Google Developer Day - Evening Reception

The best part of the day was the evening event at the Googleplex. As I mentioned, the conference took place in San Jose, which is about 25 mins south from the Googleplex in Mountain View. Google provided their renown commuter buses as free transportation between the convention center and their campus. Here's the outside of one of the buses:


And the inside:


There is a giant fleet of these buses which provide free transportation for Google employees to and from work (they even have free WiFi Internet on them). After arriving at the Googleplex, everyone was funneled into the central courtyard between all the buildings. On the way there, we passed the personal swimming pools that have been posted all over the Internet.

Inside the courtyard, it was clear there was a party. In fact, it felt more like a carnival than a corporate reception. There were many white tents setup, each of which had a different type of food.
Check out this picnic table that also acts as a job posting service and a white board (where do they get those things?)!
After filling my stomach on all types of good food, I was able to convince one of the Googlers I met, named JP, to give me a personal tour of one of the buildings. I really wanted to see how the software development areas were setup. JP walked me through registering as a visitor, and we entered one of the buildings (I forget which exactly). It's hard to summarize exactly what the insides of one of the buildings was like. Of course the cube areas felt like office space, but there were plenty of open meeting areas decorated with a similar feel to an Ikea display. I managed to snag this picture of one of there conference rooms (those are two projectors mounted in the ceiling):

Regarding the development stations themselves, I was able to see three different types: a typical cube, an agile island, and two person pod. The typical cube was just that, a typical cube. The "agile island" was a configuration of work stations that I felt was perfect for agile development. Imagine a large open square of about eight work stations, with two in the middle. The large amount of open space is very conducive to free conversation and thought. The two person development pods were a sort of small office made from temporary glass walls. There were two development stations in these pods. Unfortunately I was not able to get pictures of these.
After my mini-tour, we returned to the party. Instead of hanging out in the courtyard, we moved into one of the buildings that were open to entertain the guests as well. I thought I was walking into Dave n Busters downtown Philly than a corporate lobby. There were arcade machines, pool tables, a slideshow running on a huge screen, and disco lights.

It wasn't until I went to the bathroom that I found one of the most best ideas Google had, TOTT (testing on the toilet). In reading distance from any vantage point during a bio-break, developers can review techniques to better test their code!

Furthermore, I did a little poking around when I got home and found that all of these articles are available as PDFs online for other development shops to use! Here's a couple links: http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=155&thread=192883 and http://googletesting.blogspot.com/