> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # NeurIPS 2025 Retrospective - URL: https://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/neurips-2025-retrospective/ - Published: 2025-12-10T16:34:43.000Z - Updated: 2025-12-10T18:29:36.000Z - Description: The conference is over. I had a chance to go explore San Diego, relax and return here. The daily posts are pretty terse, so I've collected my thoughts about NeurIPS 2025 here. - Author: Matthew Brunelle - Tags: NeurIPS-2025, Conference Here is the [post series](https://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/tag/neurips-2025/) for the conference. --- NeurIPS 2025 is upon us! Expo talks and tutorials started December 2nd. I am fortunate that my work provides a pretty large learning budget each year which can be used on conferences. I [attended PyCon 2025](https://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/tag/pycon-2025/) this year, which took up a portion of the budget, so I did not attend any tutorials on the first day of neurIPS. On the plus side, one less day of a conference means I won't be as exhausted. [\[1\]](#fn1) This year the conference is in both San Diego and Mexico City. Partially because of how many people want to attend, but also [because of visa accessibility problems in the US](https://blog.neurips.cc/2025/07/16/neurips-announces-second-physical-location-in-mexico-city/?ref=blog.matthewbrunelle.com). I am attending at the San Diego location. The full [schedule is available](https://neurips.cc/virtual/2025/calendar?ref=blog.matthewbrunelle.com) online. [\[2\]](#fn2) Unlike PyCon, I don't know if the recordings will be made available online for non-attendees. Some of the links I provide in the section titles include slides though. Also, sometimes the descriptions will be a little terse. I promise you, I wrote them myself, I'm was just out of brain juice after the long days. I have notes from the three days I attended: - [Wednesday](https://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/neurips-2025-wednesday/) - [Thursday](https://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/neurips-2025-thursday-notes/) - Friday --- ## Why did I attend NeurIPS and a thank you to my coworkers I work on software products that use machine learning under the hood. However, I am squarely on the applications side in the org chart. I get to work closely with the ML side though and I enjoy that a lot. Last year I went to EMNLP 2024 in Miami with the goal of reducing my unknown unknowns. Ultimately, I want to understand the different choices that go into the ML side so I can better collaborate on projects. At EMNLP I was able to spend time with the ML folks and learn from them. For that I am really appreciative. They showed me the ropes for attending an academic conference like that. Some of my takeaways were: - Take notes! There will be so much content you will not remember all of it. - Pace yourself. Its tempting to go to everything, but that's not sustainable. - On the flip side, you get out of a conference what you put into it. If you just randomly go to things you won't gain much. This time at NeurIPS I am leaning on them the same way. Some new lessons: - If you're not sure what talks to go to, have a look at the [best paper awards](https://blog.neurips.cc/2025/11/26/announcing-the-neurips-2025-best-paper-awards/?ref=blog.matthewbrunelle.com) and use that as a starting point. - If you want the coveted conference branded water bottle, go early because they are gone quickly. - For some reason now, there are cafes in the expo hall. The companies fight over hiring the best baristas they can. [\[3\]](#fn3) - My coworkers also went to a event by Weights & Biases after the sessions. I didn't sign up in time so I couldn't go, but this was recommended because we already use their product at work. That means they won't bother selling you anything and you can eat the free food unbothered. The Cafes: ![desres_cafe_neurips_2025.jpg](https://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/content/images/2025/12/desres_cafe_neurips_2025.jpg) ![jump_trading_cafe_neurips_2025.jpg](https://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/content/images/2025/12/jump_trading_cafe_neurips_2025.jpg) ![microsoft_cafe_neurips_2025.jpg](https://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/content/images/2025/12/microsoft_cafe_neurips_2025.jpg) ![susquehanna_cafe_neurips_2025.jpg](https://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/content/images/2025/12/susquehanna_cafe_neurips_2025.jpg) Also, somewhat uncharacteristically, I organized the team dinner this time. --- ## For some reason, people are writing a lot of papers about AI right now This is my first time attending NeurIPS, so I cannot compare my experience to previous years, but it seems there were a lot of papers this time. Melanie Mitchell mentioned in her talk that in the 90s, NeurIPS was just a couple hundred people and they would spend most of the day skiing. In comparison this year is the 39th conference and in the conference's [reflections post](https://blog.neurips.cc/2025/09/30/reflections-on-the-2025-review-process-from-the-program-committee-chairs/?ref=blog.matthewbrunelle.com) they mention "The main track this year received 21,575 valid paper submissions, of which 5,290 were accepted". I heard some people mention that papers were accepted, but then later rejected due to limited space. I can't find a solid source to cite though. The San Diego Convention Center was *huge*. I would frequently underestimate how much time I needed to get from one side to another to catch a talk. The fact that they still didn't have enough space really speaks to just how many papers were submitted. --- ## Finally a bit of meta commentary on writing I've been [trying to practice new kinds of writing](https://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/on-practicing-writing/). At this conference I wanted to challenge myself to try to write and share summary posts as close to daily as possible. The process felt a little like journalism, though I never took a class on that at school. I'm not sure if I like it, but the stretch was a nice challenge. The downside was that I sometimes felt like I was missing out on the conference since my attention was split with writing. I think in the future I will take notes, but not edit and post them until after the conference is over. --- ## Also Meshtastic Totally unrelated to all of this, but I brought my MeshPocket so I could see the San Diego and [Californian Meshnets](https://meshtastic.org/docs/community/local-groups/?ref=blog.matthewbrunelle.com#california) when I was in town. It's looking pretty healthy: ![san_diego_meshtastic.png](https://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/content/images/2025/12/san_diego_meshtastic.png) I managed to get one node over the boarder in Mexico, and not pictured here, but I hopped to some nodes in LA. --- 1. No actually, no matter what, you are tired after a conference like this. Especially with a 3 hour time change. [↩︎](#fnref1) 2. I did not review the schedule ahead of time, and boy do I wish I did. The way it was presented made it very hard to parse. [↩︎](#fnref2) 3. Certainly there is no bubble, and this is not a gilded age. [↩︎](#fnref3)