VietNamNet Bridge – Two hundred Vietnamese programmers and four Google experts from Silicon Valley participated in a nine-hour, Google-style seminar at the HCM City-based Polytechnic University Wednesday.

Pamela talking with a young Vietnamese programmer.

Google’s representatives appeared at the seminar in jeans and black T-shirts with “DevFest” or “Google” on the front, which made some Vietnamese attendants believe that they were there merely supporting the event.

The four experts from the Silicon Valley were Jason Costa, Google’s Technical Director since 2005; Patrick Chanezon, who left AOL and Netscape for Google to develop Adwords; Conway Chen, Business Development Director in China and Southeast Asia; and Pamela Fox, a programmer of Google Map.

Google’s engineers spoke at length about techniques. While they were talking, listeners could use Slide Share to follow their slideshows on their own laptops. Through Simple-ajax-chat, Vietnamese programmers posed questions for the Google experts, who were sitting down or lying stretched out on the stage. Pamela even started her presentation with a Maccarena dance.

“Google’s engineers gave presentations about libraries and tools that Google provides for programmers in order to encourage more programmers to develop applications based on Google,” said Pham Huu Ngon, a Vietnamese programmer.

Jason Costa talked about Google’s plan to hire Vietnamese programmers and job opportunities for Vietnamese candidates at Google branches, for example the one in Singapore.

“We are seeking Vietnamese programmers for the Google Research and Development Centre in Shanghai,” Costa said.

However, Google’s representatives were reserve about answering non-technical questions, such as whether Google would open an office in Vietnam like Yahoo did, what was the status of Google’s projects in Vietnam, how did Google view Vietnam’s online market.

(Source: Lao Dong)