G-Mauritius : 2 wonderful days with Google!

First of all, mille excuses!

Unfortunately I have not been able to blog the monthly price update of the Petroleum products on the 2nd September 2009. I was surprised by the number of people who told me “To pane blog lo prix l’essence!”. I did not even know that some people did notice that missing post.

The main reason behind my absence in the blogosphere (though only a few days) was the lack of time because of work commitment. Today, after nearly 1 week, I ate dinner at home!

So, here’s the price update for the month of September 2009 😛

Essence : Rs42.05 to Rs 45.20 (+Rs 3.15)

Diesel : Rs 35.45 to Rs 38.10 (+Rs 2.65)

G-Mauritius Day 2009

Gmauritius

Let’s come to the subject of today, which I am sure many are eagerly waiting to read my review.

As you (perhaps) already know, G-Mauritius Day 2009 was a 2 days event during which Google Engineers shared some of the invaluable knowledge to some 100 Mauritians. This initiative, a first in the African continent, was truly a success, and the Board of Investment can be really proud for making this a reality. Hats off to the whole team, you were wonderful!

During the last 2 days, there was a wide exposure of Google products and technologies to the participants, including live demos. It was really nice to interact with the Google Team (Sasha, Ade, Julian, Chewy and Mary) who work in Google offices located in different parts of the world.

Day 1 was mainly aimed to software developers, since most of it was technical. Google Maps, Google API, Google Web Toolkit were some of the topics. I even felt lost a few times!

Inside the Conference room

Shah did take nice shots with his camera. He is truly a twitter addict, and I experienced that live while sitting besides him on Day 1.

The first day ended with a very nice Cocktail Party at Four Points which started at about 7pm. What time it ended? I dont really know since I had to leave the party at 9pm to go to work (yeah!) but the BOI team left the hotel after midnight!

Google party

Wonderful shot on Fadilfr flickr.

BOI made a great surprise to the Google Team for the 11th Anniversary of Google (which falls today!)

Google Cutting Cake

Neodil was lucky to get such a nice picture of Mary (Google) cutting the birthday cake in the presence of the Finance Minister.

Dilraj,me and Ashesh | Eating my Google Cake! | Google team

Day 2 was much lighter and allowed us to discover Google tools to improve your business online. Most of us were amazed by the wonderful tools (Google Analytics, Adwords, Google Webmaster Central among others) and their results!

Nevertheless, tweeps did catch someone sleeping today! lol

Conference room

Laptops were made available to all the participants.

Indeed, G-Mauritius was a heaven for Twitter users and bloggers. The event gave the opportunity to the virtual friends to meet in real. It was really cool to meet and discover the people behind some blogs and twitter accounts.

Truly a small bloggers’ event : Ashesh, Ashvin, Avinash, Dilraj, Jevin, Kailash, Shah and Sou (Did I miss someone?). During these 2 days, Mauritian tweeps present at the event kept writing and discussing live during the presentation sessions.

Google gifts….

Google Tshirts, Google 2 GB Pendrive (Real pen + the  usb drive lol), nice Google File + the loads of cakes, snacks offered by BOI during tea and lunch breaks.

Gifts

Ahhhh! I can already feel that a few people are being jealous 😛

What could have been done better?

Generally, there’s always some room for improvement, but I am sure most of the participants will agree:

  • A decent internet connectivity!However on hearing the provider’s name, I told to myself “La queue lichien pas cpv faire vine droite!”
  • haha, and another great party for the Day 2 lol ! 😛

These 2 days were simply great and I feel really proud to say that I was at the G-Mauritius Day!

In a few words, I would describe it as an wonderful enriching knowledge sharing social event!

Were you there? Do you regret for not being there? Do discuss and Share!

Useful links :

Pictures available at

Other bloggers’ review :

It is exactly midnight, time to publish the article!

Have a nice weekend everyone!

20 thoughts on “G-Mauritius : 2 wonderful days with Google!

Add yours

  1. Wi mo ti asize a coter Yashvin – li pareil couma banne fotos ki li ti poster lor internet. 😛

    BTW, Twitter FTW!

    Google Mauritius Day = AWESOMENESS!!!

    I believe we’re all interested in using Webtoolkit and AppEngine more often in our personal and “work” apps. + We are now obliged into adopting OpenSocial as part of the “Googlization of our souls.”

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  2. Yes am already jealous only by seeing that you own a google shirt ..xD

    you are very lucky and hope that you enjoyed your G-cake =)

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  3. allala bye yashvin……. ki pane resi met so T-Shrit Google!!! boukouh doukh lol..

    It was a nice pleasure meeting the Brillant Googlers (some who have GOATS as part of their lives) 😀

    Had new twitter contacts and followers as well too..

    Poor Yashvin: have to work till really late (or morning also) and then come to the event… Manz r li!

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  4. sounds nice 🙂 I had a feature request for Google’s weather service api.. Maybe they can happen to be reading this post 😀
    my request: add reverse-geocoding to your Weather API!

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  5. Thanks for the information on this event. I would dearly like to have a chance to see some of those G + Emtel demos. I hope that they will do something orientated for the end-users/public in the future

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  6. I added your blog to the advert section of mine. Check out my sidebar. Also, check out my last post which I was referring to @ GMDD – using mobile press to Google Gadgets.

    [delete this comment – it’s not related to the topic statement]

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  7. So this guy asking about Eucis is called Ashesh!
    Enchantee monsieur 😉

    See we still identifying each other even after the event 😀

    By the way it was only when I saw Yashvin as member of the G-Mauritius group that I asked Vimla to show me where you are :p After that you came to meet me.

    Oh and among all bloggers you met am the only girl !!! I honoured lol

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    1. @Harsha : Yeah? I guess you were not on twitter then?
      Not only nice, but it was an experience which only lucky ones get 😉

      @Souraksha : Yeah, the only blogger girl, but on seeing you, I told myself that you are a familiar face (on the web).

      Being a blogger is a great thing, people remember you easily just like a few persons told me “To Yashvin non?” 😛
      It is always a great honor when people say this to me 😀

      Vimla was in Information System course (if am not mistaken), and I came across her a few times, especially in the computer lab, but I don’t remember having ever talked to her during university days. Anyway, was nice to meet both of you, as well as the loads of people there.

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  8. Yeah it was awesome, learn quite a few things… i do regret not getting the gifts though….pendrive could have been useful, just lost mine….:(

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  9. MEGALOL!
    “La queue lichien pas cpv faire vine droite!”!!
    Hahahahaha, I was talking to a Nomad guy the day before and he was telling me he’s improving his service, customer retention, satisfaction, a lot of bla blah…

    Like

  10. (hey Yashvin, could you enable nested replies on your wordpress?)

    @Souraksha Nice pleasure meeting you dear. You have a very beautiful name btw. Let’s keep in touch Online, now that I know you are a blogger also..

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    1. @Ashesh : I don’t really like nested replies, becomes a bit messy to follow which comments are first etc…
      Not planned to enable this for the moment, but I may reconsider my decision later. 🙂

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  11. @Yashvin: Hehe nopes Vimla was CSE student 😛 I was IS student a year after her.

    @Ashesh: Went on your blog recently, saw our picture there :P. And thanx for my name 🙂

    Like

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