The 16th edition of DevFest Goa, organised by Google Developer Groups (GDG) Goa, was held at the Panaji Convention Centre, Panaji on Saturday. The festival brought together industry professionals, developers, founders and Google Developer Experts for technical discussions, networking and an exchange of ideas on AI and Cloud technologies.
Themed “#Any.Body.Can.Code.”, the festival focused on strengthening Goan , creating career and entrepreneurial opportunities within the state, and encouraging technology solutions for challenges faced by local communities.
The festival brought together speakers from leading companies such as Salesforce, Qualcomm, OneCard and Cobweb MENA, alongside more than 300 delegates from across India, for technical discussions, networking and an exchange of ideas on AI and Cloud technologies.
Addressing the gathering, D. S. Prashant, CEO of the Startup and IT Promotion Cell (SITPC), Government of Goa, emphasised the role of startups in achieving Viksit Bharat. He said India needed a leap in economic growth to secure prosperity before an ageing population placed pressure on productivity, and identified a strong startup ecosystem as an effective driver of that growth. He announced that Goa’s AI policy would be launched soon, with an AI conclave scheduled later in October. The state government, he added, was actively pursuing the adoption of AI solutions developed by startups to improve governance.
Speaking about the event and its vision, Founder of SoFueled and organiser of DevFest Goa, Prajyot Mainkar said aim was to inspire delegates to build ventures, hire local talent and build from Goa, thereby contributing to the state’s economy. He emphasised the importance of nurturing Goan talent and said Goa’s AI and IT policies and technology ecosystem provided a foundation for growth. Calling for greater collaboration, he urged the community to build from Goa for the world.
The technical programme covered AI, Google Cloud and modern application development, with sessions on prompt engineering, securing AI agents at scale and engineering cost-effective LLM applications through effective token budgeting.
Jay Thakkar, AI/ML Engineer and Google Developer Expert, led a session on “Securing AI Agents at Scale,” examining the transition from prototypes to production, the security challenges of scaling and the safeguards required. He urged developers to understand how the entire system operates, beyond its generative AI components, to build more reliable and secure AI agents.
Kartikey Rawat, Senior AI Developer Advocate at Qualcomm, discussed bringing AI capabilities to local devices so that data can be processed on-device without being sent elsewhere. He urged developers to strengthen their understanding of system design and the components underlying their applications. Emphasising that AI agents are only one part of a broader system, he highlighted the importance of integrating technology stacks effectively to build better applications and improve the developer experience.
Ekta Shah, Associate Data Scientist at MSCI, led the session “Prompt Engineering Got You In. Token Budgeting Gets You Out.” She examined how developers can balance token usage with accuracy to make AI tools more efficient. Drawing on experiments and practical applications, she highlighted the importance of effective token budgeting and well-structured context in improving results while managing costs.
Context and collaboration were key themes in the sessions conducted during the event.. Tarandeep Singh, in “Your Agent is Not Smart. Your Context is,” explored the role of context in AI agents. Ajoe Joseph, Software Engineer and Google Developer Expert in Cloud AI, covered connecting remote agents through Google’s Agent Development Kit and the Agent2Agent SDK. Bringing the discussion into the workplace, Namrata More, Solution Product Manager at OneCard and Google Developer Expert, spoke on building enterprise agents with Google Workspace and Gemini.
The programme also examined how AI interacts with websites and multimedia. Aarshad Devani, Senior AI Architect at Cobweb MENA, introduced WebMCP in his session “Your Website is Now an API for AI Agents.” Geeta Kakrani, AI Consultant and Google Developer Expert in AI/ML, explored multimodal agents using Gemini Live API and Gemini Omni. Addressing application costs, Mrinal Prakash Desai presented “Stop Burning Tokens: Engineering Cost-Efficient LLM Applications.”
DevFest also brought together GDG Goa’s year-long community initiatives, including Build with AI, Solve for Goa, Agrithon, Goa Code Premier League, Code for Communities and Cloud Connect Days. These initiatives connected developers with real-world challenges and encouraged collaboration among government, industry, startups and the developer community, with an emphasis on building opportunities and useful technology solutions within Goa.
