Great comments here, and I'm delighted many of us enjoyed it so much.
"wouldn't agree there were absolutely no patronising comments but these were more from ignorance and lack of experience than for any bad intention"
Every single suggestion, idea or point I made was rejected or ignored by our Google dev, and I have come away feeling very sad and demoralised about the whole experience. They made or part-made a website (yet another website, which I'm pretty sure I wouldn't use), and most disappointing was that they branded it with silhouettes of thin men, upright, walking, architectural type silhouettes, none female even, never mind elder. "Don't, please, please don't use those, they say nothing to us, they're not of or about us." Doesn't matter apparently because you can get rid of them in just one click.
I was accused of wanting to steal 'their' code and of threatening him when I said I was going to blog about it all. I had the impression that he had come with pretty much a plan and was determined to stick to it whatever. There was no sense that any contribution I might make to the development of my own Idea was going to be considered, and in the end, nothing was. Nothing.
Four days from the end of the event and I'm still astonished that this has happened. After arriving so brightly optimistic and excited, my Idea will be progressed, of course I'm not going to stop doing the work. And I've written to the two student developers offering to endorse their applications for Google grants. No replies, as yet.
There will be some analysis, and I hope people will be brave enough to come out and share difficult experiences as well as good ones.
Gransnet/Google didn't pay for my travel and to stay in a nice hotel, I'm doing all this under my own steam, and was grateful and delighted to meet other people doing the same. Ideally Google could offer the same grants for development work to those of us who are Ideas people, and I hope they will think about it.
Great to meet everyone: especially Maureen, Geraldine, on many others whom I hope I'll find in these forums - I'm so pleased I went, despite everything.