DevFest concludes in Vietnam & the Philippines

We finally finished up the tour, coming to a close in Vietnam and the Philippines. We met a lot of really great people in both countries, and it was inspiring to see some of the locals get up and give lightning talks on products that they've built (including some that use Google APIs).

In Ho Chi Minh City, our attendees were extremely engaged and for a while "devfest" became the #3 trending topic globally on Twitter. Just after the Maps API presentation, we got to see a great lightning talk from SkyDoor, a Vietnamese travel site that leverages Google Maps, YouTube, GWT, and Earth. The outfit is already working on an OpenSocial version of their application. As a side note, we went to some really great restaurants there, and I even got to try eating snails for the first time. Yuuummyyy.

















And in Manila, wow - the DevFest party was off the hook. Seriously, we didn't just cover Google Maps, OpenSocial, Google App Engine, and even an additional talk on YouTube - we also got to see our very own Pamela Fox (Maps API extraordinaire) perform "Baby Got Back" (video below). Mid-way through some of our presenters decided to perform the dance from "Thriller", priceless stuff. Lastly, we saw five different lightning talks from groups working on apps for Android, OpenSocial, and more.

















A big thanks goes to Jason Vu and WebPal Networks, as well as to Kevin Miller Jr., Tony Fernandes, Aileen Apolo, and everyone else for their tremendous help in pushing these events forward.

Finally, we launched an OpenSocial application contest for all of the countries that we hit in Southeast Asia (plus Malaysia!). We're excited to see some great apps developed from this. Fire up your editors now!

And a really huge thanks also needs to go out to the DevFest partners that helped to make this entire tour happen: eXo Platform, Globant, hi5, and friendster. Thanks guys, and let's do it again soon!!



Pictures from our Vietnam DevFest are here. The pictures from our Philippines DevFest can be found here.

OK - that's it. We need to go sleep now.

Jason Costa, Developer Relations, Asia Pacific