ICML in Seoul

What was discussed

It was the week ICML, the machine learning conference, was being held in Seoul. The reason for putting this on was simple: until now we had always been the ones flying out to learn, and this time the world had come to us. We ran it with Expedite and Playco, and took over a bar belonging to someone we knew.

About 130 people came. There were researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Alibaba, mixed in with people from Stanford, ETH Zurich and Peking University. It was one evening, but for that evening Seoul became a place people working on AI in several countries happened to pass through.

Then, thirty minutes before doors, it fell apart. The DJ we had booked believed the party finished at 10pm. It actually ran until midnight. Someone on our side had passed on the wrong time, and with 130 people about to arrive there was nobody to play music. If the music stops halfway through, the room goes with it.

We fixed it on the spot. We borrowed equipment from the original DJ and, with Teddy, who had lent us the bar, hurriedly installed software on a laptop. As it turned out one of the guests DJs as a hobby and carries a USB drive of the playlists he always uses. He became the DJ for the night, and we were across within thirty minutes of finding the problem.

What we said to each other in that moment became the motto for the evening: nothing is impossible. Looking back, what saved the night was not the planning but the judgement on the floor. No amount of preparation stops something breaking thirty minutes before doors. What is left is what you can do about it then.

The party went fine. The people who had flown in said they were grateful for the chance to meet Koreans and see something of the local culture, and several said they wanted to come back. On our side we spent the night cleaning up after a mistake, while people who had met that evening talked late into it.

That reaction mattered because of where Seoul sits. AI research is concentrated in North America and Europe, and Seoul is a long way from both, so ordinarily we are the ones getting on a plane. During a conference week those people are already here, and if the time they spend is good, they have a reason to come back on their own.

The connections made that night carried on. On the back of the Seoul evening we went to Singapore and ran something there with the local community. A small point of contact over one evening turned into the next one.