Hello SE Asia

I recently returned from my first trip to Southeast Asia with developer advocates Patrick Chanezon and Pamela Fox. It's the first time Google has been back in the region since the DevFests last year, and we wanted to reconnect with developers.

First stop, Singapore! With e27, we hosted a hackathon at Singapore Management University. Pamela covered all the new things going on in Geo, and Patrick covered new things with Friend Connect, along with many great HTML5 demos. We tried keeping the talking at a minimum so that there was plenty of time to work.

A good crowd showed up and we had some interesting demos at the end, with Peekspy's fan venue site using Google Earth winning crowd favorite. My personal favorite was "The Base is Right," an app that had you guess the price from a random item from Google Base. Bob Barker would be proud :). For a more detailed write-up, check out e27's blog entry.



In Manila, we partnered up with Globe and the Ayala Foundation to hold a workshop to encourage mashups using Google APIs and Globe's APIs.

A large crowd showed up and soldiered through all the talks, even though the aircon was a little spotty. :) Watch a few videos from the event.



Globe is looking to help commercialize the best apps through their billing framework. To submit your application, see here for more info, and join the forum here.

I was really impressed with the developers that I met, and found many enthusiastic people who want more! For those that don't want to wait for us to come around, Google Technology User Groups are a great way for you guys to network and learn from each other about technologies like GWT, Android, OpenSocial, App Engine, our product APIs, and more. We already have four chapters that just started up in the region -


* GTUG-KL, Kuala Lumpur
* SG-GTUG, Singapore
* GTUG Philippines, Manila
* GTUG Bangkok, Bangkok


Check them out, or start one near you.

I really enjoyed my introduction to the region and hope to be back soon to visit more countries. Thanks for the hospitality, Singapore and Manila!

Posted by Stephanie Liu, Google Developer Relations