Ben Recht Proposes "Microconferences" to Replace Mega Academic Meetings
beenwrekt · x · 2026-08-17
Berkeley professor Ben Recht proposes alternative systems for generating, evaluating, and sharing knowledge: "Microconferences."
He notes academia exploded in size post-war while the ideal conference size stayed constant. AI was born at a small Dartmouth conference; ICML began as a small CMU workshop; NeurIPS grew out of John Hopfield's 10-30 person "Hopfest" at Caltech bringing together neuroscientists, physicists, and engineers. Small, cross-disciplinary, idea-focused workshops consistently launched big ideas.
Today ICML and NeurIPS draw tens of thousands, yet computer scientists convinced themselves conference proceedings rival journal publications. Rather than complain, Recht plans to lead by doing this semester and experiment publicly with an alternative system.
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