GDG Summit
This week I was invited to the GDG Summit as part of the organizers of LechazoConf… and it was quite nice. Thank you so much Almo and Carlos for the invite!
The GDG Summit is the yearly meeting of all the Google Developer Groups of Spain and they talk about how to energize communities, organize events in schools, deal with conflicts… it’s a really cool initiative to spread knowledge across communities and create bonds between cities and organizers.
This year was held in Tenerife, at the same time as the Tenerife Lan Party (TLP for short). The TLP is a huge LAN Party (2000+ attendees) + cosplay event + stands + tech talks (TLP Innova) + lots of things! The Summit had one day of open talks about technology, open for the public and one day of internal talks about communities.
I was amazed by the work behind the TLP and the GDG Summit by Paco and Alicia. I definitely know how hard is to organize a medium-sized event like the CAS and I can’t fathom how is to mount something for 2000+ attendees. Really nice work 👏👏👏.
I had a blast at the event and learned a lot about how the GDG are organized. But I especially liked several things that I have to mention, without any particular order:
- The passion that @icynthia transmits in her talks and continuously. We hosted her in the Facebook Dev Circle Madrid and she gave a great talk. I thought (and the TarugoConf organizers and everyone at the GDG summit now) that she is one of the rising stars that every event would be lucky to have.
- I loved Nerea and Moisés talk about Reinforcement Learning. It was clear, direct, technical and interesting.
- I 💖 Jorge Barroso and Laura Morillo passion. Both are the pillars of several communities and events and they enrich every event they go.
- I was amazed (and envious!) by the work of Ana and Orestes with the Vigo Tech Alliance. Valladolid is like 1.5x times bigger and we can’t foster a community with more than one meetup, let alone 200 events in one year.
- I was surprised by the initiative of someone so young as Abdallah. When I was a university student, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t organizing events nor community booths.
I’m missing lots of things that were awesome, thanks to all for contributing to the event :)
It was great to talk, although too briefly, with Moisés about the T3chFest challenges (we definitely missed Nerea there!). I wanted to talk with Theba and Ulises about the great work they are doing with the OSW community but I’m too shy :(
And, obviously, old friends like Yeray, Miguel, Patarino, Aurora, Reinaldo, Rubén, and the people from GDG Burgos (sorry :( I forgot that I already knew you from the Android course and the Droidcon 2015!) and GDG Salamanca (I’m sure I’m forgetting someone!).
I had a blast and I’ll try to use the opportunity to collaborate with the GDG Burgos and Salamanca to do more things around Castile & Leon.
See you around! :)
– Picture by @alby_martin
