India to London : Flutter Live 2018
Mails are my favorite notifications, specially when the headline says —
Congratulations, you have won a Travel Grant to the Flutter Live
After a long process of visa, I packed my bags, took my passport and left for the beautiful City of London. This was my first time out of Asia, naturally my first long flight, and obviously my first time to London. And as soon as I landed, the British air and the little British houses stunned me. 😍
Flutter Live 2018 was crazy. Every announcement was crazy. If you are a mobile or Flutter developer you cannot miss this. In fact, after the announcements, I would say, you can be a developer of any platform, and you would still be stunned after the keynote.
PS. Too busy to watch the 90 minute keynote? Watch the short 10 minute recap here.
My favorite parts from the keynote —
- Square’s partnership with Flutter, yaaay to easy payments in Flutter apps
- I’m blown away by Flare. I don’t think animations can get easier than this.
- Desktop Embedding. I don’t want to give away the surprise here. You have to watch the keynote yourself and get blown away more.
- And ofcourse, Hummingbird. 😍
- I also had a small appearance in the #MyFlutterStory video, and that is obviously my favorite part too. 😋
#AskFlutter Interview
I’m still pumped about the fact that I got to be a featured guest on #AskFlutter segment of Flutter Live and had the great opportunity of being interviewed live by Wm Leler and Andrew Brogdon. Atleast 150+ viewing parties and thousands of viewers around the world saw me on Flutter Live livestream talking about my path to Flutter and my future plans. The number of congratulatory messages and mails I have received after the show is crazy.
If you missed it, you can catch me live here. It’s a 5 minute interview, and I’m super nervous at the beginning, so kindly ignore all that, haha. :D
Disclaimer : I don’t work for Google, or specifically Flutter. I don’t get paid to do all of this. Flutter is like my favorite book or movie, that I want to tell everyone about, so that we all can discuss about our favorite parts. I really want Flutter community to grow huge, because who doesn’t want their favorite movies to do successful at the box office?
Social Hour
The craziest hour of my life.
Almost all the people that I have been interacting with, in the last 6 months were right there under the same roof in London. This was my celebrity crush moment.
Wm Leler and I have a great bonding, thanks to his Bangalore trip for DroidJam and GeekyAnts Flutter meetup. So it was great meeting him again in another country. I have watched Andrew Brogdon so many times on the Boring Show, it was crazy to be in the same camera frame as him. I have interacted with Tim Sneath not just because of Flutter, but he was also my Google mentor for the Women Techmakers Udacity Scholarship recipients’ Resume Review segment. And I finally got to meet him in real. He is such a happy happy person. You can’t ever lose your smile when you are talking to him.
I met so many others from the Flutter team. Emily Fortuna who has always empowered me, Eric Seidel, the face of Flutter, Martin Aguinis, and so many many other people. And the crazy part that everyone of them recognized me by my name. Somebody pinch me again. 😯
But most importantly, I met Nilay Yener, the main reason why I could be at this event. This incredible woman has supported me in every path and made sure I grab each and every opportunity that comes my way. And in reality, she is the same cheerful person that I keep seeing on social media. Even in reality, she is the most comforting person in the room.
And I met so many others from the Flutter community who came from all over the world. Thomas Burkhart, who immediately thought I was too small, hahaha! Marie Jaksman from Nevercode, who got me chocolates from Estonia! I taught Simon Lightfoot, Norbert about camera perspectives when taking pictures with short people like me :P. I even spoke to Brian Egan, Marcin Szałek, Romain Rastel and so maaaany others, I have lost count.
Moreover, my friends from India were also there who kept the fun factor alive and made it easier for me to be comfortable in another country.
There were also plenty of things to do at the social arena. A photo booth that lets you take crazy photos with the Flutter Live wall in the background and you can get instantly printed photos for everyone who are part of the photo. (Did I mention, its free? :P) The most famous was the Dash claw machine. You don’t just get a Dash, you earn it. They also had a Flutter apps viewing wall where you can see and use all the crazy apps built with Flutter. I heard there was a Hot Reload game as well, but I guess I missed it.
Is this how Cloud 9 feels like…
This was a dream trip for me. I knew it for months that Flutter Live is happening in London, but never did I think, that I would be part of it. The travel grant came out of nowhere, and then soon I was preparing documents for my visa in London. And here I was in London, representing India at the biggest celebration of Flutter, met my long distance community friends with whom I have been interacting with since months, and became one of the featured guests of #AskFlutter that was live-streamed to the entire world. Everything was so surreal. Everything still is.
I’m so glad that I could be part of this celebration and I am able to share this with all of you. I also got a lot of goodies to take back to India. And no, I did not get another Dash, because I already have one, so he gets all the love, haha! :P
