‘Google I/O Extended 2017 Sri Lanka’ kicked off with two events in Colombo yesterday with top mobile service providers Mobitel and Dialog each hosting an event.

A large number of developers, ICT professionals, industry leaders, university students and young tech-savvy innovators participated in the events.

Mobitel conducted an island-wide competition for innovators, under the theme ‘Inspire Sri Lanka’, while the first ever open robot battle in Sri Lanka entitled ‘Chromium Collision – Battle of the Bots’ was powered by Dialog.

Google I/O is an annual developer conference held by Google in San Francisco, California, which showcases technical in-depth sessions focused on building web, mobile, and enterprise applications with Google and open sources.

Two Sri Lankans - Udaya Gunathilaka and Pamuditha Imalka – representing Google Developer Group (GDG) participated at the parent event – ‘Google I/O’ in the United States.

The I/O main event and the extended events bring local developer communities together to experience the I/O keynote and sessions with one another in real time, around the globe.