11:38 PM, 25 March: I get an idea, a simple one. As a team of one, I open ChatGPT and ask it to help me make the poster. Fitting, considering the brief from Manifest is for a campaign to promote an AI chatbot.

11:59 PM, 25 March: I hit send. Phew!

[I won the Manifest competition sometime in between. Of course, I was too overwhelmed to note the time.]

10:47 PM, 25 September: Squeezing into the aisle seat of an American Airlines flight, I open ChatGPT. 'What are the best things to do in Vegas? And cheap dinner places?'

6:11 PM, 26 September: I see the Vegas Sphere for the first time. One trippy video leads to another. Then another. Almost enough to make me forget the 20-hour journey with limited leg space.

10:11 PM, 26 September: I’ve been in Vegas for a few hours, and I completely understand why 128 young creatives have been invited to this city. Vegas is basically advertising with the volume turned all the way up.

Buildings are billboards. Walls are screens. The Sphere is a gigantic LED canvas. There’s a giant Coke bottle outside the Coca-Cola Store, where you can buy Coke socks, Coke buckets and probably a Coke-branded bathtub if you look hard enough. Hershey’s has a whole world. M&M’S has one too. Vegas doesn’t do subtle. Clearly.

9:07 AM, 27 September: Creative LIAisons begins. I’m back to school. Except the classroom is at the Encore, the teachers are some of the biggest names in advertising, and school is supposed to last roughly nine hours a day. For the next five days.

9:40 AM, 27 September: Ali Rez is moderating the first panel. Yes, Ali Rez, the regional chief creative officer of IMPACT BBDO. The agency behind the ground-breaking Annahar newspaper campaigns over the years. (They went on to win the Grand LIA in Democracy and Human Rights in a couple of days.)

1:00 AM, 28 September: Just woke up as my body clock loses the battle to jet lag. I step out into a Vegas that still ain’t asleep. I take the RTC bus to the Las Vegas sign.

9:45 AM, 28 September: 'How Hard Can It Be? The Reality of Making Great Creative Work.' Another amazing session to start another day. Wuthisak Anarnkaporn from Factory01, Bangkok, is on the panel. It opens up for Q&A. I don’t have a question for him. I just want to tell him how crazy his films are.

12:33 PM, 28 September: Marco Venturelli has put us on a mock jury. Case study after case study. Scoring and debating. And in between, Marco keeps breaking into parentheses, teaching us how to judge or speak against an idea… politely.

The 128 of us award SOS POS the Grand Prix. The real jury awards it to Levi’s Unsponsored Stadium. We can’t argue with that!

11:43 PM, 29 September: Reached Fremont Street, Downtown. I’ve walked 27,181 steps through this mad city today. No time to journal.

3:13 PM, 30 September: It’s been a few hours of watching the jury debate the finalists in the Entertainment & Content and Cultural Catalyst categories.

6:10 PM, 30 September: It’s Grand Prix time. Unanimously, the jury’s hands go up for Johnnie Walker’s The Walk to the Walk of Fame. They believe it’s a benchmark for the Entertainment category and recommend that we watch the 90-minute documentary celebrating legendary Brazilian percussionist Paulinho da Costa.

6:24 PM, 30 September: The Cultural Catalyst category doesn’t have a Grand Prix. Geoff Edwards, the jury president, says awarding a Grand Prix is like loving someone. You don’t have to talk yourself into it. You just feel it instantly.

11:30 PM, 30 September: We’re at the after-party. I meet Susan Credle, this year’s LIA Legend Award winner (and the jury president who gave me my first Grand Prix at Adfest). She remembers my campaign. Or maybe she was just being polite. Nevertheless, a chat I’m going to cherish forever.

The party is at the Neon Museum, which feels almost like an open-air art gallery, except it has a very good reason to be called a museum. It houses more than 200 rescued signs from old casinos and hotels, including the Stardust, Sahara and Hard Rock.

4:00 PM, 1 October: Fireside chat with Pancho Cassis, global CCO and partner, David. After his session, I tell him that Burger King’s Stevenage Challenge is my favourite campaign. He tells me it took two years to make and how unpredictable the journey was. I might have spoken less after that. Jaw-dropping session, you know.

With Pancho Cassis, global CCO and partner, David

11:00 AM, 2 October: I’m checking out of Treasure Island hotel. Indebted to Manifest for hosting the competition and getting me here. And thankful to Barbara Levy and Laurissa Levy for curating such a life-changing (I’m not even exaggerating) experience. Where else could you ask CCOs anything and everything?

11:01 AM, 2 October: I realise I forgot to ask one question. Let’s get back to where it all started. ChatGPT.

'Hey, why does the London International Awards take place in Vegas?'

(The author is creative director, Ogilvy India.)