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>"The big problems with attendees last year were that the demographic imbalances were in many ways embarrassing, and that they didn't feel it was developer focu

>"The big problems with attendees last year were that the demographic imbalances were in many ways embarrassing, and that they didn't feel it was developer focussed enough." I'm curious, what kind of demographic imbalances? Of all the better known conferences, material from I/O has routinely been the most interesting to me - I've gone through dozens of videos from years past on YouTube. I've been thinking about pushing to get some employer sponsorship for a trip to I/O one year in place of our typical trips.

sgarman 13y ago
The presentations and material are great but there are a lot of attendees there who are not developers which makes a lot of the interactions confusing. TBH if there were more developers there I'm not sure I would be been able to get a seat or stand for that matter at a lot of the technical presentations.
fidotron 13y ago
Every stereotype of the tech industry being a male dominated monoculture was reinforced. Very (very) few women, and general racial/ethnic imbalances not reflective of Google or the wider world. As I alluded to, I'd recommend going primarily if you think you'll get value from interacting with interesting people there. I'm big on Android, but my highlight of last year was chatting to a Chrome dev relations guy about their approach to profiling, so it is the pleasant surprises that are the main takeaways.
- mncolinlee 13y ago
  How is Google supposed to address that? And why is it relevant to getting value from the conference? The few female developers I know tend to resent the fact that the only women they meet at conferences are marketers, thereby ruining the chances other attendees will treat them as developers. It does not help developers to invite more marketers or recruiters in order to achieve gender balance.
- 10098 13y ago
  The question is: who on earth cares about the demographics of a conference? You go there to get information, so why should you care about who the people sitting in the hall are, especially given the fact that you won't see them ever again?

sgarman 13y ago

The presentations and material are great but there are a lot of attendees there who are not developers which makes a lot of the interactions confusing. TBH if there were more developers there I'm not sure I would be been able to get a seat or stand for that matter at a lot of the technical presentations.

fidotron 13y ago

Every stereotype of the tech industry being a male dominated monoculture was reinforced. Very (very) few women, and general racial/ethnic imbalances not reflective of Google or the wider world. As I alluded to, I'd recommend going primarily if you think you'll get value from interacting with interesting people there. I'm big on Android, but my highlight of last year was chatting to a Chrome dev relations guy about their approach to profiling, so it is the pleasant surprises that are the main takeaways.

mncolinlee 13y ago
How is Google supposed to address that? And why is it relevant to getting value from the conference? The few female developers I know tend to resent the fact that the only women they meet at conferences are marketers, thereby ruining the chances other attendees will treat them as developers. It does not help developers to invite more marketers or recruiters in order to achieve gender balance.
10098 13y ago
The question is: who on earth cares about the demographics of a conference? You go there to get information, so why should you care about who the people sitting in the hall are, especially given the fact that you won't see them ever again?