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...."

Funds pay thousands, often $10K+, per room at the nearby hotels, often spending hundreds of thousands to book over a dozen hotel rooms to use as makeshift conference rooms. The hotels often don't even allow people to sleep in the rooms, only to use them strictly as conference rooms.

All the real action happens in those hotel rooms, at private events, private receptions, etc.

The answer to that in San Francisco was once "meet me by the clock", which is in the lobby of the St. Francis Hotel.[1]

"There’s no easy way to sugarcoat this, so I’ll just come out and say it: 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."

That clock is a master clock, synchronizing the other clocks in the hotel. In the past, the synchronizing signals from that clock drove some other clocks in the downtown area. So it really is the beating heart of the city.

The clock was recently overhauled, and is acting as the master clock again. For years, the hotel's time signals were coming from an electric motor clock and then a quartz time standard. But they've reverted to the pendulum clock. Error is about 5 seconds a month.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGK_OaMVPUs

Maybe my failure to read latent signals is why this doesn't repeat. When you do get to the elven castle, you don't remember much that happened inside, but now you're back on a quest and your donkey has more food.

I do think this stuff happens. Side deals which move markets, people who taste test in lowly techs and then advise private equity buyers to move or not. You aren't the talent, your information value informs the talent going to do their job with bigger fish.

1. Do you know anybody from "J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference"?

2. Have you ever been to "J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference"?

3. Do you know anybody who has ever been to "J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference"?

I experienced the same situation at the human factors and ergonomics society (HFES) annual conference a few months ago. This was fine for me because I'm part of the (relatively small) AI/ML group at my company, which has traditionally focused on developing human factors engineering solutions and services. In fact the reason I was sent to HFES was to help bridge my background (phd in computational neuro) to the broader company mission. And to be honest I was looking forward to hearing (what I assumed was going to be) a wide diversity of talks. I mean, ergonomics... there will probably be like companies presenting next generation office chair designs or some shit, I thought. Instead I estimate that 50% of the talks were on one of three topics: AI trust, Explainable AI, or Human-AI teaming. Another 30-40% were on some other AI related issue, with the remaining 10-20% accounting for all other possible topics related to human factors and ergonomics.

I wonder what will be the repercussions from this current hyper-obsession with AI, and the resulting neglect to many other viable areas of research. I foresee a near future where chairs are packed with AI features, and are the source of much back pain.

This sort of writing is what AI will take from us.

I can't comment on the authenticity of JPMHC. But it's interesting to think about who might benefit from creating a similar fake and observing how the world reacts to it. Will job candidates fraudulently list it on their resumes? If people publish articles claiming to have attended, what are their incentives? If you promote the conference ahead of time, will real researchers pitch talk ideas to you?

I have a friend who fell for one. He won the Dutch "Student of the Year" award in... I think 2006. When our then-minister of education proposed to make maths more popular in high school by dumbing down the curriculum, he organized a giant STEM activity day on a nation-wide scale to popularize it. We were both physics student at the time.

Anyway, as part of the award he was allowed to pick a conference to go to. He chose one in Spain. When he arrived it turned out he had fallen for an internet scam: the conference only existed as a scam website and the money had disappeared. He still had a nice weekend with his best buddy (now husband) though, and at least it didn't cost him anything.

https://www.jpmorgan.com/about-us/events-conferences/health-...

(tfa is a fun read, regardless)

https://www.mysteryfleshpitnationalpark.com

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_Flesh_Pit_National_Par...

> 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.