g|Philippines

Today's been such a coffee/ cuddle weather with the rain pouring all day and the sweet cool breeze blowing against our faces. I'm supposed to be reading 26 court cases right now for my Personal Effectiveness 2 class OR I'm supposed to be in a road trip right now with friends but physically, it's really not possible to finish all these readings during the road trip. I really miss hanging out with my friends. A road trip sounded really good. Plus, there's a typhoon right now.. but instead of reading the court cases, I feel like blogging. This shouldn't take long. Let's talk about G|Philippines (in short for Google Philippines).

Last August 3-4, there was G|Philippines. There were two events: G Dev Fest for the developers and there was the education track for students and professors.

The room for the education track.

We Google Student Ambassadors who signed up for this event had a call time of 7am. So we were there pretty early. I think the event was set to start at 9am. (I should really blog right after events so that I don't forget these details.. haha) We got these red g|Philippines shirts and sat down at the lobby of the Asia Institute of Management (which smells like really good cinnamon because they have Cinnabon in their school!)

There were about six of these Google stands with laptops on them. There was a term on how you call these stands.. I guess I'll just call them Google Laptop Stands for now.

We spent about 10 minutes using the internet - tweeting, updating our statuses on FB and G+ that we were in g|philippines! And there was one laptop with a lot of songs stored in it, so we sang along to them. The one I super remember is PYRAMID by CHARICE (like a pyramiiiiiiid!!)

When the participants started arriving, we greeted them with our very cheerful selves and some of the GSA's escorted them to the elevator.

briefing
Photo by Aileen Apolo

Fast track to the event itself ---

The Googlers at the education track

GDG Devfest in the bigger hall.

The GSA's were assigned to the education track (of course). The Googlers showed and taught the participants some of the Google products we were taught in our Google Student Ambassador Summit. It was good being refreshed with the insights again.

Some GSA's were asked to share about the Google Student Ambassador Program and a lot were really curious about it! :) I can't believe it's been 6 months already that we've been GSA's!

Photo by Patric Sugay

During one of the breaks..

You remember Mafe, my roommate in Singapore during the summit in Singapore.
Photo by Patric Sugay

We also got the privilege to meet Mr. Nelson Mattos and see how some meetings in Google go.
Nelson Mattos is the VP Engineering & Product EMEA, and the VP Emerging Markets. 

that's him in the black shirt to the left of Jyle (the one in the red shirt in the middle)
Photo by Patric Sugay

Then some time while the program was ongoing, we had some chill time and had our usual bonding sessions doing what we do best - talk. ;)

David, Minty, and Pat

Amourr and David

Google Student Ambassadors Philippines bonding with Minty

Amourr and Mikey with the other participants (which I believe were from DLSU too?)

Aileen with her son

Ruel being tall reaching the ceiling!

But what really caught the attention of the La Sallian GSA's was the DLSU-UST game going on.

Amourr, David, Mikey, and I depended on this laptop having a live stream. It lagged at times too cause we were sharing the internet with another group who was also live streaming (some funny dancing thing going on). At that buzzer, when L.A. Revilla made that shot, WE CHEERED OF EXCITEMENT! YES WE WON THE GAME!! Then the live stream lagged. Then a Googler went out and told us that everyone inside the conference hall looked back wondering what was with the cheering from outside (we're sorry :( )

From that moment, we depended on our school mates tweeting. But damn, it wasn't a win for La Salle just yet. Apparently, LA released the ball a few milliseconds too late. So, it resulted to an over time. At a very crucial moment in the first overtime, we were too excited, one of us accidentally clicked close window. AHH! So we had to scramble looking for that link again! When we found it and the live stream was back up, it was a 2nd overtime! Every single minute we were anxious excited! But in the end, UST won. Congrats! But the good news, we made it to the top 4!!

We got free Google shirts, stickers, notebooks, and ballpens that day!

And the day wouldn't be complete without...

THE ELEVATOR PICTURE! I think this was outside the elevator but CLOSE ENOUGH!

Congrats to these next few Googlers who organized the event!!