article, I talk about how one can get essentially the most out of attending technical occasions as a knowledge scientist, ML engineer, or different related roles. Attending occasions might be difficult, as there are quite a few methods to spend your time. I’ll thus talk about how you can prioritize your time between speaking to specialists, attending displays and panels, and visiting firm cubicles. There are additionally different methods to enhance your expertise, akin to correct preparation forward of the occasion and reflecting in your learnings, each of which I’ll talk about on this article.
The inspiration for this text stems from my attendance at NVIDIA GTC Paris 2025 as a knowledge scientist from Findable from June 10 to 12, 2025. I’ll thus talk about my expertise on the occasion, what I realized, and how one can strategy related occasions to get essentially the most out of them.
You too can learn my article on OpenAI Whisper for transcriptions.
Disclaimer: I’m not sponsored by NVIDIA in any approach, and they didn’t affect the contents of this text.
I’ll break up this text into 4 essential segments:
- Motivation: My motivation for attending the occasion and writing this text
- Preparation earlier than the occasion
- Throughout the occasion
- Reflections after the occasion
That is to spotlight the thought course of I went by way of earlier than, throughout, and after attending the occasion.
Motivation
My motivation for this text is that I used to be attending NVIDIA GTC Paris 2025. This marked my first time at a big convention like this, and thus, I spent a while determining how you can greatest spend my time on the occasion.
I attended the occasion as an worker of Findable, and went there to enhance my technical information, talk about AI with sensible individuals, and hopefully study rather a lot. I consider going to such occasions might be an immense studying expertise, however to get essentially the most out of the occasions, it’s important to put together and strictly prioritize the way you spend your time.
My objective for the article is to share my expertise on the occasion, and inform you how one can get essentially the most out of comparable technical occasions.
NVIDIA DGX GB200 compute system. Picture by the creator,
Planning forward of the occasion
Earlier than the occasion, NVIDIA put out a full session overview on their web page. I went by way of all of the classes on their web page, and chosen as much as the highest three classes I needed to attend per timeslot. Typically, lower than three have been related to me, wherein I simply chosen the related classes. I additionally put the classes in a prioritized order.
I then put all the related classes into my calendar, as you may see within the picture beneath. As you may see, I packed my calendar to be as full as potential. I consider it is a good place to begin, and in the event you discover out throughout an occasion that you just need to do one thing else, you may in fact determine to prioritize that. For instance, on Wednesday, June 11., I came upon there can be a dialogue with
This naturally outweighed the opposite plans I had that night, and I made a decision to attend that dialogue as a substitute, which turned out to be an inspiring speak.
And that was many of the planning I did for the occasion. Apart from this, I principally took issues on the fly throughout the occasion.
In the course of the occasion
There have been three days to the occasion
- Tuesday, June 10: I attended an LLM Workshop
- Wednesday, June 11: Jensen’s Keynote and a few classes within the afternoon
- Thursday, June 12: Classes the complete day
Tuesday June 10
On my first day on the occasion, I attended the workshop on adding new knowledge to LLMs. This was an attention-grabbing workshop going by way of matters akin to:
- Knowledge cleansing/curation
- Analysis (LLM as a choose, and so forth)
- Data injection (fine-tuning)
- LLM compression (distillation)
This was an insightful workshop, and I might advocate attending related workshops if they’re related to you and your work. I additionally met some attention-grabbing individuals on the workshop, with whom I bought to have insightful technical discussions.
Nevertheless, I consider the simplest factor you are able to do at such a workshop is to talk about with the instructors. In reflections after the workshop, I noticed I spent too little time discussing with the instructors, as a result of in a whole lot of instances, they might be actually sensible individuals working at NVIDIA, who might offer you insights into completely different AI matters. If I have been to attend a workshop like this once more, I might spend extra time upfront getting ready inquiries to ask throughout the workshop.
Wednesday/Thursday, June 11/12
There are a variety of issues you may spend your time on throughout nowadays. Most notably:
- Attending displays/panel discussions
- Going to the corporate cubicles
- Attending the join with specialists classes
Join with skilled classes are occasions the place you sit round a small desk, amongst a couple of different attendees, and also you get to ask inquiries to an NVIDIA worker. The occasions usually had a set matter; nonetheless, you would, in idea, ask any query.
Join with skilled classes have been by far essentially the most helpful classes I attended throughout my time at GTC Paris.
The principle causes for this are:
- The NVIDIA workers current on the occasion have been tremendous clever and will, generally, give me a extremely good response to my questions
- I used to be in a position to ask questions on business-specific issues (that I, for instance, face at Findable) and obtain solutions to these. That is naturally a lot better than solely asking questions on basic AI matters.
To elaborate on the final bullet level: In reference to skilled classes, you are supposed to ask a query. This may very well be as basic as:
How do I take advantage of LLMs for classification?
Nevertheless, it’s usually troublesome for individuals to reply such generic questions, as it’s troublesome to know the place to start answering the query. To unravel this downside, you may present them with an instance (or, in lots of instances, the NVIDIA workers will ask for a selected instance). You’ll be able to then present them an instance of a selected downside you’re engaged on at your small business, and obtain a really particular response, which in lots of instances shall be way more helpful.
For example, I might add to my query
In Norway we’ve a classification customary for constructing paperwork, the place they should be sorted into round 300 completely different classes. The classes are for instance “Electrical cables”, “Air flow system”, “Furnishings” and so forth.
Offering an instance like this each makes it simpler for the NVIDIA worker to reply your query and makes the response to the query extra related for you. It’s a win-win!
I might additionally like so as to add that you could, in lots of instances, join with NVIDIA workers by asking questions after their presentation/panel dialogue. You are able to do this by:
- Asking a query in entrance of everybody on the microphone
- Discovering the speaker(s) after the classes and asking questions
- Connecting with them on LinkedIn and asking your query there.
Additionally, I did attend some displays on June 10. and 11. that have been insightful. Nevertheless, I additionally skilled that a whole lot of classes solely lined matters at a really excessive degree, or solely lined NVIDIA-specific instruments, and didn’t really present helpful insights for me in my work. For this reason I made a decision to spend extra time on the join with specialists classes.
Reflecting after the occasion
After the occasion, I mirrored on every thing I realized all through the three-day attendance. I had a whole lot of impressions after these days, from assembly so many new individuals, choosing up a whole lot of new information, and basically, by being in an atmosphere with a whole lot of sensible individuals, engaged on related stuff to what I’m engaged on.
On my approach house from the occasion, I due to this fact
- Went by way of all my notes. I made certain to take notes from each session I attended.
- Went by way of the fabric I acquired throughout the occasion. Largely Jupyter Notebooks and displays
- Linked with individuals I met on LinkedIn
In a while, I additionally watched some replays from the occasion, which you’ll be able to watch on demand.
I additionally consider that when attending such occasions, one of the best concepts might typically come from your personal thoughts. So it’s not essentially what somebody says to you, however
For instance, I talked with an NVIDIA skilled about fine-tuning LLMs, and he talked about how teacher-student fashions are crucial in as we speak’s panorama. Listening to this made me take into consideration once I was engaged on fine-tuning Qwen 2.5 VL, and that I may need missed part of the LoRA fine-tuning that made mannequin efficiency rather a lot worse than it might have been. I attempt to sum this idea up in a single quote beneath:
When attending occasions, essentially the most helpful insights usually come up from your personal ideas impressed by conversations—not simply from what somebody immediately says.
After some reflections, I’ll now additionally present some optimistic and unfavorable sides with attending the occasion
Upsides of the occasion
- You get to fulfill a whole lot of sensible individuals engaged on related issues to you
- You get a condensed set of helpful data (a whole lot of what you study on the occasion can be discovered on-line); nonetheless, there’s additionally a whole lot of noise on the internet. On the occasion, many of the data is of top quality
Downsides of the occasion
- It might typically really feel like looking for gold in Klondike when talking to individuals. You may need to talk to lots of people earlier than you discover somebody with the proper experience and curiosity that can assist you in your precise downside
- It takes a whole lot of time. I spent three full days on the occasion, which naturally may very well be utilized in a whole lot of alternative ways
Conclusion
On this article, I mentioned how you can successfully attend technical occasions, drawing on my expertise attending NVIDIA GTC Paris 2025. I defined how you must plan the occasion forward of time and decide which classes you need to attend, and I highlighted how I personally realized most from talking to completely different specialists (notably NVIDIA workers), somewhat than attending displays and panel discussions. Reflecting on the occasion afterwards can be vital, going by way of all of your notes and the fabric you bought from the occasion. Attending technical occasions, akin to NVIDIA GTC, might be immensely useful for gathering new concepts, connecting with attention-grabbing individuals, and hopefully, enhancing your engineering expertise.
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