Google Next is Google pitching Google Cloud to CXOs and enterprise customers.
If you’re looking for technical details it’s Google I/O you’re looking for.
>Am I alone? Am I simply jaded?
I've not been to 'Next, but every conference I've been to the best parts are talking to speakers afterwords or magic hallway conversations with developers or other attendees.
Sounds like you got a bit of that at the expo. If you go again, make it a point to hunt down the engineers or speakers you liked and get into the nitty gritty.
Not new.
Overall the conference was not very technical and was characterized by an obsessive focus on generative AI. It unfortunately obscured a lot of the good work that people have done at Google.
For example, there was an excellent talk on work to forecast flood levels in United States rivers by mapping NOAA hydraulic data as time series data in BigQuery. I'm interested in this particular topic and found that single talk worth the trip to Las Vegas. The talk title was "Channel the flood data deluge: Unlocking the American National Water Model". [1] I hope a recording will be available soon.
[0] https://assets.swoogo.com/uploads/3771985-6615e3b5da2cf.pdf