158 pointsby abhishaike12 hours ago18 comments
  • dekhn4 hours ago
    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...."

    • epistasis3 hours ago
      All the action at PSB happens in the hot tub discussions. I didn't spend any time in them, as I was too junior and didn't know the right people, but PSB did get me some good post doc options!

      Not much industry there though, unless it's changed in recent years. One of the more scientifically productive conferences because of the connections that people establish.

      (Inside JPMorgan is so crowded and not so useful. I got a really really bad impression of 10X when I saw their debut at JPMorgan but that was an incorrect impression because they have done really well, mostly by not actually doing any of the products they touted at their presentation.).

      • 3 hours ago
        undefined
    • buildbot4 hours ago
      For some reason this rings a bell - is there an article/blog/post/message in a bottle about Lynn Conway at that conference (and how it’s not really conference; lol?).
  • lesdeuxmagots3 hours ago
    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.

    • cal_dentan hour ago
      I'd say this is true of almost all corporate conferences
      • rurban4 minutes ago
        Similar thing happened to me at a surf competition at an anon place. People were flown in from everywhere, my surfboard arrived too late because the plane sucked.

        But as me, everybody just gathered at the hot tub, nobody took part at the real sports event, we just fooled around and were happy to meet people from all around the world. Brazil, Hawaii, Germany, Canada, US. Really nice event. No idea if there even was a winner at the event. Maybe they did put something onto the web page, but nobody cared.

    • tptacek2 hours ago
      This is how RSA works, too.
  • ooterness17 minutes ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bielefeld_conspiracy

    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"?

  • semiquaver2 hours ago
    Glad someone is taking up the mantle left by Hunter S. Thompson’s demise.

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

  • lijok4 hours ago
    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”
  • SOLAR_FIELDS2 hours ago
    I can tell you that this conference for sure exists because I am here for unrelated reasons right now and the hotel prices are ridiculous this week.
  • aorloff3 hours ago
    There is no question that there is an unseen world. The problem is, how far is it from midtown and how late is it open?
  • dr_2 hours ago
    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.
  • wilson0904 hours ago
    Reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut - what a wonderful and absurd article
    • Obscurity43404 hours ago
      What is the Vonnegut-esque in your view?
      • selcuka3 hours ago
        > The Sirens of Titan [1] is a comic science fiction novel by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., first published in 1959. His second novel, it involves issues of free will, omniscience, and the overall purpose of human history, with much of the story revolving around a Martian invasion of Earth.

        [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sirens_of_Titan

  • refuser5 hours ago
    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.

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

    (tfa is a fun read, regardless)

  • sota_pop4 hours ago
    What an incredible read.
    • buildbot4 hours ago
      Seriously the way it slowly goes from totally coherent, to slightly coherent, to flat earth, is as another commenter said; “absolute cinema”.
      • cbozeman3 hours ago
        It really is a masterpiece.
  • enderforth3 hours ago
    This would make a pretty decent premise for an SCP article.
  • jmugan3 hours ago
    I just finished reading House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, and this could have been one of the chapters.
    • cyberpunk18 minutes ago
      Ha, funnily enough I just bought it after hearing about it on that thread with the 90's 'strange website'. Not cracked it open yet, it's quite a tome.
  • shevis4 hours ago
    Absolute cinema
  • alephnerd4 hours ago
    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.

    • abhishaike4 hours ago
      I will investigate these other locations!
      • alephnerd4 hours ago
        If you want to actually talk with people about some of your thoughts on the industry, I'd recommend just going to a hotel bar, grab a pint, and just spark a conversation.
  • bix64 hours ago
    lol best thing I read all day
  • doctorpangloss4 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • abhishaike4 hours ago
      I'm going to be honest: I have absolutely no idea what this comment means
  • fn_bb_sqr_pnts4 hours ago
    from my understanding, it's a healthcare investors conference where investors meet companies (both public and private), esp those looking to fund raise.
    • abirch4 hours ago
      My wife was there last year. There are a lot of investment opportunities. Plenty of dinners and meetings away from the conference. It's the whole drinking from a fire hose as there is too much to see and do.
      • themadturk3 hours ago
        Makes me wonder if this how the creature under California feels.
      • 4 hours ago
        undefined