I had absolutely zero expectations for this 😭
The planner did not begin as a startup idea. It began as conference panic. SIGGRAPH has the wonderful problem of offering too many good things at once, and my existing system, tabs, screenshots, calendar events, and hope, was not going to survive the week.
So I built the smallest thing that would remove the friction: search the program, compare sessions, understand walking time, and keep one usable schedule. Seeing strangers use it changed the scale of the problem in my head. Apparently a lot of us were quietly losing the same fight against conference logistics.
two days before SIGGRAPH, i realized there wasn't an easy way to plan a conference where 10-20 incredible sessions are happening at the exact same time.
so... i opened OpenAI's Codex (GPT-5.6 sol), locked in for half a day, built a tiny planner, and threw it onto the internet.
i thought maybe my friends would use it.
instead...
**500+ SIGGRAPH attendees** ended up planning their week with it. 🥹
the coolest part wasn't the number.
it was randomly walking around the convention center and catching people using something i built.
people stopped me in the hallways, at registration, between sessions, while i was running around doing Team Leader duties.
just to say, "hey, your planner saved me." 🥹
that honestly made my week.
this tiny side project also led to conversations with amazing attendees, ACM SIGGRAPH volunteers, conference organizers, and people i've looked up to for years.
What I remember most is the shift from an idea in my head to something another person could actually touch. Shipping makes the questions sharper, the feedback more honest, and the next version much easier to imagine.