Marko Budiselic recaps his experience at the impactful CIDR 2023 Database Conference, highlighting its single-track format that fosters in-depth discussions and its emphasis on technical marketing. The conference, which Memgraph attended to broaden industry connections, featured engaging events like the Gong Show and Startup Panel, as well as talks on advanced database topics such as distributed storage and execution, correctness guarantees, and concurrency control. Budiselic notes that while cloud-native OLTP systems show promise, challenges like skewed writes scalability persist, and he underscores the importance of default isolation levels in databases, citing Memgraph's use of Snapshot Isolation. The conference also featured significant discussions on graph databases, with talks on KùzuDB and DuckPGQ introducing innovative concepts like factorization and Multi-Source BFS algorithm implementation. Budiselic expresses enthusiasm about the growing research in graph databases and the upcoming SQL and GQL standards, appreciating the advancements in graph database technology and its implications for users.