Not exactly news, if you consider that DjangoCon happened two weeks ago. Also, I landed on Santiago three days ago. But only now I feel like writing things on my blog.
Short history: it was a fantastic experience. Just awesome.
Heck, it was my first time in the U.S.
First time speaking in english. Or at least attempting to do so.
First public talk!
I had the opportunity to meet many smart and cool people, and to be in four wonderful places: Mountain View (or should I say the GooglePlex, as I passed most on that time there), Portland, Boulder and Stanford/Palo Alto.
If someone would asked me four months ago if I was going to visit the U.S "soon", I would said: sure, maybe for PyCon 2010, or if I'm really, really lucky, on 2009. Heh.
When I started with my proposal for the Google Summer of Code 2008, back in March, getting accepted was cool enough. Then, just finishing the project successfully was a reasonably ambitious goal, enough to make me very happy. Traveling to the core of Silicon Valley to show my work on a major conference wasn't even on my dreams.
Bottom line: Archiving one of your childhood dreams is really cool. I've attempted to express it with words, but I don't think that it is even possible. This is as close as it will get.
[Side note: If you haven't watched Randy Pausch's Last Lecture, stop reading this and either watch it now or at least bookmark it.]
On the other hand, I'm kind of spoiled now. Obviously I'm looking forward for opportunities to travel again there. Too much places that I wasn't able to visit on this time, and too much people which I'd like to talk to. Which reminds me that I have improve my spoken English skills (which were vastly improved on the short time I was on the U.S, but are still highly unsatisfactory), to enjoy better the (hypothetical) future experiences.
I think I'll make some posts focused on Djangocon, Portland, Boulder and Stanford when I get more time. Right now it's celebration time here on Chile (from yesterday and till Sunday!). As you can see, the returning date from my trip was very carefully chosen ;-)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
It was cool to meet you at DjangoCon! Hopefully you'll be back soon for PyCon etc.
I'd already seen your talk at DjangoCon and it was pretty cool, but I'd just like to take a minute to thank you for pointing out the Randy Pausch video. Without doubt, that's the most inspirational talk that I've seen in a long time. Just amazing.
@eric: Meeting you was also very cool! Let see if I can make it for PyCon 2009...
@ian: You're welcome!
wow... you may know that i can't congratulate you more, really.
and Randy Pausch last lecture is by far the most "inspirational" presentation.. actually now my plan is to follow some of those advices.
... and once and again my friend, you have to make the leap, to some F500.
Regards
Post a Comment