ICML in Seoul, Nothing Is Impossible
The top machine learning researchers in the world were in Seoul for ICML week. We ran the afterparty, and the night nearly fell apart before it started.
For one week the top machine learning researchers in the world were in Seoul rather than somewhere we had to fly to.
The week the world came here
ICML is one of the two or three most significant machine learning conferences in the world, and this year it ran in Seoul. For graduate students it is closer to the Olympics than a conference.
That created something unusual. Normally reaching this crowd means flying somewhere. For one week they were here, and the calendar filled with satellite events.
So we ran one. Not a research session, which other people do better, but the thing that happens after the sessions end.
Nothing is impossible
Thirty minutes before doors, the DJ schedule fell apart.
There is no clean process for that. Someone shouted that nothing is impossible, and the team found a replacement on the floor, from among people already in the room.
It sounds like a small operational story. It is actually the thesis. Running events at this pace means something breaks every time, and the difference between a good night and a bad one is almost never the plan. It is whether the people running it will improvise in the ninety seconds available.
Why bother
None of this sells anything. There is no product attached, and the direct return is hard to name.
The reasoning is that small global moments accumulate. A researcher who spent an evening in a room in Seoul has a different relationship with the city than one who did not. Multiply that across a week and across the people who keep showing up, and the community stops being a local one.
That is the same reasoning that took this to Singapore, and it is why the goal is not a bigger Korean community but a room where the passports differ.
Photos from the event
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Bloom builds offline rooms where people and technology meet. We run them in Seoul, and now beyond it.
- 💬 Discord community, where events are announced first
- ▶️ YouTube, full talks from past events
- 📸 Instagram, photos from the floor
- 🎟️ Upcoming events
Based on Bloom's ICML week afterparty in Seoul, run with Expedite and Playco.
