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.
from my understanding, it's a healthcare investors conference where investors meet companies (both public and private), esp those looking to fund raise.
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”
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...."
The point of the conference is not the official conference itself, but the meetings that happen around the conference. This is not true of all conferences, but for the JPMHC, and many other major conferences, that is the entire point. It's just a way to get people all in one place at one time, so that there is an efficient gathering to do deals.
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.
Seems like a subset of enthusiasts - early stage VC types, people working in product, people who write lengthy healthcare posts on LinkedIn, have been trying to position it as another HLTH, but that’s not what it is. It’s an investor conference that you need to be invited to. Wouldn’t be surprising if JPM somehow had taken a stake or done a deal with your company, combined with some government insiders.
The digital health community, however, has used it to start off the new year with a bang. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I got power schmoozed once. Why they mistook me for being worth the investment in time was beyond me. It's a strange feeling being led into the presence, assumed to have knowledge and power, and be offered.. something intangible to help them do .. something unclear.
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.
"if you had to meet a stranger in New York City on a specific day, with no way to communicate beforehand, where would you go?"
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.
> The conference has six focuses: AI in Drug Discovery, AI in Diagnostics, AI for Operational Efficiency, AI in Remote Healthcare, AI in Regulatory Compliance, and AI Ethics. Every single theme of this conference has converged onto AI as the only thing worth discussing.
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 is good writing at its peak. I don't care about the subject matter, but reading it is a joy. The references, the writing style, the pace.. Love it.
31 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 44.8 ms ] threadhttps://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.
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.
This sort of writing is what AI will take from us.
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"?
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.
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
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.