Google I/O 2011
Project Overview
With the 2011 I/O website, Google was looking to rebrand their largest conference to date, as well as push their motto “Innovation in the Open” to the forefront of all communication to attending developers and those watching around the world.
To create anticipation for the conference, we engaged the developer audience months before I/O began by creating an interactive bouncing-ball, javascript countdown clock with movable page elements. Buzz spread about the countdown as users began rearranging objects on the page to create "remixes" of the site. We kept the page fresh with multiple versions of the countdown for major holidays like Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day and a special 90s throwback edition for April Fools’ Day. This targeted approach paid off, and by the time registration began, it had nearly ended, with the conference selling out in a record 59 minutes. (The year before, it had taken 50 days.)
At the actual conference in San Francisco, we counted down the final seconds with a video countdown on a massive 80-foot screen that spanned the entire stage and provided an exciting lead-in to the Keynote speaker. For those online, when the clock hit zero, the real magic began with a series of explosions and transformations in HTML5, as the balls morphed into a series of Google icons. (Watch it here.) The countdown was a hit with the developer community for its creative use of HTML5 and availability through Google Chrome Experiments.
After the countdown, we debuted I/O Live, the first opportunity to watch the I/O conference sessions on streaming video on the website in realtime from San Francisco's Moscone Center. We continued to build buzz about the conference by rolling out major announcements as they happened and showing viewer reactions on Twitter with location-based “#io2011” tweets on a spinning globe via Google Earth. Attendees were also seen sporting our colorful t-shirts, which remained interactive with a morse-code puzzle on the back (covered by Engaget).
I/O 2011 achieved new heights in both site traffic and overall press coverage from previous years. Traffic continues as the 2-days worth of content lives on the site as a permanent archive where users can watch the keynote speeches, session videos, and even download presentation slides to their computer. The 2011 site truly promotes open innovation and content and has set benchmarks for future I/O gatherings to come.
Credits
- Creative Director JD Hooge
- Technical Director Phong Ho
- Producer Amie Pascal
- Designers Martin Linde, Zech Bard, Christine Vo
- Developers Phong Ho, Mark Mahoney, Ryan Roemmich, Stefanie Hatcher, Matt King
