On 6th March, at the tail of Winter, about 50 people gathered in Google Korea office for the second event of Seoul GTUG.
It was a little less than 70 attendees of the first Seoul GTUG event, but it was better for talking and sharing thoughts each other.
On the first event, the subjects were quite wide-ranged and some people gave us feedbacks that it would be better if we focus on one or two subjects only. So this time we decided to focus on Android and AppEngine, which most people are interested in.
For ice-breaking, I started the speech with introducing scenes of GTUGs around the world, and talked a little bit about Google Buzz and Google I/O. People seemed to feel the pictures of other countries' GTUG event very interesting and get a sense that we are all connected.
Here is the slide about it.
The second speaker was Brian Lee, the co-organizer. He introduced basic to detail informations about AppEngine. He is not a professional AppEngine developer, so he put a lot of effort to study by himself first and prepare the presentation. And it ended up as a very useful lesson for all of us.
Next speaker was not on the official agenda because we invited him very urgently. He's name is Sang-yeop Park, and he is an author of the book "Starting Google AppEngine". He made a insightful speech about what kind of chances we can get as developers with AppEngine. He explained the reason he wrote a book about AppEngine. When Chris Schalk and Mickey Kim from Google Mountain View came to Korea and had a seminar about Open Social and AppEngine, he attended and asked them that if there is a plan that Google will build a data center in Korea or Asia. And they answered, if Korea have got enough number of AppEngine developers, Google may consider it. So Park thought that he should publish a book and make AppEngine more popular, so that there can be more AppEngine developers in Korea.
Jae-ku Choi made the next speech. He explained the differences of various kind of mobile platforms like Android, iPhone, Windows Mobile, and so forth. he also talked about a little bit about Apple iPad too. He also is an author of many books about computer programming. And he was a very nice and funny speaker, so we all could enjoy the speech and learned a lot.
At last but not least, Sung-suh Park (a.k.a Gray, which is his internet name) has made us a great time discussing about Android platform. He is known as the first Android developer in Korea, and made lots of apps so far. he made speeches on many seminars or events about Android in Korea. He just wanted to talk freely with all the developers there and it was a very successful try. Many people asked a lot of questions very passionately and we even got over-timed.
After the official event ended, a few people among us gathered around at the cafeteria and shared our lives, and had dinner together. As always, meeting nice people and building networks are the most exciting and greatest part.
As events passes by, I feel our community is getting firmer. We feel more like a group or a family. I wish this group to be great network of developers in Korea and make good examples for other communities.
Here are the pictures of the event. Enjoy! :)