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) .…