Powering Up Google Apps Script with Gemini AI — My DevFest USF 2025 Talk Recap

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This weekend, I had the privilege of presenting at DevFest USF (University of South Florida) — part of the world’s largest community-driven tech conference hosted by Google Developer Groups. Held on November 15, 2025, at the USF Engineering Building II in Tampa, the event brought together an incredible community of developers, students, innovators, and tech leaders from across South Florida and beyond.

The theme for this year resonated strongly:
Global community, local impact.

My session, “Google Apps Script & Gemini Power Up,” focused on helping people automate their workflows, integrate AI, and build powerful tools using nothing more than Google Workspace and a bit of JavaScript.

Here’s a full recap of what we covered.

Google Apps Script and Gemini Power UPDownload

🌎 DevFest USF — A Community of Builders

DevFest USF 2025 was a full day of:

  • Talks from industry experts
  • Hands-on demos
  • AI, cloud, web, and mobile development tracks
  • Networking with developers across Tampa and South Florida
  • Student-focused learning from the University of South Florida’s vibrant tech community

Location:
ENG – Engineering Building II
4220 E Fowler Ave, Tampa, FL 33620

Date & Time:
Saturday, Nov 15, 2025 — 9 AM to 5 PM EST

With developers, students, GDG members, and tech professionals filling the rooms, the energy was high and the discussions were fantastic.

🚀 Why Google Apps Script?

I kicked off the session by highlighting why Apps Script remains one of the most accessible and powerful automation platforms for both beginners and professionals.

Apps Script gives you:

  • Cloud-based JavaScript
  • Automation inside Sheets, Docs, Drive, Gmail & Forms
  • No servers required
  • Instant deployment
  • Integration with Gemini AI

From generating PDFs to building chatbots inside Sheets, attendees explored how simple code can dramatically boost productivity.

⚡ Live Demo Highlights

1. Custom Functions in Sheets

Attendees saw how easy it is to create functions like:

function ADD_NUMBERS(a, b) { return a + b; }
function POWER_NUMBERS(a, b) { return Math.pow(a, b); }

These instantly become usable directly in Sheets.

2. Automating PDF Reports

One of the high-impact demos showed how to:

  • Build a report in Docs
  • Insert a dynamic chart
  • Export to PDF
  • Email it
  • Schedule it daily with a trigger

Perfect for business reporting, sales summaries, or academic workflows.

3. Extracting Text From PDFs

This demo showcased:

  • Reading PDFs
  • Extracting totals
  • Emailing the summary

An example that caught the audience’s attention for accounting and record-keeping use cases.

4. Fetch & Store API Data in Sheets

Using the Random User API, we fetched sample data and populated a sheet automatically — perfect for testing, mock data, or dashboards.

🤖 Supercharging Google Workspace with Gemini AI

The second half focused on integrating Gemini into Apps Script using the REST API.

We covered:

✔ Secure API key storage via Script Properties

✔ A core AI function callGemini_()

✔ A Sheets custom function: =GEMINI_COMPLETE()

✔ A Sheets sidebar “Prompt Pad” for rapid prompting

✔ A Google Docs summarizer

✔ A Gmail reply generator

✔ An image-description generator using Drive + AI

These examples demonstrated how AI can enhance productivity, automate content creation, and bring intelligent features directly into the tools we already use every day.

🎤 Engaging Audience Q&A

The USF crowd asked excellent questions around:

  • Quotas & limits
  • When to use Apps Script vs. Cloud Functions
  • How to design safe and efficient AI prompts
  • Best practices for handling sensitive data
  • Real-world use cases in education and enterprise

The enthusiasm—and the number of attendees wanting to try the examples immediately—was fantastic.

🙏 Thank You, USF & the South Florida Dev Community

DevFest USF was a reminder of why the developer community is so special:
curiosity, collaboration, and the drive to build a better future with technology.

To everyone who attended my session:
Thank you for your time, your questions, and your energy.

Let’s keep building together.

🔗 Resources