Last day at Techfest, IIT Bombay  and here we came to know that +Ryan Germick  ,( Google Doodle Team Lead ) was gonna come by ! ,well as ” technerds ” ,Me and my friends were very much excited and totally geared up! After surpassing that 1Hr long wait in that line outside ,all I have to say is ” It was worth it 😀 ! ” . Quick note : Ryan Germick is well known for leading the Doodle team that have created more than over 2000 doodles . Some of his well known doodles are sesame street series ,charlie chaplin ,pacman ,star trek ,Les Paul ,Robert Moog ,2012 london olympic doodles and many dozens for +Google . He was involved among those who made the recent Christmas Doodle last year. It was really amazing to have him speak in front of many students around techfest . It was really inspirational watching him speak in front of us.

 So Ryan was here to discuss ” Google Doodles & User Delight ” ,he was really happy to see students attending his lecture ,Since he mentioned ” I appreciate you’ve been here ,instead of looking at Robots , If I were you ,that’s were I would be ! “. So he was here to talk about the importance of Google Doodles & why World needs more of the them ? So he headed over sharing his life story.

His Life story :

     He grew up in Indiana & told us that major part of his journey involved India ,While he was at bolgatty palace cochin ,his shoes were stolen by a guy & Fortunately the same guy who had stolen his shoes was present in the hall that day ,he pointed out the guy giving him round of applause for betraying him ,Lol !. He showed us a Picture from his family at a halloween party ,which was pretty funny though his parents thought him something and that was : ” Only Boring people get Bored ! ” Since he was a kid at that time ,if ever there was a problem he use to remember this Mantra and eternalise it ! He used to draw in his childhood to entertain himself from getting bored .

At this point he also mentioned about how his Art Career went better than his basketball career ,making a fun fact about his interview by a Indian newspaper ,while he was asked about why he became an Artist ? which Ryan responded in a funny manner : ” Because my professional basketball career didn’t work out !” lol !!  he just had made a joke on which it was printed in newspaper as he opted Art ,since he could’nt became a Pro basketball player ! , He also asked the Students to make a Wikipedia page for him ,Since he didn’t had one. Since he had a good interest for Art ,his teachers used to let him spend his time more in the art studio ,where he learnt many programs like Photoshop.etc

  He also took a class of Hindu Mythology where he made many drawings which had Lord Ganesha ,he was so excited that he came to India and stayed in madurai for a year and his favorite place was madurai meenakshi temple at that time ,were he even got married with a indian girl. He made his first website here in India named ” Ryanayana ” from the name ” Ramayana ” with photographs he used to take with camera that had floppy disks in it! he used to design website offline and then used to upload it from a cyber cafe ! This is where he got stuttered and amazed by the paintings on the random walls at madurai which didn’t exist anywhere in the world ,which inspired him & that was pretty much how he got into websites ! At that day he also mentioned his favorite movie star ” Rajnikant ” ,he learned indian painting style from a guy named : Raja ,which he mentioned as his Paint Guru ,where he made painting of Rajnikant too !!

How to become a Doodler :

  Then after getting back to New York from India ,he started his career as a freelance coder due to many skills he learned at madurai ,he also learned several programming languages and started making websites on the fly ! In 2006 he applied at Google ,where he got up in google as a web specialist ,which was very meaning less term as he considered ,where he ended up his first full time job creating many icons ,and his famous motocon that grabbed many’s attention was the ” Poop ” motocon ,where he said that  ” Now ,today if i have to end a conversation i can easily send a poop motocon (smiley) ,and end the conversation right away! ” he was even interviewed upon the same. He has co-designed the Street View Pegman that we all now see while navigating to a place through our smartphones. He was also featured in the street view video that was google’s first viral video on Youtube.

  Doodle History :

   This is the part where he showed us many doodles ,highlighting how Google home page was simple ,telling us more about how doodle was improving day by day.By now they have made about 2500 doodles.

   Pacman Doodle was the highest game play of Google Doodle of all time ,which was named by guinness world record as the most expensive game in pacman history.

   Then he told us that how the Doodle making process works as thousand of peoples submit them online ,which is then reviewed by their team. He also took a moment to tell why the world needs more doodles !

Before google sold out Motorola ,he was also involved in making the boot-up animation of +Motorola Mobility

 Wrapping up his lecture ,Some of his awesome words were :

Robots can’t do everything ,since a human touch is needed always .Machines cannot replace the human touch ever !. Giving the example of Robocop (movie) saying how things go badly 😉 ,he even said technology has got more personal due to the supercomputer that lies in everybody’s pockets today !

Put forth it was a great day of my life ever and everything he said was motivational ,kind and sometimes funny ! We all enjoyed his presence at Techfest ,and ask him to come again next year too.

By Pratik Patil

I am a tech savvy guy..!! i roll over the internet to find the hottest in gadgets around,love to spread my knowledge around.!!

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