This years CHI was my third in this series. And it was in my view the best one yet. It had all the elements that make a top-notch conference interesting: Esteemed seniors getting upset over their prodigy’s rather provocative way of conducting research, A paper on “if industrialism never happened” Steampunk awesomeness, my (and freshly escaped) supervisors book release party with a guy shoveling nails and what not up his nose, many colleagues presenting everything from Jacquard loom revisits to how playful people at Vanuatu were with their recent familiarization with the mobile phone, the look on people’s faces when discovering that the conference proceedings came on a DVD rather than a USB-key, Richard Shusterman’s neat introduction to the philosophy of Somaestethics, Stu Card’s reflections on the role of engineering in the field, Batya Friedman’s SIG-CHI Social impact talk where she explains how she dealt with her legacy crisis, the wonderful CHI’2012 Android app that made all the session planning manageable, hands on with digital artifacts – Interactivity Session in which I myself participated, and last but not least all the wonderful people that inspire me so much that I still manage to stay loyal to a research career. At least until next CHI.