Before the event
"I wonder what they will show today?". That was the question that keep popping in my head when I entered MUST. I went up until the 6th floor of the Performing Arts Theater until I realized that I got lost. After asking some of the students there, I found the right room across the east wing of the building.
I saw some familiar faces of some GDG volunteers in the crowd. I arrived 1 hour early for the event. It gave me ample time to chat with Aryan, one of my friends in the
CDO-ITG group and Jeff, a VR enthusiast. We talked about the K-12 program, wireless routers and the future of VR.
The receiving area had been flooding with participants after I arrived. The registration booth opened 30 minutes after my arrival. By that time the venue was already packed with participants. We figured that its better to register later so we went down and got refreshments at the bottom floor. We met Eric, a co-worker with his friend Mark while I was drinking water from a fountain. After some small talk, we went back to the room to register.
Inside the event room, before the event starts
We discovered that the theater was circular in dimensions. When we went inside, we were greeted with the sight of 4 projected tarps at the center, facing the 4 cardinal directions.
We opted to take the seats on the east part of room, at the middle distance from the center. I knew the air conditioner system was working because the venue was cool in spite of the mass of people inside.
While waiting for the participants to dribble in, I went around and took some photos of the venue. I noticed that at there was a giant Android plushie at the center of the theatre.
Keynote Speech
The event kicked off around 2 pm. The keynote speaker for the event was Josan Astrid Dometita-Chug. She is GDG CDeO's manager and the Creative Director at
Aestrea Software.
Her talk started with the encouraging message that "Technology should not be intimidating". She exhorted young students to embrace technology. To experiment, to take risks and not be afraid to fail. After all, they still have an "artificial safety net" in the form of their parents. They are still not exposed to the consequences of failure in the real world.
Technology should not be intimidating
The next thing that she talked about was the importance of having a vision of the future. To have ambitions and not to settle for the mediocre. She also talked about the importance of building the community and to engage with other people.
The last part of her talk involved discussing the Google I/O event held last May. It was held at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View. She also talked about the technologies featured in it. Among these technologies are
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Google Home, a voice-activated home product that allows people to get answers from Google and manage everyday tasks
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Allo, a new messaging app
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Duo, a one-to-one video calling app
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Android Nougat, the new Android release for this year
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Polymer, a library to create Web Components
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Firebase, a backend as a service provider
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Daydream, a virtual reality platform from Google
Intro to Machine Learning and Tensor Flow
The next speaker for the event was Jordan Aiko Deja, the group head of the Seamless Interfaces Group of ComET. He is also an assistant professor lecturer at De La Salle University.
He started by showing us
an online demonstration of Tensor Flow. When the page was shown, many confused faces was seen in the crowd. It was not surprising since this is likely their first taste of Data Science and Machine Learning.
Seeing or anticipating this, he proceeded with talking about Machine Learning for the uninitiated. He started with giving a layman's definition of Machine learning.
"Machine learning is a subfield of computer science. It gives computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed." - Arthur Samuel
He clarified that Machine Learning is not simply a new name for Artificial Intelligence. He then gave a Machine Learning definition in more formal terms
"A computer program is said to learn from an experience E with respect to some task T and some performance measure P, if its performance on T as measured by P improved by some experience E" - Tom Mitchell
An example that he showed us was playing with checkers. In this activity,
- the task is playing checkers
- the performance measure was the number of games won against opponents
- the experience is playing practice games with itself
Other activities where Machine Learning can be used was briefly touched. This includes handwriting recognition, robot driving and facial learning.
He also said that Machine Learning is also different from Data Mining. Machine Learning focuses on prediction on *known* properties learned from training data. However, data mining focuses on the discovery of *previously-unknown* properties in the data. Machine Learning requires lots of data. They need to be good data too. As they say, garbage in, garbage out.
"Machine Learning focuses on prediction on *known* properties learned from training data. However, data mining focuses on the discovery of *previously-unkown* properties in the data."
The final part of his talk emphasizes that Machine Learning is not a futuristic and immature technology. We don't have to wait for it to ripen. It is already in use today. You can see it in Bots, Google's self-driving cars, reading of muscle signals, etc. And to make it more enticing, jobs in Machine Learning are in high demand with very good compensation.
Virtual Reality and Google Cardboard
The next speaker is Edmund Salcedo Jr., a MUST alumnus who now works at
Engagis Software. He is also a VR Enthusiast and
Unity Developer.
He started by showcasing a 3D environment with a hilarious dancing on screen. This was followed up by giving a short talk about the tools that he uses. This includes applications like Blender and Unity.
He then whipped out a slick looking phone and asked the audience to guess the price, brand and model of the device. 5 persons were picked from the audience to guess. Those who guessed the correct answer would get a prize. In my own seat, I guessed was that it was the Alcatel Idol 4S and the price to be around 8k.
I was wrong. To the crowd's pleasant surprise, the model turned out to be the Cherry Mobile XL. The price was also only 3.5k PHP. That includes the VR headset. This would make the device ideal for testing out your VR applications since it won't cost you an arm and leg to buy.
Besides getting a prize, the winner got to try the VR headset on. While he was tinkering with it, a live feed of what he was seeing is shown in a projector. We were able to observe the capabilities by watching the feed.
Internet of Things using Firebase
The next speaker is Elymar Apao, founder of
JumpSparc and a UX/IoT coach.
He started by recounting an anecdote about feeding his cat. The problem was how to feed his cat when he was away on long vacation days. To solve this problem, he needed to devise a clever solution. He went to work on creating prototypes for his ideas. Some of these include an auger screw system and an open close system. It took him 3 prototypes to arrive at a solution to his satisfaction.
His next discussion was about the Internet of Things, a development that is gaining traction today. He introduced us to electronics that help us do create devices for IoT. One of this is Wido, a combination of Arduino and Wifi. Another one is Photon, a $19 postage sized hackable wi-fi module for Jumpsparc.
He then pivoted his talk to Firebase, a backend as a service provider. He showed us how he used an Android app connected to Firebase to control some of his custom devices.
His last discussion revolves around the "Makers" culture. He showed as a trailer of the "Makers" documentary film. He clarified that being a maker doesn't mean that you must be an engineer. Instead, you only need to want to solve your own problems. He recounted an instance where a 12 year old kid proposed an alternative to the jeepney barker system. Instead of utilizing barkers, the system uses signage and sensors to display the destination. It makes it easier for people to know where jeepneys are going.
LED + Fiber Optics + GEMMA
For the last talk of the event, Josan once again took the stage. But not in the way that you think.
She entered the stage while performing a LED Poi dance in her LED woven dress that she made for the Google I/O events. This performance was then followed up by two veteran Poi performers, Jesson and Gilbert.
When the performance was over, Josan then proceeded to talk LED use. She recounted how she incorporated LED into her wedding dress. She told us that she used a kit called GEMMA to do it. She went on a brief anecdote of how bringing the GEMMA kits to other countries almost caused some problems with immigration.
Her last demonstration was showing us how to control devices using the the Myo armband. It is a gesture control wearable device. It works by analyzing the electrical signals in the forearm muscles. It then maps these signals to gestures. By using these gestures, people are able to control devices wirelessly.
Conclusions
To my pleasant surprise, the event was not the I/O extended that I used to know. As a software developer, the event was enlivening. The Machine Learning and Virtual Reality talks convinced me of their big role in the future. The hardware talks motivates me to learn electronics and tinker with tangible things. The IoT talk encouraged me to engineer solutions to my problems. You don't need to be an engineer to be able to do it.
I hope to see more events like these from GDG CDeO. It was a blast. Thanks for the free shirt!
P.S. Thanks to Aryan for letting me use some of his pictures for the event.
