The head of KIU information support department became a participant of the Annual Summit, which the multinational company holds for its experts from all over the world.
- Maxim, you are an expert on Google products and, as I know, you already participated in the Global Summit, where experts fr om different countries meet together in one place. This year the meeting was in the USA. What was new and what was the difference from previous meetings?
- The main goal of such Summit is a global meeting of participants and communication. Figuratively speaking, it’s an opportunity to greet people, whom you stayed in touch with in the internet for a long time. Besides, it’s a great possibility to talk directly with the developer. This year the Summit brought together more people than previous years. It means the community is growing and people’s desire to help each other.
They talked about products, future of services, new products, discussed what critical bugs we helped to find and solve. Each country, each market has its peculiarities: different attitude to products, search, for example, people use search in different ways. Google wants the overall launch to be good for everyone, but it doesn’t always work. Reasons are different, for example, languages. Chrome updates about every six weeks and, for example, in our region wh ere the Cyrillic alphabet often works wrongly because the Cyrillic can’t combine with Unicode. It happens that people have problems and we, regional experts, can help them with it.
The Summit lasted three days and was very intensive from morning to evening. Besides, Google pays the experts for travel and accommodation during the Summit.
- What do you think allows Google to be the global company and to stay on a leading position in the market?
- I think it’s a quick development, rapid implementation of services and an international team. Yes, failures sometimes occur but the power of Google, from my point of view, is in a constant development.
- Tell more about the expert program: who can become an expert, what this program is made for?
The experts are volunteers. Participation in the program is open for everyone. To become an expert you need to have only desire – desire to understand and desire to help. And a little bit of eagerness. Programmer skills are optional. To become an expert on Google products you don’t need to write on “Python”, at first, it’s enough to be a Google user.
The program is made for users to help each other because “users” often know a specific product better than technical support.
- How did you become a Google product expert? What is your function?
- I think, a lot of people came to it in the following way: I had some kind of a problem and I didn’t have enough help to understand how to solve it. I went to a forum, saw people, who help others and found out that they are not members of Google. In a while there was a newsletter that if you wanted to participate in the program you could come to a video meeting. I attended this meeting and liked it. It was my beginning.
We help users to solve problems if they didn’t find an answer in the help. It possible to ask a question through a form or on a forum. You can “google” your problem on the forum, probably, it’s already there. Or, for example, there isn’t a solution of the problem but a discussion because some problems can’t be solved.
There are several levels in the experts program. I have a platinum “badge”, so it means I have a mentor status. It means I can help with an entrance into this program. If someone is interested in it, don’t hesitate to write me, here is my email address mak@ieml.ru, I try to help you.