Last Day of ICFP

Yeah…my camera is not uploading images

• Probably another short in my cable, so I’ll do it when I get back. Maybe I’ll just do a full post of pics!

It’s been incredible

• Every..single…day.
• For PLMW, my peers were joking that I was a celebrity now, because Simon immediately asked me my name for his talk (as part of his interactive example) and used me three times. He also remembered me the next day, also, which is pretty incredible. Alas, he lost his red sweater :( Strangely, I too own a red sweater exactly like the one he has. A bit eerie. I slept in that sweater when I was in upstate New York. I don’t wear it unless it’s “snow weather” cold anymore, because mom is embarrassed by the state of that sweater, too :)
• I also ran into Kmett, who said he “tripped out” over my badge, because he recognized me from summer of code. I got to talk to him about Hyperloglog (his library), since I was reading up on it after watching Gabe’s talk on folds.
• I also met Bartosz and met up again with Matthias and Ron and Ranjit and everyone.
• I met Yaron Minsky. He was very nice and told us a bit about who they hire at Jane Street now compared to years ago (in terms of the background), and what he’s been working on these days.
• I met David from Galois, who worked with Dan on Little Typer (we also went to that book release party) . I met David via email because I was planning on attending the Galois workshop in UMass, but had to dog-sit last minute and didn’t end up going (I totally would have gone for the day! It was a Haskell workshop. However, I’ve also tried to convince him to have one on the West Coast).
• Chris’s dinner for K-12 education was amazing. I met so many great people there (and Bartosz also ate dinner with us, so we were joking it was also “teaching Category Theory at the K-12 level”).
• Robby was the Chair for the conference, so he was pretty much my boss. He’s always fun to work with and just so calm…always.

Highlights

• We went out for dinner last night and had barbecue. I met Joomy officially, but a group of us, including Racketeer Ben (who I met at POPL) hung out and spoke about what we would like to work on in terms of ideas. These guys are SPILLING with ideas they find interesting to explore. It’s energizing. Joomy even asked if I’d like to work with him on some research.
• I saw Kenny’s talk and he introduced me to Stephanie, and she ended up inviting me to their Open House in October. So I may be there then; we’ll see.
• Another professor came up to me who also does Haskell and we exchanged emails; I will also apply to his school. He does type theory work..so YES.
• Finally, I was tasked to work the OCaml session yesterday. I came in to hear “Oui, bon!”. It’s all full of some amazing French people! I learned about the Facebook Programming Languages Research group, and met one of the guys who works on infer. I also saw a really compelling project that I thought I could seriously do in Haskell, and I made contact with the researcher and he said they would love to have me for an internship at their lab, which is in France :) (of course). So I joked that the OCaml people had kidnapped me. They started telling me that there are more OCaml jobs than there are OCaml developers, and as they say “bla bla bla” in French :)
• Oh, I met Larisse Voufo. She also gave me some GREAT advice on what to look for and what her PhD experience was like. We met when my roommate and I decided after food-truck day (and before the City Museum) to go for ice cream! We picked up William Byrd and Larisse along the way :) We got rolled ice cream and she gave me some solid and supportive advice; she is a wonderful person and works very hard is very talented.

On another note

• Ron has the SAME sense of humour as I do. It cracks me up. I have to play frisbee with him one day!

And so

• I guess I’m heading back to LA this evening. I’m looking forward to the food, but not the people (sigh).
• I leave with a few thoughts…one is that I have to find an institution that supports me. My current one does not, and all these opportunities I’ve mustered together with little or no help from my current institution. There are a handful of teachers who have consistently helped me (one or two), but it isn’t anything like what I experienced in New York (which was overwhelmingly supportive). I need to find that in a school.
• I currently got into SPLASH as a student volunteer but passed on it because I lack funding. So another time.
• I now have about 8 schools. So time to jump into getting those sent out. We’ll see.

And so it goes

• Look ahead, stay positive and keep pushing, amirite?