DOUG STEVENSON: Hey, everybody.
Welcome to "Meet Firebase," where
you get to meet the Googlers that make Firebase happen.
On the show with me today is James Daniels
from the Firebase team.
James, thanks for being on the show.
JAMES DANIELS: Thanks for having me.
DOUG STEVENSON: Well, tell me.
What do you do with the Firebase team?
JAMES DANIELS: So I'm actually a developer programs engineer
with Firebase.
So what that means is I actually am developer relations.
I get out there.
I talk at events.
I meet developers.
And I'm also an individual contributor,
so I mostly work on our open source SDKs--
DOUG STEVENSON: Oh, OK.
JAMES DANIELS: --and documentation.
DOUG STEVENSON: I guess you worked on Cloud Functions
samples, right?
JAMES DANIELS: Yeah, yeah.
I did quite a bit of work with the Cloud Function samples.
We have some two dozen examples there.
I also did a fair deal of work on the documentation
and then did usability studies into the API and also
the documentation.
DOUG STEVENSON: We love the samples.
I refer people to those all the time.
It answers a lot of questions.
JAMES DANIELS: We had a lot of fun building them, too.
You know, it's nice to actually get
to play with the technology.
DOUG STEVENSON: Yeah, we've got to make sure it
works before we send it out.
JAMES DANIELS: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Often, we get caught up in the building and not necessarily
the using it.
That's where dev world comes in.
DOUG STEVENSON: Yeah, we actually just
got done with I/O. How was I/O for you?
JAMES DANIELS: I actually manned for a good part of it the
Meet the Experts area, so where people came and asked
us questions as Firebasers.
They brought their gnarly technical questions,
and we gave a stab at giving them good answers in the heat.
And then I also manned App Ship 300.
DOUG STEVENSON: OK.
JAMES DANIELS: That was our collaborative video
game built on Firebase where--
STEFAN HOOGENDORN: --users to send direct links to content--
DOUG STEVENSON: And hopefully people
will learn something playing this game.
JAMES DANIELS: Exactly, yeah, and it's a trivia game, too.
So you know, if you've ever played something
like "Space Team," that's very similar.
DOUG STEVENSON: OK, that sounds like a party game--
a lot of yelling and shouting and--
JAMES DANIELS: Yeah, exactly.
DOUG STEVENSON: --things like that.
JAMES DANIELS: Also at I/O, you know, after all this on Friday,
I got a chance to sit down with a couple of our GDEs.
I caught them.
I--
DOUG STEVENSON: So what's a GDE?
JAMES DANIELS: Yeah, those TLAs come out of nowhere.
So a GDE is a Google Developer Expert.
They are an external developer, non-Googler,
that has been blessed by Google to be
one of our experts in a certain knowledge area.
There's a bunch of different ones--
Android, Chrome, Play, Firebase.
DOUG STEVENSON: Firebase, of course.
JAMES DANIELS: IoT, right?
Things like that.
DOUG STEVENSON: OK, so yeah, you took
some time to interview some GDEs at I/O.
So we have some video of that.
So why don't we take a look at that real fast?
JAMES DANIELS: Hey, there.
I'm here at I/O 2017 with Chris Esplin from howtofirebase.com.
That is a cool domain name.
What's on it?
CHRIS ESPLIN: howtofirebase.com is all about taking developers
from the docs to actual production
worthy application architecture.
JAMES DANIELS: What do you do as a GDE aside from howtofirebase?
CHRIS ESPLIN: I attend events like this.
I ask lots of questions online.
I try to communicate as much as possible
and help people get started with Firebase.
JAMES DANIELS: What's a month look like to you?
STEFAN HOOGENDORN: If it's the month of May,
obviously I'm at I/O. But in general, I
try to find positions that I do presentations on.
I try to interact with the community spreading
the word about Firebase.
DOUG STEVENSON: A Firebase GDE in Brazil--
tell me a bit about that.
JUAREZ FILNO: Ola, Brazil.
Yeah, I'm the first Firebase GDE in Brazil.
That's pretty cool.
I do a lot of community stuff--
go to events, conference, planning workshops,
and teaching people, like, how to use Firebase features.
JAMES DANIELS: What is your favorite application
of Firebase that you've seen today?
JUAREZ FILNO: Wow.
Santa Tracker for sure.
JAMES DANIELS: Awesome.
Santa Tracker is very cool.
Anything that made your job awesome or easier?
STEFAN HOOGENDORN: I think the one
that really sticks out for me is cloud functions for Firebase.
At first, we had to do a lot of development
using other Google Cloud Platform products to build back
ends for Firebase applications.
But right now, it's so much easier
to actually build that back end.
JAMES DANIELS: What has been your favorite talk so far?
There's so many to pick from, right?
JUAREZ FILNO: It was about Angler, Firebase,
and progressive web apps.
It's so nice that you can combine Angular, CLI,
Firebase to build really cool progressive web apps, you know?
Because PAA is the thing.
Oh, no, no, no.
Wait, I saw like the Firebase hosting with Cloud Functions.
JAMES DANIELS: Two favorite talks?
I don't know if that's allowed.
One, two, three, go.
Yeah!
Keep going, guys!
CHRIS ESPLIN: Yeah!
DOUG STEVENSON: All right, so it looks like you had a lot of fun
there with the GDEs at I/O.
JAMES DANIELS: Yeah, exactly.
You know, it was good to, you know, decompress after--
DOUG STEVENSON: Absolutely.
JAMES DANIELS: --a long couple of days in the sun.
As you heard, they described a bit about what they do.
We tend to send them to events and have
them speak and-- and really help us, Firebase,
developer relations, scale across the entire globe.
DOUG STEVENSON: So if someone wanted to become a GDE,
what does that process look like?
JAMES DANIELS: Yeah.
DOUG STEVENSON: How do you get started?
JAMES DANIELS: They're actually brought to us by our GDG
leads, our regional leads.
DOUG STEVENSON: GDG is--
CHRIS ESPLIN: Google Developer Groups.
DOUG STEVENSON: OK, Google Developer Group.
JAMES DANIELS: More TLA, right?
DOUG STEVENSON: Just real fast, what
is a Google Developer Group?
JAMES DANIELS: A Google Developer Group
is Google sanctioned meetup.
So you'll probably have one in your nearby community.
They're all over the world.
There's a bunch of them, some of them very, very large,
some of them smaller.
So if you're interested in becoming a GDE,
it really starts with getting involved in your Google
Developer Group in your local region, going to those meetups,
speaking where you can, and getting
to know the people organizing it,
because it's them that need to refer you.
DOUG STEVENSON: I see.
JAMES DANIELS: Or if you're friends with a Googler, right?
DOUG STEVENSON: Right, so it sounds
like you just need to find one of these GDGs and just go.
JAMES DANIELS: Yeah, I mean, get involved.
Start talking.
Don't wait for us to call you an expert before you
start acting like one.
DOUG STEVENSON: I hope more people get involved with that.
JAMES DANIELS: Yeah, exactly.
DOUG STEVENSON: Tell me.
Where are you from?
JAMES DANIELS: I'm actually from Maine, so New England boy.
I hail from the most easterly city in the United States--
Eastport, Maine.
DOUG STEVENSON: Eastport.
JAMES DANIELS: Yes.
DOUG STEVENSON: OK.
JAMES DANIELS: It's a small fishing community.
My mom's family-- all fishermen.
Dad's an auto mechanic.
So I'm a bit of the rebel in terms of using computers.
DOUG STEVENSON: Yeah, yeah.
I was-- I was a little bit of a rebel myself.
How did you end up getting into computer science or software
engineering?
JAMES DANIELS: My first experience
actually programming was actually video game modding.
I got into it.
I was a "Command and Conquer" modder back in the day,
you know, had a lot of fun with that,
but wasn't sure if that's where I wanted
to get into until college.
So when I went to college, University of Maine,
I originally thought I wanted to get into genetics, biology.
But that was a lot of school.
DOUG STEVENSON: Yeah.
JAMES DANIELS: So I bounced around a little bit,
ended up in math, comp sci, and then eventually left school
to start my own startup.
DOUG STEVENSON: OK.
What was that like?
It sounds like a pretty risky--
JAMES DANIELS: So it was fun timing
with the financial crisis and all.
But we managed to build a cool application that
had a lot of users, this golfing startup.
And that went on for a couple of years
and eventually crashed and burned as most startups do,
right?
DOUG STEVENSON: I know about that.
JAMES DANIELS: But I learned a lot.
DOUG STEVENSON: OK, well, yeah.
Yeah, when did-- what came from all that for you?
JAMES DANIELS: I'd say startups, you know,
they tend not to fail because of the technology.
They fail for, you know, reasons around people and not knowing
the product and the fits.
And you know, it's really-- the lesson
is get out there, meet people, talk to them,
and build the right thing.
As a programmer, you often get caught up
in debating algorithms and speed.
And ultimately, if you're not building
the right thing, then--
DOUG STEVENSON: It has to be a product at the end of the day.
JAMES DANIELS: Yeah, exactly.
Someone has to use it.
Someone has to pay money for it.
DOUG STEVENSON: Well, James, thanks for being on the show.
JAMES DANIELS: Thanks for having me.
DOUG STEVENSON: And for those of you at home,
if you're interested in learning more about GDGs
or becoming a GDE, be sure to click the links
in the description below.
Be sure to stay tuned here to the Firebase channel on YouTube
to get more video content like this.
Thanks for watching