Google's I/O conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco is a lot of things. It's the debut of Google's latest projects to the world. It's an informative conference for developers. It's a chance to meet with Google one-on-one and, of course, it's a massive party.

During the 9 months leading up to the event, Instrument was tasked with creating and directing I/O's visual presence, for both the physical conference and the web. The first part of Google's request was to concept an online experience that would bring together the community of developers around the world to build and share something unique. Our response was to create a game.

Our game, Input/Output, is the first of its kind, an interactive HTML5 Experiment that allows Google+ users to create a particle-moving machine by dragging and dropping mechanical parts onto a board in order, sending the particle from the input to the output terminal. The name Input/Output is a nod to "I/O," which references and celebrates "Innovation in the Open."

The "Input/Output" interactive HTML5 experiment inspired thousands of developers and non-developers alike to create Rube Goldberg-esque machines and show them off on Google+. Machine boards poured in and prompted Google to create a special gallery of their favorites. Play the game for yourself and get lost in building your own machines.

The game was just the beginning. We also redesigned and rebuilt the conference website, providing all the essential content in a smart and accessible layout.

We created a clean, modular website capable of complex updates and simple views of I/O's schedule, speakers and events. Each page was built with conference attendees in mind, including mobile versions for easy reference during the event. To provide a great experience for the millions of viewers who couldn't attend the multitude of sessions at I/O, we created a venue on the website to live stream video of many sessions, including the keynote speeches, as well as provided links to download every speaker's presentation and slide notes after the event.

At the live event, everything came together. Since we were in attendance we were excited to see everything in person, from Input/Output machine parts hanging off the ceiling to our t-shirts and badges on hanging on everybody's neck. Also standing out was a 480-square-foot LED wall that we designed and built at a breakneck pace in the weeks prior to the conference. This wall was lit up with realtime Google+ posts covering all the scoop at #io12 from developers at the conference and all around the world.

As a result of Google's innovative debuts and a solid partnership with our team, the I/O 2012 conference posted big numbers. Over 1 million more people watched the online stream in 2012 than in 2011, and over 30,000 developers, a triple-increase from the previous year, got together for live-stream viewing parties around the world, from Cairo to Senegal.