but sadly not the muddy kind), and corgis (especially my own - Taxi. He is a good boy.)

Alexandrina Garcia-Verdin

Sunnyvale, United States ??

G Suite Developer Advocate, Google Photo of Alexandrina Garcia-Verdin

Photo of Alexandrina Garcia-Verdin

Tell us about something you’re working on?

I am interested in making the word "developer" be more inclusive of citizen developers and creating samples, tutorials, videos, and hopefully a podcast for that audience. These are folks like myself, who do not come from traditional computer science backgrounds but love learning about how to build apps as a hobby or learn from tinkering with projects at work. You see, a "developer" is someone who builds apps or automations on a computer, sometimes it's with code and sometimes it's with programs that abstract code, but people have a strong association with the word as only meaning "coder" exclusively. What that does is it creates limiting beliefs about what content to explore because they see articles with the title "developer" included and think "oh that's not for me", omitting content that is indeed for them. I am actively interested in changing the conversation to make the "developer world" a more inclusive place where anyone who builds SQL queries, dashboards, workflows, or code -- all understand they are developers aka "builders" on computers. I believe this would also make content accessible to more diverse audiences. Google has created so many amazing products, and with user experience always in mind, I think it's important for everyone to feel comfortable reading what's out there before making a decision on whether it's for them, because I have personally found myself building all types of things because of the sheer ease of use of the products, and this is thanks to opening myself up to learning from all developer content.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers or developers in general?

My peer Jennifer Thomas upon returning from her first coding bootcamp said it best. She learned there is no "one way" of doing things, and that "every person builds things in their specific area of expertise." I think this is a powerful reminder that "I am enough" whenever we are haunted by imposter syndrome. I strongly believe that conversations like these, where we expose limiting beliefs and create safe spaces for vulnerable and empowering exchanges, are the biggest accelerators to making developer communities more diverse. When people feel like they can be themselves in their own happy capacity as a builder (without expectations imposed), we will rapidly help each other to thrive.
So please keep talking and sharing about your learnings, it helps support everyone on their journey.

Do you have any special interests, hobbies, or other fun facts you’d like to share?

I am extremely passionate about everything I can learn on regenerative ecological design, which is a framework for living in a harmonious way with our planet by optimizing my habits (inputs and outputs). My top three subjects at hand are being plastic free (zero waste), growing food via permaculture methods, and building cob homes (earthquake and fire proof earthen homes). As such l took a week long course to learn how to build a home out of cob (a monolithic structure made of clay, sand, and straw) at Quail Springs (a nonprofit in Santa Barbara). I am in love with how accessible it makes home building, and am working on making that content available on YouTube for my teachers Sasha and Johno. I am also volunteering to modernize a nonprofit's website that has written building codes for cob structures called CobCode.org. Their work is amazing, and I wish to support the movement in whatever way I can so more people can legally build healthy and affordable homes.
Follow updates and content by AGV on Twitter at @TechAndEco

Anu Srivastava

New York City, United States ??

G Suite Developer Advocate, Google Photo of Anu Srivastava

Photo of Anu Srivastava

Tell us about something you’re working on?

G Suite Solutions Gallery
I created a gallery for both Googlers and external developers to showcase how developing with G Suite solves real business problems. Our goal is to inspire new developers to create meaningful integrations to boost productivity and collaboration like team time management solutions and event planning, etc.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers or developers in general?

Find a mentor and create a strong network of developers in your community.

Do you have any special interests, hobbies, or other fun facts you’d like to share?

I used to be a dancer in a group that recreated pop music videos in local performances around the SF Bay Area.

Margaret Maynard-Reid

Seattle, United States ??

Machine Learning GDE, Women Techmakers Ambassador, GDG Seattle Photo of Margaret Maynard-Reid

Photo of Margaret Maynard-Reid

Tell us about something you’re working on?

I recently curated an awesome-list of TensorFlow Lite models, samples and tutorials on GitHub. This is a project that could be very impactful for the TensorFlow community by helping those who want to implement their models on mobile and edge devices. I’m working on engaging the community to further expand the list. ML practitioners, engineers and researchers can contribute.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers or developers in general?

Stay curious and keep learning. My emphasis on continuous learning opens doors for me. It has helped provide the greatest opportunities to solve interesting problems with cutting edge tech.

Do you have any special interests, hobbies, or other fun facts you’d like to share?

Outside of work I write blog posts, speak at conferences, and lead tech communities. I’ve always wanted to study art - I recently started drawing and I absolutely love it! I’m excited about applying AI/ML to art and design.

Lesly Zerna

Cochabamba, Bolivia ??

Machine Learning GDE Photo of Lesly Zerna

Photo of Lesly Zerna

Tell us about something you’re working on?

I am working on a project to get started with teaching machines to play and compose!
I was inspired by this book: "Generative Deep Learning" by David Foster.
I have loved music since I was a child! And since the first time I learned about Google Magenta, I wanted to learn more about teaching machines about music and art in general.
This is a great opportunity to get started with something a bit different from what I have done before, but one that helps me to combine my passion for technology and music.

What is one tip you would give your fellow women developers or developers in general?

Give it a try!
I think when you are new to something it is normal to be nervous or scared, but everyone should take that first step! It is not easy but it is rewarding. Either you learn or win!
Don't be afraid to try something with tech, just baby steps and you'll have fun!

Do you have any special interests, hobbies, or other fun facts you’d like to share?

Oh I love music, learning about tech and traveling to meet new cultures, people and landscapes. I love outdoor activities as well as staying home or being at a coffee place studying. Also, sharing knowledge and helping other people to find new perspectives to see the world.

_____________________________

Interested in becoming a part of the Google developer community? Here’s more information on the programs we’ve shared above:

The Google Developer Groups program gives developers the opportunity to meet local developers with similar interests in technology. A GDG meetup event includes talks on a wide range of technical topics where you can learn new skills through hands-on workshops. The community prides itself on being an inclusive environment where everyone and anyone interested in tech - from beginner developers to experienced professionals - all are welcome to join.

Join a Google Developer Group chapter near you here.

Apply to become a Google Developer Group organizer here.

Follow Google Developer Groups on Twitter here.

Subscribe to the Google Developer Groups YouTube channel here.

Founded in 2014, Google’s Women Techmakers is dedicated to helping all women thrive in tech through community, visibility and resources. With a member base of over 100,000 women developers, we’re working with communities across the globe to build a world where all women can thrive in tech. Our community consists of over 740 Women Techmakers Ambassadors across over 100 countries. These ambassadors are the north star of our movement. They are leaders committed to their communities, using Women Techmaker resources to build space and visibility so that all women could thrive in tech.

Become a Women Techmakers Member here.

Follow Women Techmakers on Twitter here.

Learn more about the Google Developers Experts program and its eligibility criteria here.

Follow Google Developers Experts on Twitter here and LinkedIn here.