Web 2.0 Expo and Conference

The O'Reilly Web 2.0 Expo is just finishing up, and my co-worker and I had a blast with most of it. Working in the academic sphere, it really feels great to get first hand confirmation that we are perfectly on track with the rest of the industry with our vision of what is to come. Now, if only we were given the means to do it all as fast as we can dream it, which is always a challenge in a large public institution. But we're working on that. :)

One of the highlights of the conference for me, was to find out (confirm) how close the Digg architecture is to the one that we've been developing for our university for many years now: LAMP (though we use PostgreSQL), memcache, Linux, clustering, etc. They actually seem to be facing some challenges that we've already tamed in the last year and a half. They're hiring, by the way.

On the other hand, it was my first time in San Francisco (about time...), and I won't lie: it's even better than I imagined it would be! Truly a fantastic city, populated with wonderful people. First time, but definitely not the last one, especially given that I just don't have the time to stay a few extra days to visit Berkeley, Oakland, San Jose, Santa Cruz, Cupertino, Mountain View, etc. Next time!

On this, I'm going to go and enjoy the city before I have to leave tomorrow morning.