Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Back and very late

Well,
First I must admit that I forgot that we were supposed to write a second post after the conference. I am doing it now since I firmly believe that better late than never. I really enjoyed attending PLDI and the many many co-located workshops. I especially enjoyed JSTOOLS and PLAS since their topics are very close to my interests. I also was student volunteer and as such I met many other students which was truly a great experience.
This was a great opportunity and I profoundly thank the ACM for the opportunity. And of course I took the opportunity to visit Beijing which was also an incredible experience that I will remember all my life.
Cheers,
José

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Great time

Hi everyone,

Thanks to everybody making this such a good experience!

Did my first talk in front of that many people... and in particular in such a big conference. It was interesting to see how everyone reacted to the idea of having race conditions in a single-threaded environment like the web platform.

I met a lot of great people (some which I've only heard about) and made some good friendships. Thanks again!

Holding the conference in Beijing was definitely a good choice. Not many people have been there so it was a fun experience. Yes, having scorpions, cockroaches and the likes was part of it. I managed to visit most things there as well as have a (short) trip to Xi'an (some 1000 km away from Beijing) to visit the terracotta army.

All in all I had an amazing time!

and back again


For those who haven't been to PLDI and might by random chance be reading this, it is well worth it.  I learned a lot and finally got to put a lot of faces to names.  I also got to learn some new names.  It is definitely fun to spend time in such a large flock of birds of a feather. 


The best part for me was from some of my last minute decisions on some talks.  There were a few talks that were just closer or involved someone I met through random conversation that turned out to be very pleasant surprises, and possibly quite helpful for my research.


In the end, things seemed to run fairly smoothly.  It was nice to work as a captain for the student volunteers, as it gave the inside story on what was going on, and also increased my networking.


For those who couldn't stay much after the conference, take heart in that the weather never got sunny like it was for the conference again.  Beijing was amazing, but the photography is rough when everything is covered in a haze.


Monday, July 2, 2012

Back from PLDI & ECOOP

I had a great time attending PLDI and ECOOP. I got to attend many interesting talks and I got to talk to many interesting people.

I gave my first talk at PLDI, which went well. Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback on my talk and expressed interest in my research. I enjoyed getting to a chance to talk to other people working on API discovery research and getting their perspectives.

I had time to explore Beijing some. I got to see Tiananmen Square, Mao's tomb (which is in Tiananmen Square) and the Summer Palace, which is quite impressive.

Thanks to the NSF for the travel grant, and thanks to the organizers for a great conference.