These are 25 “sure bet” breakout sessions for developers at Google Cloud Next ’25

It can feel like a relief to attend a single-track conference. No choices to make! Just sit back and learn without feeling angst about choosing the “right” talk to listen to. Of course, big conferences have their own value as you have nearly endless options for what you want to learn about. But it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. I helped assemble the breakout program for Google Cloud Next ’25 (April 9th through 11th) and every talk is great. Some will be more interesting to developers than others, and these are the ones I’m confident you’d really enjoy.

Specifically, these are talks where you’ve got speakers I can vouch for, fresh insights about software development, and in most cases, live demonstrations. And, a handful of talks—I asked the Google DeepMind team to fill up a mini-track for us—feature speakers you don’t always get to hear from at Cloud Next.

[cloud] The ultimate Cloud Run guide: From zero to production. Cloud Run is amazing, and these two speakers are guaranteed to do it justice.

[engineering] Unlock developer productivity with AI. How does Google do it? I asked these folks to come show us how Google engineering transformed with AI.

[cloud] Gen AI with Gemini and LangChain4j for the enterprise Java developer. Both of these speakers have deep Java expertise, and Guillaume is contributing a lot to the LangChain4j project.

[Android] Accelerate enterprise Android app development with Gemini in Android Studio. AI assistance is making life easier for mobile devs. You’ll like what this team has to show off.

[DeepMind] Let’s talk about thinking models: Test time compute and reasoning. You won’t want to miss AI research scientist Jack Rae explaining our thinking on thinking models.

[DeepMind] Gemini is now a multimodal creative partner. This will be a can’t miss session with Mostafa showing us the “emerging frontier of multimodal generation.”

[DeepMind] Agents are all you need. Shrestha is going to make us all smarter on the latest advances in AI agents.

[DeepMind] Long context is all you need. I doubt most have effectively unlocked long context, and I expect Nikolay to fix that.

[DeepMind] DeepMind: Replicating the entire computer vision industry using Gemini. Vision use cases are hot right now, and you’ll hear from DeepMind about what’s possible.

[cloud] Take your multimodal data to gen AI with databases and serverless runtimes. Abi is an excellent technologist and is great at demoing live. This talk has a good mix of technologies.

[cloud] Remote development in 2025: Your new default. Great topic, and Jason is going to have have a good time with this one.

[cloud] Architectural approaches for RAG infrastructure. You’ll learn a lot by listening to these two explain different ways to approach retrieval augmented generation.

[cloud] From AWS to Google Cloud: Expand your cloud toolkit. We’ve got folks who are very familiar with other clouds, and can help you map the ideas and services to Google Cloud.

[cloud] Reimagining the IDP: How cloud changes your developer platform. Anna is a brilliant engineer and has an exciting take on internal developer platforms. I’m joining her to help deliver this fun talk, and show off some demos.

[Firebase] Deploy Next.js and Angular apps with Firebase App Hosting on Google Cloud. Deep expertise plus a penchant for live demos? This should be great.

[Firebase] Introducing Firebase Genkit: A new framework for AI development. This is an underrated AI app framework that comes with a lot of extras. These speakers will get you fired up about it.

[cloud] Developer’s jumpstart guide to Vertex AI. Zack and Dave are going to be hands-on for most of this, which should help you really understand what’s possible.

[cloud] Accelerate end-to-end Java application development with Gemini Code Assist. Nobody just uses AI coding assistance. They’re bringing language skills to the tools. These speakers will help you get the most out of your Java work.

[cloud] Build high-performance apps for the edge with Wasm in Go 1.24. Curious about Web Assembly? These are some smart folks who can help you figure out where it applies to edge architectures.

[cloud] Build AI agents on Cloud Run. The co-founder of LangChain joins our Cloud Run experts to look at how to build great agents.

[cloud] Full-stack improv: From idea to app in 45 minutes. This will be a blast. Luke and Simon will pick a framework and database, and then take suggestions for what to build live.

[cloud] Deploy AlloyDB Omni on Kubernetes next to local AI models. Every app needs a database, and Gleb will give you confidence that you can run PostgreSQL in Kubernetes.

[cloud] Ditch the frameworks and embrace core tech: Prototyping in the AI era. Karl is a terrific engineer and is definitely going to deliver an engaging and educational talk.

[engineering] Navigate a web app with an AI-enabled browser agent. Our own technical writing team built an innovative agent to help us improve the ongoing quality of our docs. You’ll enjoy learning about this.

[cloud] What’s new in Gemini Code Assist. There will be many exciting updates, and these great speakers will undoubtably show it off.

There are dozens of other terrific developer-focused talks at Next. Build your program for the conference, or watch out for the recorded version of most of these to show up later.