Incredible AI Conference Recap

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I'm on the ✈️ back to DEN after an incredible AI filled few days (AIE NY, AIT Toronto) and want to drop a recap/appreciation post (mostly for myself to remember later) to all the friends who came together to make it happen (If you don't like Gratitude, keep scrolling)

Let's start with of course @aiDotEngineer creators, @Benghamine (who's birthday was at the conference!) and my man @swyx for organizing a conference that is HOME for many of us, third year in a row! Also huge shout out to Lia, Max, Russel (? ben help me out here, I forgot 🤦‍♂️) and all the volunteers, MCs that make this thing work like clockwork! World class productions don't just happen folks, these people deserve tons of the praise. Max took these insane quality Leica photos of me and @YoungPhlo_ too, which is like, icing on the cake!

Of course huge appreciation to @weights_biases that sponsored this event and flew out our awesome team to give the @weave_wb evals gospel (you aren't evaluating your LLM apps? let us help!) to the AI Engineers. And we SHOWED UP in NY! Tied with Writer beanies for best swag at the conf, we also had the best booth demo (were you able to jailbreak our voice agent by talking to it on the phone??) @ash0ts @sammakesthings @morgymcg Phil and @lavanyaai who made it possible and was supporting behind the scenes.

After the yearly traditional recording of ThursdAI during the AI Engineer conference (Swyx we gotta talk about the timings of these), I went into full conference mode, meeting people, shaking hands, talking evals and on Friday, I gave a hectic talk in front of 150 hungry people I talked about "Are reasoners better LLM as a Judge" and you know the talk lands when even competitors ask for the slides! (Will re-record and upload soon as it wasn't recorded or live streamed 😿 sorry for folks who waited on the live) Huge shoutout to @vibhuuuus for the pics, but also for just being an awesome friend all around, helping with the conference, telling folks about Weave. Thank you brother, glad to hang out with you at all these events.

How can I forget about the AI ENG traditions? Hermano @fpingham, whom I met 3 years ago at AI ENG, by him coming up to me and saying he listens to @thursdai_pod from Argentina, of course brought the now annual traditional 🧉 and Alfajores We also expanded our AI Eng sauna tradition to new friends, @sammakesthings @aquamansam1 @dvdcrbt ( and @Stefania_druga who went later and also loves the Flatiron Baths in NY! A must visit)

Oh, one of the best traditions in AIE is the speakers dinner, when I get to meet and talk with the folks presenting, doing workshops, and sponsoring. Again, huge thanks here to @graceisford and LUX capital for feeding us delicious french food 😋 and my table mates @samuel_colvin @kevinhou22 @caryotacos @graceisford @barry_zyj and other folks I've met during the speaker dinner 😋 🇫🇷 Special thanks to Ben for the awesome speakers limited edition scarf that saves tons of us during NY cold! I really love this scarf, it's so so dope!

Second (actual) day speakers and folks who came up to the booth were amazing, I really learned as much from speakers (like @HamelHusain @sayashk @barry_zyj @karinanguyen_ @EthanSutin @mariadlzollo @Stefania_druga @osanseviero ) and tons tons of others. Additional shoutout here to @swyx who I wish gave himself more time, as his content was 🔥🔥🔥 and folks really leaned in!

Of course, the hallway track and the after event events are where the real conversations happen, so really a huge shoutout to @kwindla and @ninacali4 (who I didn't know are a married / co-founder couple!) for throwing the awesome Voice Agents dinner! 🔥 Not only that, Kwin, helpful as always was helping @sammakesthings to debug pipecat stuff with our demo! 🔥 If you haven't tried Daily or Pipecat, what are you waiting for? These guys are LEGIT (they I believe are also hiring)

Another great event was thrown by @cerebral_valley folks and @crewAIInc who pitched in! Always awesome to hang out with @iporollo Dan and the Crew AI folk!

The on Saturday, just before leaving, I ran an Evals workshop, with probably... 70 people? IDK, folks were sitting on the floor, it was great! (pics before I got started, @vibhuuuus send me some workshop pics brother) It was a blast, thank you everyone who came to support! @aquamansam1 @maaarinaaaa1 @Stefania_druga @morgymcg @ash0ts @sammakesthings and tons more great friends! Although @swyx gave me 1.5 hours for a 4 hour workshop so we did it NY style, fast, energetic and in your face! I'm sure folks had fun though 👏🔥 I sure did!

And then... I went to Toronto, but the stewardess tells me to put my laptop away, so that'll be another 🧵 Thanks to everyone who is listening to @thursdai_pod and came to say hi and give me a high five! Suffice it to say, that if you're not already planning to come to @aiDotEngineer Worlds Fair, you're going to miss out! And it's of course impossible to mention everyone, so if I didn't tag you, sorry, but know that I enjoyed every second of our interactions!

Incredible AI Conference Recap

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