31 january I went to London for the Google Code Day. It was nice to meet a lot of people who also showed interest in this new platform. I was wondering if there were more people who attended one of the Google Code Day's and how you experienced it.

Hello Jodol,

I'd have loved to go there (especially to Munich, because I'm from Germany), but I'm currently having exams .
It would be 100% awesome if you could write a (small) article about your experiences on the Code Days.

Anyone else got the chance

Regards,
plusminus

Could you please do a brief write up on the code day?

Interested to see what people thought.

As requested a small debrief on the Google Code Day London:

It was a windy morning, Thursday 31 January 2008, when me and my buddy from ColdTrick Solutions went from Amsterdam to London for the Google Code Day. We arrived at Google HQ in the Belgrave House at 11:00 am where Jason Chen (Google) introduced Android (for those who didn't know about Android yet). In his introduction he told us about the architecture and the freedom for developers to do anything they would like to. The most comment during this introduction was about this 'open-ness' of Android. While it gives developers more possibilities, there's also the possibility to do harm to your system or install 'bad' software. I personally like to think more about the possibilities then about the risks. The engineers working on Android are aware of these risks and in the SDK's to be released security will be one of the improvements. For example, the permissions to be set in the manifest file, will trigger a prompt for the user on install, asking him if he allowes the actions, the application requests. After the introduction Jason told about the future. A new SDK will arrive in a few weeks with a lot of new things and if i recall correctly even a new UI (User Interface) and some new features for the emulator. He also said the first hardware will not be available until the second half of 2008. Most of the people present weren't developing for the Android Developer Challenge, a few though had a quick look at the SDK. Some guy even build a SuperMario game in 2 days not knowing Java!

After a good lunch between skippy balls and white boards we had ourselves a little 'hackathon'. After brainstorming about a few subjects we split up in small groups and talked about the subjects. I sat in a group discussing Location Based Services. This was one of the popular subjects, cause i think with GPS in all phones in the near future, this will be a very interesting market developing software for. The rest of the day we spent discussing and exchanging ideas for Android. 16:00 pm was the end of the Google Code Day, and after a few drinks we left satisfied for our flight back to Holland with a very nice Android t-shirt

Maybe one day Google will be holding a Code Day in Holland. I will definitely be there.

Yours truly,

Jodol

Nice write up, thank you.