An opportunity is an interesting thing. An opportunity has potential that may or may not be realised. And does it have a price? And a value?

I was in Amsterdam, my first time at a big international conference. The last talk had been given and a party of sorts had begun. Well, maybe a good after-party, but I wanted to talk to others about all the interesting tech topics that had been opened up during the conference. Not really possible during a karaoke session…

I chatted with Ujjwal from Igalia about feature support in browser engines. We wanted to get away from the noise, so we started walking away from the karaoke. A few other people had the same idea, while also talking about being hungry. Yeah, good idea, I thought. So a group of people formed in front of the conference building.

A group of people? Well, I was beginning to feel rather uncomfortable. It was not “a” group. The biggest names I know from the JavaScript open source world were there. Evan You, Pooya Parsa, Daniel Roe, Matias Capeletto, Daniel Ehrenberg, Ujjwal Sharma and others. Anyway, they were all very nice, and I started to feel like it might be OK to go with them and draw some of their wisdom.

Someone said he knew a nice place to eat. So after a while we got there, but the restaurant was very busy and there was no table for all of us. Except — a chef’s table.

Never in my life have I eaten a dinner with such an extraordinary group of people. Never in my life have I eaten such luxurious food.

It was an opportunity you can’t foresee. For me it was like a dream.

I can count the price, but I can’t put a price on happiness. However only time will tell the value of this opportunity.