Last week, I went to the Salt Lake City for attending my second YAPC & first YAPC::NA. It was an awesome experience. This blog post is about the whole journey from Amsterdam to the Salt Lake City.

Pre-trip chaos

It’s not about trip, but I guess I should write this section for people who need visa for going to the USA. I had hard time in getting the US visa in the past. My US visa application was rejected twice in the last year. This is how it went this time:

1. I had my US visa interview at the US embassy in Amsterdam on 8th May.
2. Questions/things which they asked me:
   • Why do you want to go to the USA?
     • A technical conference.
   • Who’s sponsoring your trip?
     • My employer.
   • For how long you will stay there?
     • 6 days.
   • Where do you work?
     • Booking.com
   • For how long you have been working in the Amsterdam?
     • Around 9 months.
   • Do you know anyone in the US?
     • Yes, conference organizers.
   • Why your visa application got rejected twice?
     • I don’t know, they didn’t tell me any reason.
   • Invitation letter from my company.
     • I had it.
   • They asked me for more information about the conference.
     • I didn’t have it.
   • They asked me to email the above information & then they will take a decision.
3. I emailed them the letter after a week or so.
4. They called to my office number, just to check if I’m an impostor or not :D.
5. Then I checked with them multiple times if they are going to give me the visa or not.
6. Finally, I got the visa on 4th June, just 2 days before I boarded my flight.
7. I carried my flight tickets, hotel booking confirmation, job contract, passport, residence card (of the Netherlands), documents related to the conference like screenshots of the website, letters from the conference organizers.

The best part is that I have got this visa for ten years, so I won’t need to apply for it in the next ten years atleast 😀

Pre-conference days

I arrived in the beautiful Salt Lake City on 6th June, saturday. First day (saturday) was mostly spent in sleeping in the hotel room. On Sunday, I went to Red Iguana for eating awesome Mexican food (I highly recommend this place for foodies) along with Mickey, Stevan, Brad & Jeff. In the evening, I went to the Himalayan Kitchen for the anti-arrival dinner.

First day of the conference

On the first day, I came late to the conference venue because I was mostly busy with preparing for my talk. When I came to the venue, people told me that I got shout-outs for my work on Moose exceptions. But I was not there to see it, thanks to everyone who praised my work.

Then I gave my talk. It was so so, if you will ignore the Q&A part. After the Q&A part, I felt that I didn’t convey the message well, but I was expecting the sort of response I got from the audience. I didn’t intend to convey that Perl is dead. I just pointed out some problems which could be reasons of why Perl is not so popular. I was not so excited about giving this talk & I think I will never give such a talk again.

Here is the list of people who helped me in one or the other way for gathering the data for my talk slides:

1. Chris Prather
2. Stevan Little
3. Sebastian Riedel
4. John Anderson
5. Gabor Szabo
6. Neil Bowers
7. Stanislaw Pusep
8. Wim Vanderbauwhede
9. Ranjib Dey
10. Joel Berger
11. Ricardo Signes
12. Ron Abraham
13. vijaykumar.tater
14. Suman
15. Josh Alvord
16. Nate Glenn
17. leobetosouza
18. Toad Warrior
19. Dan Wright
20. mykyoyo
21. Steven Haryanto
22. Himanshu Gusain
23. Paul Fenwick
24. David Wheeler
25. mjlush
26. Brian D Foy
27. Breno
28. Dave Cross
29. Olivier Mengue
30. gizmobathboy
31. John Anderson
32. Brian Wisti
33. John Napiorkowski
34. Sawyer X
35. Matthew Horsfall
36. Wendy
37. Curtis Poe

I think I’ve not missed anyone, but if I’ve missed your name, then please let me know & I will add you (If you want me to remove your name then please contact me & I will remove it). I’d like to thank above people (& people who I might have missed in the above list) for helping me directly or indirectly.

After my talk, a guy asked me to email my slides to him, but I lost the paper on which I wrote his email :(. So, whoever you were, please check this. Then, I went to The Sages for eating food & I did get edible food (so called Ethiopian food) there, so I highly recommend it if you just want eat something edible in the Salt Lake City.

Second day of the conference

On the second day, I attended some talks, but I loved this one the most : Q&A with Larry Wall (not really a talk).

I also liked these talks:

• Lessons from High Velocity Logging
• Lifting Moose
• Keynote: Seth Johnson – What Perl Taught Me About Life

Third day of the conference

On the third day of the conference, I didn’t really attend any talks, because I met Ingy. Then he started showing me what he has been doing. Long list of his projects! You should check his github account for more details :D. It’s always a pleasure to talk to Ingy, I get to know about something new whenever I talk to him.

Then, I signed Shawn and Thomas’ GPG keys & also got my keys signed by both of them. It was the first time, I signed someone’s keys. I didn’t know how to do that, but Shawn taught me.

In the evening, I went to the mountains with Ingy, Shawn & Nick in Ingy’s car. It was an awesome experience. We also went to David’s house.

Pictures

Here are some pictures from my trip.

People I met

1. Karen Pauley
2. Wendy
3. Elizabeth Mattijsen (Liz)
4. Jeff Goff
5. Theo Van Hoessel
6. Sawyer
7. Mickey
8. Abigail
9. R Geoffrey Avery
10. Stevan Little
11. Pete Sergeant
12. Curtis Poe
13. Ribasushi
14. Eugenia
15. bulk88
16. Ingy Dot Net

People I met for the first time

1. Larry Wall (proof)
2. Tim Bunce
3. Dan Wright
4. Michael
5. Dave Rolsky
6. Huey-Ling Chen (Dave’s wife)
7. Yaakov Sloman
8. Yanick
9. Brad Lhotsky
10. Selina
11. Reini Urban
12. Jay Hannah
13. Will Brasswell
14. Matthew Horsfall
15. Brian Wisti
16. Jason May
17. Ricardo Signes
18. VM Brasseur
19. Brian (don’t know his surname, a tall guy)
20. Andrew
21. Joel Berger
22. Daina
23. Tim H
24. Liz
25. James E. Keenan
26. Walt Mankowski
27. Mark Gardener
28. Steve Scaffidi
29. David Oswald
30. Thomas Sibley
31. David Golden
32. Nick Patch
33. Shawn Moore

There must be many more people, but my terrible memory! 😦 It was a pleasure to meet such great people. Looking forward to meet them again.

Thanks

I would like to thank these people (or organizations):

• David Oswald for becoming my contact person in the US.
• Dan Wright for giving me the invitation letter.
• Organizers of YAPC::NA, for organizing such a great conference. I loved it & looking forward to the next one :).
• My employeer for sponsoring my trip.
• Shawn for teaching me how to sign GPG keys.
• To everyone else who talked to me at the conference, just for talking to me.