I/O 2021: New Decade, New Frontiers

Did you miss any content from Google I/O 2021?

If so, then check out the links below to see the sites and videos linked to throughout the entire map above. (If you missed the roundtables or Meetups hosted on Bevy, then sorry, I think you're out of luck; those are lost to the ether.)

But First, a Recap:

2021 is the first year of Google I/O since 2019, since 2020's I/O was scheduled to happen in the midst of many worldwide lockdowns from the COVID-19 pandemic. While I'm sure much content was being prepared for 2020, it would take a great deal of logistical shifts to prepare all of it to be delivered virtually. But it was certainly worth the wait!

As you can see from above, besides the usual lists of conference talks and meetups, there was also Google I/O Adventure, an explorable "platformer" where you could wander the map, collect wearables and badges, and meet other I/O attendees and Googlers. Obviously a lot of thought and creativity went into this, and while there were certainly some annoying bugs and glitches one might face on a regular basis, I must admit it was just as exciting to spot your friends in this virtual world as it is to bump into them at physical I/Os. Also, I could explore all the usual demos (my favorite part of I/O anyway) all night long, and not be constrained to their usual shutdown time of 5 PM physically.

Why We Should Abolish Physical I/O!

No grueling aspect of getting up super-early to catch an Uber to go across town and get stuck in traffic to make the long walk in, and then repeat the same on the way out
Demo tents are open 24/7; no one's kicking me out of Tensorflow or AR demos at 5 PM
Platform makes it just as random to meet friends of yours as it is in real life
Events were held pretty much 24/7, for all time zones across the world; the event had a much bigger global reach since people didn't have to travel, so more could participate

Why I/O 2022 Should Be Back in Mountain View!

Lots of Googlers were "asleep" in the demo booths, so I couldn't go up and ask questions or have conversations (no matter how trivial) about every demo, like I normally like to do
There's not really a way to just huddle around a specific demo and engage a group of people, like you can physically. Sometimes the best conversations are when multiple attendees and Googlers participate. Unfortunately, the "private conversation" spaces seemed empty most of the time, and usually weren't super-close to demos.
I don't think very many people knew about Google I/O Adventure to begin with, so it was not nearly as crowded as the usual I/O events would be. This, combined with most folks' lack of participation in private chats, made it rather hard to network from within Adventure. Of course, there were plenty of Meetups scheduled that offered the ability to network anyway.
Somehow, I don't think all the content listed in each demo dome made its way to the schedule pages. There may have been some round tables going on at booths in the dome that you'd have to be present for at the certain time.
I wish there was a better announcement system in-game to tell you when to exit Adventure and go to your meetup. Physical I/O ebbs and flows, since most people go to talks at the top of the hour, so it gets fairly quiet in the demos at the beginning, and then busier later in the hour.

Hacking I/O Adventure

It should have been fairly apparent that there are places on the island that are inaccessible just by walking around. Going close to these places, you could meet NPCs that would give you hints. These hints involved taking the part of the URL that comes after the hash (#) and running that through a base64 decoder. Once you did this, you would be greeted by a very human-readable string consisting of your map quadrant, plus your X and Y location on the map. All you would need to do is adjust the X and Y numbers, re-encode the string into base64, and then paste that encoded string back into your browser's address bar after the hash sign. Then, you could teleport anywhere you wish, including the remote islands!

There may have been some other interesting Easter eggs, such as the hidden coding challenge and such. I never do a good job of finding these things anyway, so you certainly won't find it here this year.

What Could You See At I/O 2021?

I have spent several hours crawling around the entire map, and have made bookmarks for what I think is every single available external link from inside I/O Adventure. Enjoy!