Google meeting held at Royal University

Written by Hor Hab
Tuesday, 30 June 2009

Google engineers from US, China and Singapore confer with representatives from Southeast Asia.

GOOGLE engineers from the United States, China and Singapore met on Thursday with users from a number of countries in the region at the Royal University of Phnom Penh.

The group spent four days at RUPP sharing experiences and ideas and looking for creative ways to solve problems ranging from health and knowledge-sharing to social networking.

Mark Smolinski, a director of Google.org in Southeast Asia, said the event marked the first time the company had come to the Kingdom to organise an event with local users and Google developers.

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It is a chance for students to engage with some of the technology.
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Smolinski said the purpose was to improve awareness and collaboration, and to keep users informed.

"Google@RUPP is great for students because they can have four days interacting with 18 engineers from Google in California, China and Singapore," he said.

"It is a chance for students to engage with some of the technology that they are developing themselves, with help and guidance from Google engineers," Smolinski said.

"They spent four days looking at new ideas and working out how to put these tools together to support technologies needed in the region by collaborating with local developers and those from Google."

The 75 participants came from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. Smolinski said collaboration among attendees would continue via the corporation's Web site.

Phal Des, the director of the IT centre at RUPP, said the event would help to increase cooperation and sharing of information worldwide.

He has organised a team of 15 students to interact with engineers and developers from Google and other countries.

"Students will have learned a lot from this, especially from Google's engineers and from developers from different countries," said Phal Des.

Andrew McGlinchey, Google's product manager for Southeast Asia, said many people were using the company's products on a regular basis.

"I was very impressed with the students and people here," McGlinchey said.

"They are very enthusiastic about Google's technology, and the way they interacted and asked questions was very smart."