Gateway to the West: SC25 and the machine language quantum does not have

Supercomputing SC25 in St. Louis, November 2025. Neutral atoms, PCIe switches, four quantum pure-plays with pitch decks, and a public seminar at the St. Louis Fed where the answer given was a lot narrower than the question asked.

AI for the Accelerated Science, downtown

The Chen Institute’s AI for the Accelerated Science symposium in San Francisco, October 2025.

NeSy25 in Santa Cruz, and a Mario Kart run over HWY17

September 2025, NeSy25 in Santa Cruz, where the whole emphasis was on making models reason and then show their work. I also took HWY17 over to the Imagination in Action event at Moffet Place, and missed Neal Stephenson for my trouble.

Gonzo in the Valley of Heart’s Delight

Astro Teller on why imperative projects do worse with arbitrary resources, a lightning talk on predicting preterm birth, and a panel that sent me looking at Norse mythology. Sunnyvale, September 2025.

Open25 at the Venetian, and demand manufactured out of nothing

The last leg of my summer trip was Vegas for Open25, eBay’s thirtieth, at the Venetian. Influencer selling by cohort, a leak in the WC that got me an executive suite, and a sphere everybody else wants a room facing.

Two Tracks in the House That Halmos Built

A conference split cleanly into Quantum for AI and AI for Quantum, plus an NVIDIA roadshow aimed squarely at midwestern researchers. Indiana University Bloomington, 2025.

Ed Chi on machine dreaming, and a vibe shift at Berkeley

August 2025, the Agentic AI Summit at UC Berkeley, the middle stop of nine days and three towns. A sidebar with Ed H. Chi of Google DeepMind on why models dream, the inductive-deductive divide, and why both sectors got to the same idea at the same time.

The Trillion Parameter Consortium, and a Vibe Shift

National-lab researchers working out how AI might not just assist large-scale physical science but autonomously conduct it. Santa Clara, July 2025, the first of three towns in nine days.

Where the valley trips actually happened

The conferences were in Santa Clara and San Jose. Cupertino is where I slept, and where a good deal of the useful conversation took place. A deliberately thin pin, for now.

Value over hype in the foothills of the western Carolinas

From Nashville to Asheville for a workshop on AI strategy and production, chasing the nuts and bolts work that turns great models into real margin. Also MCP, hurricane footprints, and a town quirkier than I expected.