Darren "Dazbo" Lester for Google Developer Experts

Posted on Apr 28

My Incredible Google Cloud Next 26 Experience as a GDE

#googlecloud #googlecloudnext #gde #vegas

Hello friends! I landed back in the UK this evening, after spending the last few days in Vegas for Google Cloud Next '26. This was my 4th in-person Next event, and my second time as a speaker.

Those that follow my work on other platforms (because I haven't been on dev.to for long) know that I've been writing post-Google Next blogs for a few years now. I tend to report on the key updates, what I think of them, how they might impact the teams I'm working with, and share a bit about my experience.

This time, I'm going to strip it back to the experience, for a couple of reasons:

After Next 26, loads of people are already writing blogs with keynote summaries. And they're all so quick! There's no value in me adding another blog with the same content.
This was my first time attending and presenting as a Google Developer Expert. And this made the experience very different to previous visits. It's been an amazing experience, and I'd like to share some of it with you. (Where else am I gonna share all these cool photos?)

So, grab your coffee and your cat (or is that just a me thing?) and let's go!

What is Google Cloud Next?
- Next 26 Was the Biggest Event That Week, Right?
What's This Google Developer Expert Thing?
- And One Perk of Being a GDE? Going to Next, Baby!
Corporate Note
Sunday: Flying Out
Monday
Tuesday: GDE Summit, Baby!
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Final Reflections
Links

What is Google Cloud Next?

For those who haven't experienced it, Google Cloud Next is the annual flagship event for all things Google Cloud and Google AI. It’s a massive three-day (or for some of us, four-day) takeover of the Las Vegas Strip, bringing together over 30,000 developers, IT leaders, and cloud enthusiasts. It's where Google drops its biggest product announcements, deep-dives into new technologies, products and capabilities, and generally sets the pace for the cloud industry for the coming year.

Some of it can be watched virtually, with the Digital Pass. But most of the session content is only available to those who attend in person.

Attendees occupy all of the hotels along the strip. But the conference itself takes place in the Mandalay Bay Resort and Convention Center, which is HUGE.

Next 26 Was the Biggest Event That Week, Right?

Maybe not! When I arrived on Sunday night, Wrestlemania 42 was underway. Apparently, attendance for Wrestlemania over two nights was nearly 110,000!

What's This Google Developer Expert Thing?

I'm so glad you asked. The GDE program is an invite-only program for individuals who have proven themselves to be both experts, but also evangelists of the Google technology ecosystem. There are only about 1200 GDEs in the world, from over 90 countries. That's about 1 GDE for every 500 Google professionally certified individuals!

The evangelisation part is important. It's not sufficient to be a Google technology expert. You also need a proven (and ongoing) track-record of informing, educating and advising in the public Google ecosystem. This evangelising must extend beyond the scope of an individual employer. And Google does actually count the stats and verify your influence. 🫨

And One Perk of Being a GDE? Going to Next, Baby!

That's right. Google invites their GDEs to attend Next. And they also offer a limited number of speaker slots to GDEs. This year there were around 20 such speaker slots, and my talk proposal was one of the lucky few to be accepted. Woop! More on that later.

Also, for the avoidance of any doubt: there are many perks! But it requires a lot of continuous work. No free lunches here! You put in the work, and good things follow.

Corporate Note

I work for EPAM, and EPAM are a proud Google Cloud partner, and a sponsor of Next 26.

EPAM had a booth on the Expo floor, right in the middle of the action. And my fellow EPAMers presented a number of talks on the cool things they've been building with our clients. You can read about some of these things here.

Oh, just one tiny thing. Announced during Next: EPAM won Google Cloud Partner of the Year for the 4th year in a row.

Just sayin'.

But this is a personal blog, not a corporate one. And with that in mind, I won't say much more about EPAM here. You know, these are my personal views, yadda, yadda!

Sunday: Flying Out

I'm flying out from London, UK. Take-off was around 1730 in the sun. We were in the air for about 10 hours. Did some work. Landed in Vegas a little after 20:00. Sun is just setting. This is a weird experience, leaving me with undeniable jetlag which didn't shift for the whole week!

This is Moulin. He's an excellent travelling companion. Very supportive (especially of my neck), but not too chatty.

Monday

At the Luxor

I was staying the iconic Luxor hotel. It's the one that looks like a pyramid:

Staying in this hotel is trippy. It's a hollow pyramid, and as you're walking along corridors, the strange angles induce a weird sense of vertigo.

Also, the elevators - sorry, inclinators - travel diagonally up and down the sides of the pyramid! I was in three separate inclinator journeys where some hotel newbie would say "What's wrong with this elevator?"

And I'd explain the situation, and let them know they're not in immediate peril!

But it turns out I was in immediate peril. When I got to my room, THERE WAS NO COFFEE. I'm in tech. I need coffee. Fortunately, there's a Starbucks downstairs. They're the real winners here.

The Luxor is located next door to the Mandalay. Here's my view of the Mandalay from my room:

And you can go directly from one to the other by walking through the casinos. Actually, this is pretty much a standard rule in Vegas. You can get EVERYWHERE by going through the casinos. It's possible to go a long time without seeing daylight.

A Sneaky Visit to the Pool

I decided to try and get an hour of sun before the shizzle gets rizzle. Whilst scouting out the pool, I spotted my first fellow GDE. Like every GDE I met in Vegas, I'd only previously met John Capobianco virtually. But even as a distant stranger, this guy is unmistakeable. Pleasure to meet you John! I failed to grab a selfie with John at this point, but we were destined to meet many times.

By the way, this is me at the pool. I know what you're thinking: "Wow, those are hunky legs. Are you part of Wrestlemania?"

GDE Happy Hour

1700 was the start of the Global GDE Happy Hour. And I'm super excited to meet folk. The room was packed full of GDEs and Googlers, but I was feeling a little intimidated. Clearly a lot of people knew each other, and I was feeling a bit like a 5th wheel.

But I was rescued nearly immediately. At this point, two Googlers turned up who are my friends, and who I've been looking forward to meeting for ages: Jack Wotherspoon and Luke Schlangen. They immediately started introducing me to other people, and I started to feel at home. (Side note: Luke knows EVERYONE.)

From left to right: me, @jackwoth, Andrew Brogdon, @lukeschlangen, Bryce Howitson, Martin Omander, Emma Twerksy, and... John Capobianco! (Two Dev Keynote speakers in one photo!)

By the way, Jack and Luke: I want you to know how much I appreciate you guys. In general, but also for hanging out with me that evening.

Here's a couple more nice guys I met in the party: Giuliano Ribeiro and Azidin Shairi.

And a couple of GDE powerhouses that I've known for a while and was also looking forward to connecting with: Mazlum Tosun and @xbill.

In the time it takes me to write this blog, Will will have published 50. He's a content-factory. (Will, somehow I totally failed to get a selfie with you. Next time...)

Then I met Shishir Suresh, fellow GDE from the UK. Another super-nice, welcoming and smart guy. (More with Shishir later.)

And I finally got to meet some of the folks that run the GDE program, and who make this whole experience possible: Ronan Mandel, Asrar Khan, and Alfredo Morresi. Guys, we owe you so much. (Selfies later in the blog!)

Tuesday: GDE Summit, Baby!

Tuesday was the Google Developer Experts Summit, at the Luxor.

This was my first ever GDE summit. The day was packed with talks from some Google titans, followed by a number of round tables. It was a sneak peek of things to come, and an opportunity for no-holds-barred Q&A. The content is all under NDA, so I'm not going break any rules.

But a quick glimpse at some of our speakers and sessions...

A welcome from Ron and Asrar:

Then some insights about the program. Alfredo and Natalie described the geographic distribution of GDEs, the mix of expertise, and the types of contributions we've made in the last 12 months.

Ooh look - that's me!

Then, an amazing hands-on session from Richard Seroter.

"What, THE Richard Seroter?"
"Yes, the very same."

(This guy is my hero. I might mention this in passing as the blog continues...)

This talk was a masterclass in how to do inspiring (and amusing) live demos. The demo included Gemini Enterprise, Stitch integrated with MCP, App Design Centre (which supports SO MANY MORE services than it did a few months ago), App Hub, the new BigQuery Agent for talking to your data, and so much more.

For me, this session reinforced the message that we're in a world where everyone can be a builder with AI. Some folks choose to resist that, for whatever reasons. But we have the option to embrace it, and help builders (who might be our clients) to use AI the right way, and get the most out of the platform.

These were some of the key nuggets. Or rather, my interpretation of those nuggets:

Planning remains crucial, but AI can certain help us with that.
Use cases are rarely unique, even across verticals. So we need to share more.
The lines between disciplines are dissolving with agents. So many folks over the last few days have mentioned how they're terrible at frontend dev (including Richard). But that just doesn't matter anymore.
Software dev tools are evolving. IDEs are evolving from being code-centric to being agent centric. (Aja talked quite a bit about this in the next session.) Now our tools are using multi-modal models, MCP and skills, so we can integrate with everything and we can "see" everything.
*"Builders" are now managers of agents. *
Context engineering is absolutely paramount, as we all knew it would be. And Google's platform now allows for sharing of context between services.
Boring reports should be a thing of the past. There's no excuse to not make compelling material / documentation / business cases, whatever, when we all have access to models like Nano Banana and Veo 3, and the ability to use Gemini in Google Workspace.
Researching has always been one of the things I enjoy most about what I do. I guess it's partly a legacy from that biochem degree, a lifetime ago. But now, everyone can do detailed research in a highly compressed timeline, using agents like Gemini Deep Research and tools like NotebookLM.
Everyone can prototype, and we shouldn't block this. (Enterprises - I'm looking at you!) Embrace the new-found enthusiasm of our new ecosystem of builders. And then, when we're ready to take this to production, Google's got you covered.
Train your builders! Certainly in my current client, I've been spending time educating teams on how to leverage agentic tools effectively, regardless of your role.

Then we had sessions from:

Scott Densmore and Aja Hammerly, discussing the evolving landscape of generative AI coding tools.
Logan Kilpatrick, Michael Gerstenhaber, and David Mclaughlin, discussing the partnership of Google Deepmind and Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform (the artist formerly known as Vertex AI)
A panel discussion combining Cloud DevRel, AI DevRel and GDM DevRel, with Karl Weinmeister, Aja, Dave Elliott, Omar Sanseviero, and Matt Thompson.

Wednesday

Breakfast with Jack

Early start! At 0700 I had breakfast with the legend that is Jack Wotherspoon.

"Not THE Jack Wotherspoon?"
"Yeah, that one."
"The Gemini CLI Jack Wotherspoon?"
"Yeah, the same."
"The Dev Keynote Jack Wotherspoon?"
"Yep."
"Pictures or it didn't happen."

Dammit, forgot to take a breakfast selfie.

Jack and I have been buddies for a while now. But it was great to just chat, and make the most of the EPAM VIP breakfast at the Seabreeze Café in the Mandalay.

The Opening Keynote

The keynotes are held in the Michelob ULTRA Arena, inside the Mandalay. It seats 10,000 people. It sounds like a lot, but it's not enough! Only about a third of people manage to get seated in the arena, and you have to queue early. My top tip for my colleages: for the 0900 Main Keynote, make sure you're in the queue by 0800.

Fortunately, GDEs get a fastlane and reserved seating. Check out this welcome!

The arena starts filling up. Time for a couple of fun photos.

And now let me introduce Jesse Nowlin:

He's a fellow GDE, and he's also a famous content creator. He happens to be the authority on Google Next and always shares an extremely helpful Know Before You Go, like this one:

As we're waiting for the keynote to begin, we were treated to an awesome duo of DJ + dynamic music visualisation using hand gestures to render the code in real time! (If someone knows their names, please tell me!)

The keynote then formally begins with a very cool video, created using Nano Banana 2, Veo 3.1 and Genie 3. Check out the Google blog on how this was done.

And then, as always, Thomas Kurian took to the stage to talk us through some of the big announcements. I said I wouldn't do a proper keynote recap. So I'll keep it short! You can check out the whole Google Cloud Next '26 - Opening Keynote on YouTube.

The era of the pilot is over. The era of the agent is here.

Let me give just a few key points...

The main theme of the keynote was that we're out of the agentic "proof-of-concept" era, into a world where everyone works with agents, and everyone is a builder.
Now we need to ensure our agents are production-ready, that they can scale, that we have seamless observability across our agents and their stack, and unified context, no matter where we are.
Gemini Enterprise agents were central for flight readiness and astronaut safety for Artemis II.
Google continues to be the only Cloud provider that offers a full stack for AI and agentic solutions, and a number of big innovations were announced across all layers in this integrated stack.
Mention of some of the latest models, which are not quite new. E.g. Gemini 3.1 Flash Image (aka Nano Banana 2), Veo 3.1 Lite, and Lyria 3 Pro.
The Vertex AI Platform has been rebranded - with evolution, of course - as Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform.
The new Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform is split across four pillars: Build, Scale, Govern, and Optimize.
The Agent Platform now integrates capabilities like: low-code Agent Studio, Agent Registry, and Skills & Tools Registry.
We now have off-the-shelf agent skills for many Google services and Workspace. Nice! Check them out.
And managed, remote MCP servers for all GCP services are now available in GA.
ADK now supports graph-based deterministic multi-agent orchestration.
Agent Identity, such that every agent has a unique, cryptographic ID.
Agent Gateway, a centralised command centre for agentic policy enforcement.
End-to-end multi-agent observability.
AI Hypercomputer:
- The big announcement here was the 8th Gen TPUs, which are not split across two specialised platforms: TPU 8t for training, and TPU 8i for inference. Lots of numbers dumped here, and mentions of advancements like "inter-chip interconnect".
- Google Cloud Axion N4A - now offering 2x price-performance vs comparable x86
- Support for latest NVIDIA GPUs
- The new Virgo network, which doubles the bandwidth between chip pods in a cluster.
- And up to 1 million TPUs in a single training cluster!
Knowledge Catalog is essentially the evolution of Dataplex. It allows for universal metadata management and context, and supports both structured and unstructured data sources, as well as third party sources.

Okay, you get the idea. You can check out 260 Things We Accounced at Google Cloud Next '26 to deep-dive into any of these topics.

The GDE and Certified Lounge

THIS. This was my favourite thing about Next. It was my oasis. My safe haven. My place of calm. My spiritual home during Next 26.

Look it's John Capobianco, again!

Here we had coffee; we had power; we had the ongoing live streams. And most importantly, ALL THE AMAZING PEOPLE! As a result, I spent way more time in this space than I was expecting. I had so many sessions booked in my calendar. But I ended up skipping several in order to spend more time in this Lounge, interacting with with Googlers and fellow GDEs. (And, of course, panicking for my own sessions and planned activities.)

These are some of the first people I met:

Cristine Souza was organising the GDE Studio Recording sessions here at Next, and my recording session was planned for tomorrow (Thursday). More on that later. But TL;DR - what an absolute pleasure to work with.

Then we have Lisa Carpenter, expert in ML and lead for GDG Bletchley. Thanks to Lisa for such a warm welcome, and: I've joined Bletchley!

And Xavier Portilla Edo. Our paths had not yet crossed. But I know they will in future. This guy is a GDE mentor, podcaster, course creator, author... (Man, I feel old.)

Then I got a chance to take a selfie with Shishir. We only met a couple of days ago, but I feel like we've been friends for a lifetime.

Jesse, who let me try out his cool Meta sunglasses!

And Abdel, who actually interviewed me for the GDE program!

(At this point, if I fail to mention how friendly / welcoming / smart someone is, let's just take it as given!)

Partner All-Stars Event

A few months ago I was fortunate to be named a Google Cloud Partner All-Star in Delivery Excellence.

And so, I got invited to the All-Star event at Next. But, thanks to a stupid migraine attack in the evening, I was scatter-brained and totally missed it. With any luck, there will be a next time...

Thursday

Breakfast with Richard

Early start. At 0700 I had breakfast with the legend that is Richard Seroter.

"Not THE Richard Seroter?"
"Yeah, that one."
"The Google Cloud Chief Evangelist?"
"Yeah, the same."
"The Dev Keynote Richard Seroter?"
"Yep."
"Pictures or it didn't happen."

DAMMIT Dazbo! Why do you keep forgetting to take selfies!

I may have mentioned I'm a fan. Richard has supported me for a while now, and was the person who invited me to the GDE program. So I owe him a lot! We've chatted quite a bit over the last year or so, but never met face-to-face. The fact that he gave up time to chat to me, just a couple hours before the big keynote, is a little astonishing. But he's such a decent guy.

We're in the Seabreeze, and we talked about stuff like: model lifecycles, demand for TPUs, and how Google is well-positioned in the AI long game, given the integrated stack.

And I learned that the keynote speakers get the full Hair, Wardrobe & Makeup treatment. Their outfits are selected for them!

As we parted ways, the unimagineable happened. He said: "I'm a big fan."

This Next is just getting better and better.

The Developer Keynote

This is the session many have been waiting for; certainly the GDEs. It's the Developer Keynote - where the rubber meets the road.

GDEs once again were escorted to reserved seating, right in front of the stage. I was in row 3! Check out the arena behind me:

This was an amazing keynote, where Richard and Emma guided us through the overall journey of building a marathon planning application. And with each section, they brought in Googlers to live demo a particular part of the journey. Again, I'm not going to share details about this. You can check out the Dev Keynote here:

I'll just share a few snaps...

Richard and Emma:

Look, Jack's back! (Watch the video - Jack has a camel.)

Here's Megan:

Jason and Ines:

Puppies!

No Next experience blog would be complete without at least one picture of the puppies on the Expo floor:

I wish I could sleep as easily as these guys!

Recording Session in the GDE Studio Pod

I've been incredibly excited about this. A little while back I submitted a proposal to record a fireside chat at Next, in the dedicated GDE Studio Pod. Then I forgot all about it. (Standard.)

A couple of weeks ago I received confirmation that the proposal had been accepted. Woop!

So, on Thursday afternoon, just after the Dev Keynote, I hopped into the pod with my buddies Jack (yes - that Jack), and Romin Irani. I've known Romin for a fairly long time. He is a Google Developer Advocate, and one of the managers of the Google Cloud Medium publication. Submitting content to that publication is how we originally met. Since then we've collaborated often and I'm honoured to call him my friend.

In the fireside, I refer to both these guys as Google legends. Google already sets the bar quite high on this front. It's rare I meet a Googler I don't like. But these guys definitely deserve "Legend" status.

The chat is about Gemini CLI, agents, MCP, skills, from three different perspectives:

From Jack, Google DevRel, in the AI Tools Team
From Romin, Google Developer Advocate, as someone who has a broad view of adoption through the publication
From myself, from the perspective of what it's like getting these sorts of tools into enterprises

Check it out! And please don't forget to hit the Like button and subscribe. I don't do a lot of YT content, but if you guys like it, I'll try and do more.

Weezer and Benson

At Google Next, there's always a big concert for attendees on the Thursday night. Last year it was The Killers. This year, it was Benson Boone, supported by Weezer.

So look, Google, I don't mean to tell you your business. But for an audience that is arguaby mostly male geeks, do you think Benson was the right choice? Was he though?

Of course, I'm just kidding. However, my wife - a Benson superfan - was not happy that I got to see Benson, whilst she didn't. There's definitely a glitch in the Matrix.

Try as I might to not like him (mainly for the benefit of my wife), there's no doubt that the guy can backflip off a piano without skipping a beat:

Friday

Morning Panic

For me, this was the big event. I was doing a lightning talk in the Developer Theatre, called: Automating the UI with Gemini CLI, MCP and Skills. Just a couple of hours before it was due to start, I was at 815 registrations. Eeeek!

I sat in the GDE and Certified Lounge and did a couple of panicked run-throughs. Whilst there, I managed to get a couple more selfies...

This is Ronan, Lord of Google Cloud GDEs. (I just made up that title. It's probably not his actual title.)

Matthew Eckstrom, it was a delight to meet you!

And now, a life-changing moment. I stood next to Asrar Khan, and thought... "Is he taking the p1ss?" He stood exactly as I was standing:

And then I had a bit of a lesson on how to pose for a camera. How have I gone my whole life without getting this advice? I NEVER look good in a photo. But just maybe half of the problem is how I've been standing.

Here's the post-Asrar-advice version:

OMG, that's so much better! This might genuinely be the most important thing I've learned at Next 26.

My Talk

I did my customary three visits to the toilet that precede any talks I do. Then I was backstage, getting mic'd up. And then... Showtime!

I asked my friends to help me crowd-source some photos. They didn't disappoint! Here's just a few:

And finally, I've ALWAYS wanted to do this. The stage selfie shot.

That was a blast! I think it went well. I didn't quite leave enough time to do Q&A. (Maybe that was by design!)

Quick shout-out: Mandeep, thanks for coming to say hello. It was a pleasure to meet you!

Poker

With the adrenaline still pumping from the talk, I had one last Vegas 'to-do' list item before heading to the airport. It wouldn't be a Vegas trip without at least some time spent in the casino. So I decided to play a couple of hours of poker before my late flight.

My buddy Marius and I found a table in the Mandalay. We both started out with $100 of chips. Over the next couple of hours I was up and down, but found myself with roughly what I'd started with. The girl to my left was dominating the table, and had probably about $1500 at this point.

I figured I was going to depart in the next couple of hands, one way or another. I've got a flight to get to! So, here's how my last hand played out, for any poker fans out there...

Blinds are $1 and $2.
I'm dealt pocket threes under the gun.
I probably wouldn't normally play it, but I knew I wanted to leave soon. I raise to $6.
Girl on my left re-raises to $15.
Everyone folds except BB, who calls.
Now it's back to me. Again, I possibly wouldn't normally call, but I figured, there's over $30 in the pot, I'm already in for $6, and if I happen to hit, they'll never see it coming. So I call.
Flop comes down: AK3. Oh yeah!
I bet $6. She raises to $15. BB calls. All exactly as expected.
I go All-In for about $70.
She calls. BB folds.
We turn the cards. She's got one K, but gets no help from the turn and river.

And then I go back to my room, with roughly twice what I started with. Yay!

I know it's not the biggest hand you've ever seen. But it was a fun way to end the day.

Going Home

Finally, I'm about to board for the 10 hour return flight. It's a little before 2300 and I have the pleasure of meeting Shishir at the gate, alongside my EPAM buddy Suds. Apologies to these guys - I kept dozing off whilst talking to them. I was SO TIRED!

Finally, I'm on the plane. And one of the nicest things happens. A guy who I've never met stops as he walks past my seat. He shakes my hand and tells me my talk was inspiring.

What a way to finish the Vegas experience.

Final Reflections

It sounds a bit cliché to say "it's all about the people". But in this case, it definitely was. I loved hanging out with Googlers and other GDEs. There's so many folks I'd spoken to remotely, but never met IRL. And I met so many unexpected new friends. I feel like part of the family now.

Well, I think I've written enough. That's a wrap!

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