I am thrilled to be back to Google I/O. Agency G approached me last year because I was the production team lead for the same event in 2021 and I was available as a freelancer.
While Google has not returned to a 100% live event this year, the main keynote sessions and 50% of breakout sessions were live at Shoreline Amphitheatre and its adjacent venue in Mountain View. This is a significant change from 2023 when all breakout sessions were pre-recorded. I was impressed to see a solid workflow Agency G created. They were able to bring back many producers, production crew, and video editors. This helped ramp up the project quickly without much training.
My role was to produce pre-recorded sessions while assisting live session speakers. I provided content creation support, directed studio shoots, and supervised the post-production process. Interfacing with 30 presenters plus product area stakeholders could be hectic, but it was far less stressful than in 2021 when everything had to be reinvented from scratch, and everyone was relying on my decisions. The executive producer at Agency G did a fabulous job navigating all.
All of my pre-recorded session presenters were amazingly dedicated and easy to work with. Their stakeholders were also super responsive. Learning about the latest technologies in AI, AR/VR, Google Maps, Flutter, and Chrome was eye-opening.
While nothing beats real human interaction at a live event, I suspect pre-records may continue to be around because they look better than live breakout sessions on YouTube.