I’m going to be honest: when I first heard about DevFest, I didn’t immediately think, “Wow, I absolutely need to attend this.” My first thought was much simpler: what will I actually learn from it?
As a B.Tech AI & ML student, I’ve attended enough sessions where you listen, take a few notes, click a few photos, and then leave wondering what you were supposed to do with all that information. I wanted something different. That is one reason I became interested in DevFest.
But before the main event, I got a chance to experience the Road to DevFest journey through community-led sessions. And honestly, those experiences changed how I looked at the event.
What My Road to DevFest Experience Taught Me
My first Road to DevFest workshop was “Digital Identity Unlocked: Wallets, Credentials & Trust for the Modern Web,” organised with GDG Cloud Gandhinagar and led by Ronak Thacker.
We explored digital identity, Docker, wallets, and how these technologies connect to real-world applications. What I liked most was that it was not just “here is the definition, now write it down.” We were learning, debugging, discussing, and figuring things out together with the team.
That experience reminded me of something I genuinely believe:
Technology hits differently when you learn it by actually building and breaking things.
The second Road to DevFest event I attended was “Agentic SRE — Autonomous Observability, Incident Response & AI Ops” at Lucent Innovation. Neel Shah introduced us to SRE, observability, incident response, AI Ops, air-gapped technology, Google Cloud, Cloud Console, Cloud Shell, Gemini, Google ADK, AI agents, tools, and tool calling.
For me, this session was especially interesting because it connected things that I had previously thought about separately. Logs, metrics, traces, reliability, cloud infrastructure, incidents, and AI agents suddenly started looking like parts of one bigger system.
And that is exactly the kind of learning I want more of.
So, What Exactly Is DevFest?
DevFest is a global tech festival organised by Google Developer Groups. The Gandhinagar edition is jointly hosted by GDG Gandhinagar and GDG Cloud Gandhinagar. The official event page describes it as a community-run day of talks, codelabs, networking, and open-source learning.
The 2026 edition is happening on Sunday, November 1, 2026, at Hall 12A, Helipad Exhibition Centre, Gandhinagar. Gates open at 8:00 AM.
This year also marks the eighth departure for the Gandhinagar edition, with seven past editions listed on the official website.
What Can Students Actually Explore?
This is probably the biggest reason I would recommend DevFest to students.
The official page currently lists 10+ speakers and technology areas including AI & ML, Web, Mobile, Flutter, Firebase, Google Cloud, Kubernetes, and Open Source.
So no, this is not an event where you have to already know everything before walking in.
If you are interested in AI, you can explore AI & ML.
If you are a Flutter or mobile-development person, there is something for you too.
If cloud is your thing, you have Google Cloud, Kubernetes, serverless, and platform engineering through the GDG Cloud side of the event.
And if you are still confused about what you actually want to specialise in, that is also a perfectly valid reason to attend.
One thing I particularly like about this edition is the single-platform format. There are no parallel tracks, so you do not have to sit there thinking, “Should I attend the AI talk or the Cloud talk?” You get one shared event experience instead of choosing between overlapping sessions.
Why I Think Students Should Go
First, because college and industry learning are not always the same thing.
You can learn Python, ML algorithms, databases, cloud concepts, or web development from a course. But hearing how people actually use these technologies in projects and real engineering environments gives you a different perspective.
Second, you get exposure to technologies outside your usual bubble.
I’m primarily interested in AI and ML, but my Road to DevFest experience made me pay much more attention to cloud infrastructure, observability, agentic systems, and developer tooling. Sometimes you discover your next area of interest only after someone shows you that it exists.
Third, there is networking.
And I know “networking” sounds like one of those corporate words students politely nod at and then ignore. But in a developer community, it can simply mean talking to another student, asking a speaker a question, meeting someone working on something interesting, or finding people who are learning the same things you are.
Fourth, there is the community itself.
DevFest is not just about sitting in a hall for a day. It is part of the Google Developer Groups ecosystem, which means you can continue learning through community activities and meetups instead of treating one event as a one-day experience.
What You Get With the Ticket
At the time of writing, the official website lists Regular tickets at ₹749 and Tatkal tickets at ₹999. The ticket includes the full day, lunch, hi-tea, goodies, and a certificate.
There is also a 20% public coupon, DF2620OFF, shown on the official site while its limited uses last. Since coupon availability can change, check the official ticket page before purchasing.
I’m also sharing my ambassador code:
RUTVI-DEVFEST26
If the code is active when you purchase, apply it at checkout and check the final price before completing your registration.
A Glimpse of Previous DevFest Editions
Before you decide whether this is worth your time, it is probably better to see what the event actually looks like.
I’m adding a highlights video from the previous edition below, along with some glimpses from earlier events.
DevFest Gandhinagar 2025 — official highlights
These glimpses are useful because they show something that a poster cannot: the people, the atmosphere, the crowd, and the community side of the event.
You can also add your own previous-event photos here. I’d recommend using 3–5 good photos rather than putting every photo into the article.
What I Personally Want From DevFest 2026
I’m not going to pretend I have a perfect checklist.
I want to learn something that I did not know before walking into the hall. I want to understand how people are actually building with the technologies being discussed. I want to ask better questions, meet people who are working on interesting things, and hopefully leave with at least one idea that makes me open my laptop and start building.
As someone learning AI and ML, I especially want to see how AI connects with the rest of the modern developer ecosystem. My Road to DevFest experiences already showed me that AI does not exist in isolation. It can connect with cloud platforms, agents, infrastructure, observability, tools, and real-world systems.
That is the bigger picture I want to explore.
Who Should Attend?
If you are a student learning AI, ML, web development, Flutter, cloud, Firebase, or open source, this event is relevant to you.
If you are a beginner who is still trying to figure out which technology to learn next, it can help you explore.
If you are already building projects and want exposure to new ideas, you can get that too.
And if you simply enjoy being around people who are excited about technology, honestly, that is enough.
You do not need to walk in as an expert. The official event FAQ specifically says the event is for students, first-timers, and senior engineers alike.
One More Thing I Discovered Through the Community
Another technology I came across through the GDG community was Gemma, Google’s family of open AI models. Before attending these community events, I mostly thought about AI in terms of models, applications, and the things we build on top of them. Learning about Gemma gave me another perspective — especially around smaller, more accessible AI models and what developers can actually build with them.
That experience also reminded me why I like attending events like DevFest. Sometimes you don’t go looking for a particular technology. You attend an event, hear someone explain something you’ve never explored before, and suddenly you have a new topic sitting on your “I need to learn this” list.
I actually wrote about my introduction to Gemma and what I learned from it here: [https://btawrites.com/gemma-for-beginners-part-1/]
If you’re interested in AI and want to go beyond just knowing the names of different models, this is one topic worth exploring.
So, Should You Attend DevFest Gandhinagar 2026?
For me, the answer is yes.
Not because every event is automatically worth attending. And not because putting “conference attended” on LinkedIn magically makes your profile stronger.
I would attend because I have already seen what the Road to DevFest sessions can feel like. I have experienced learning about digital identity, Docker, wallets, SRE, observability, AI Ops, Google Cloud, and agentic AI in a community setting. Now I want to see what happens when that learning expands into a full-day developer festival.
The main event is on November 1, 2026, at Hall 12A, Helipad Exhibition Centre, Gandhinagar.
If you are a student and you are planning to go, this is the time to check the ticket options rather than waiting until the last minute.
Use my ambassador code: RUTVI-DEVFEST26 buy tickets from this link https://konfhub.com/devfest-gnr-26
And if you see me there, come say hi. We can talk about AI, projects, college struggles, or the eternal question:
“What should I actually learn next?”
Sources & Useful Links
- DevFest Gandhinagar 2025 – Official Highlights — Watch on YouTube
- DevFest Gandhinagar 2026 – Official Event Website — Visit the official website
- DevFest Gandhinagar 2026 – Tickets — https://konfhub.com/devfest-gnr-26
- GDG Gandhinagar — https://devfest.gdggandhinagar.dev/