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I recently attended Google Cloud Next '26 in Las Vegas. In this post, I'd like to share my experience at one of the most engaging spots on the EXPO floor: the Agentic Hack Zone.
Hands-On Booths at the EXPO
The Next EXPO floor isn't just about flashy demos to look at — it's packed with booths where you can actually open a terminal or console and try things out for yourself. That hands-on element is one of the things that makes the Next EXPO special.
Among all those booths, the one I dove into was the Agentic Hack Zone.
What is the Agentic Hack Zone?
A bold message was displayed at the Welcome desk.
"Build better agents to scale your impact and accelerate your work"
The zone featured 5 booths, each offering a different codelab focused on a specific aspect of agent development. The flow at each booth was simple:
- Watch a ~5-minute live demo from an instructor
- Run through the codelab yourself
And as a nice bonus — completing all five booths apparently earned you some swag (an Agent Platform T-shirt).
The 5 Booth Themes & Codelabs
Here are the five themes and their corresponding codelab URLs:
| # | Theme | Codelab URL |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Agent Development Kit (ADK) | https://codelabs.developers.google.com/next26/adk-a2ui |
| 2 | Agent-to-Agent Protocol (A2A) | https://codelabs.developers.google.com/next26/adk-agent2agent |
| 3 | Agent Tools / MCP | https://codelabs.developers.google.com/next26/adk-mcp-tools |
| 4 | Agent Governance & Security | https://codelabs.developers.google.com/next26/adk-agent-commerce |
| 5 | Agent Builder / Agent Engine | https://codelabs.developers.google.com/next26/adk-deploy-scale |
Together, the labs cover the full agent development lifecycle — from the fundamentals of ADK, to inter-agent communication (A2A), tool integration (MCP), governance and security, and finally deployment and scaling.
Heads up
- Each lab takes roughly 20–30 minutes to complete
- Expect to spend a few dollars in cloud resources while running them
My Experience
At the venue, I was able to complete one of the booths. The booth provided a dedicated PC and a lab account, so there was no setup overhead on my side — I just sat down and got started. Within 20–30 minutes, I had a working agent up and running. The instructor's short demo beforehand was really helpful too: it gave me a clear mental model of where the lab was heading before I dove into the steps.
I'm planning to tackle the remaining four labs back home.
Want to Try It Yourself?
The good news. You don't have to be at Next to do these codelabs. They appear to be publicly available online, so anyone interested in modern agent development — ADK, A2A, MCP, and the rest — can give them a try using the URLs above. The labs are short, focused, and a great way to get a feel for the full agent stack.
Happy hacking!
To be continued in #2.
[Google Cloud Next '26 Recap #2] Three Unique Booths I Tried at the EXPO
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