I've been inside the conference- I used to do due diligence and discovery for Google Ventures and they gave me a ticket one year. The "talks" were eminently forgettable ("we put this in X people and Y died") and the power meetings were... also fairly forgettable. A lot of it is just puffery, and a lot of the dealmakers have no real understanding of the area they are in (softbank seems to be the place where bad ideas go to be funded and then die). Then there are the sharks, cruising around looking for easy pickings.
My favorite conference-that-is-not-really-a-conference is Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing. The bar to get a paper in is really low, and it's set at a nice resort in Hawaii. The whole conference would just empty out all day so people could go to beaches, etc. It starts on a Friday and ends on a Monday. About the only highlight for me was sitting down at the bar and spontaneously meeting Lynn Conway- "what do you do?" "oh, I worked on VLSI...."
All the action at PSB happens in the hot tub discussions. I didn't spend any time in them, as I was too junior and didn't know the right people, but PSB did get me some good post doc options!
Not much industry there though, unless it's changed in recent years. One of the more scientifically productive conferences because of the connections that people establish.
(Inside JPMorgan is so crowded and not so useful. I got a really really bad impression of 10X when I saw their debut at JPMorgan but that was an incorrect impression because they have done really well, mostly by not actually doing any of the products they touted at their presentation.).
For some reason this rings a bell - is there an article/blog/post/message in a bottle about Lynn Conway at that conference (and how it’s not really conference; lol?).
> The Sirens of Titan [1] is a comic science fiction novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., first published in 1959. His second novel, it involves issues of free will, omniscience, and the overall purpose of human history, with much of the story revolving around a Martian invasion of Earth.
Not surprising. Take any conference and look at the schedule of some CEO or other “socialite” attending said conference. They’re not in the building, they’re running around town attending meetings. At JPMHC everyone is a “socialite”
The website linked in the article appears to not be _the_ website (to be fair, tfa only calls it _a_ website). The website actually hosted by JPM is very sparse, but even mentions that such unofficial websites exist.
The conference sessions aren't what matters. The important thing about these kinds of industry conferences is the ability for investors, leaders, regulators, journalists, and others to meet with each other in a neutral zone. Multiple M&As are being negotiated, IPOs being considered, funds trying to raise a new vintage, and companies starting press junkets in preparation for a roadshow.
> it is possible that the entirety of California is built on top of one immensely large organism, and the particular spot in which the Westin St. Francis Hotel stands—335 Powell Street, San Francisco, 94102—is located directly above its beating heart. And that this is the primary organizing focal point for both the location and entire reason for the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference
Moscone Center tends to be the primary hub for industry conferences in the City (eg. RSA, Dreamforce, Oracle OpenWorld way back in the day), and more niche executive events are in the Four Seasons or St Regis. My hunch is that JPM has a multi-year deal with the Westin to host the conference at the Westin.
If you want to actually talk with people about some of your thoughts on the industry, I'd recommend just going to a hotel bar, grab a pint, and just spark a conversation.
from my understanding, it's a healthcare investors conference where investors meet companies (both public and private), esp those looking to fund raise.
My wife was there last year. There are a lot of investment opportunities. Plenty of dinners and meetings away from the conference. It's the whole drinking from a fire hose as there is too much to see and do.
My favorite conference-that-is-not-really-a-conference is Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing. The bar to get a paper in is really low, and it's set at a nice resort in Hawaii. The whole conference would just empty out all day so people could go to beaches, etc. It starts on a Friday and ends on a Monday. About the only highlight for me was sitting down at the bar and spontaneously meeting Lynn Conway- "what do you do?" "oh, I worked on VLSI...."
Not much industry there though, unless it's changed in recent years. One of the more scientifically productive conferences because of the connections that people establish.
(Inside JPMorgan is so crowded and not so useful. I got a really really bad impression of 10X when I saw their debut at JPMorgan but that was an incorrect impression because they have done really well, mostly by not actually doing any of the products they touted at their presentation.).
You’d have to pay me a lot of money to willingly get into a hot tub filled with JP Morgan employees and Hacker News commenters.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sirens_of_Titan
https://www.jpmorgan.com/about-us/events-conferences/health-...
(tfa is a fun read, regardless)
> it is possible that the entirety of California is built on top of one immensely large organism, and the particular spot in which the Westin St. Francis Hotel stands—335 Powell Street, San Francisco, 94102—is located directly above its beating heart. And that this is the primary organizing focal point for both the location and entire reason for the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference
Moscone Center tends to be the primary hub for industry conferences in the City (eg. RSA, Dreamforce, Oracle OpenWorld way back in the day), and more niche executive events are in the Four Seasons or St Regis. My hunch is that JPM has a multi-year deal with the Westin to host the conference at the Westin.