Programmatic IO 2022

I've been busy for the last few weeks: both for work and private. The word 'busy' comes to us as a synonym of tiredness, but sometimes of energy or vitality. And for me, that was the latter because I could've been on a business trip - after a long time since the pandemic. I attended Programmatic IO 2022 Las Vegas last week.

My last flight was almost two years ago. I visited Korea during the first year of the pandemic. At the time, the San Francisco Airport was a silent and lonely place. This time, the terminal was full of people. Half were masked and another half without masks. It should make me nervous, but oddly, a part of my mind got relieved when I saw the 'normal' crowdedness.

It was Vegas, but I didn't have any specific places where I wanted to go because I've been in Las Vegas last Thanksgiving. So I tried some fine Vegas cuisines that I couldn't try before.

Momofuku is David Chang's Fusion Asian restaurant. I love his Netflix show: Ugly Delicious - especially the first episode: Pizza. There were so many menus, but our server told us that we could just tell him our budget, then he tried to match the best of the day.

I heard Joe's Stone Crab was one of the finest seafood restaurants: originally from Miami. We ordered the famous stone crab. It was much smaller than I imagined but... fresh. Yes, fresh is the right word - rather than just delicious. I had had so many crabs in many places, but it was my first time the word 'fresh' came up to my head when I had the first bite.

I don't think it is appropriate to write about my takeaways from the conference in this blog, but I can tell the conference was great in that I could catch every meaning of words that I'd heard there. I love to attend technical conferences: i.e., WWDC. But WWDC is rather my hobby; I could enjoy every session, but (frankly) not many topics were directly related to my living/work - as I was not an iOS engineer. However, at this conference, I could tell every bit of the implications of each session. I realized I'd already been in the online ad industry for almost five years. Time flies fast; of course, there also was a two-year blip in the pandemic.

The conference meal was also great - like all conferences in Vegas. The breakfast had bagels and (of course) toasters. I was sorry I couldn't find anyone from Apple who could have a chance to learn what the conference breakfast should be.