I just hosted the most well attended, well perceived, well curated Open Source AI Summit to date. Sharing a few insights from the host perspective: Presidio was a good locational choice despite concerns. It’s just really beautiful and serene and it was a perfect getaway for people on a Friday afternoon. I guess more people would have come if I hosted in downtown sf, but no way I could have this pleasant aesthetics and beautiful views, and I didn’t need more attendees anyway. So it all worked out according to my scenario. Free open events have a very steep drop off rate. This one was 1/5, which was surprising but also expected. Next time I could accept more people from the waitlist yay👀 Little details matter in shaping an event experience. People liked high quality Korean catering, my moderation, my posture(?) and outfit - things you would think people would not care about. Curation of attendees matter as much as curation of content. I checked nearly every profile of 1000 registrants, and regret I did not use my agent to do that for me - but seeing it manually does actually help envision the vibes of the event. Yesterday the concentration rate was extremely high, people actually cared about the talks and listened intently. If content was good and people didn’t care to listen and only want to network, curation goes into waste. How speakers deliver matter. No matter how good the content is, if they are not presenting well, that would be suboptimal. 8 years of community building didn’t go into waste, found giving friends and fellow hosts who understand the pain of organizing a big event alone. @elkun_peng @frommww really appreciate the help and reaching out! lastly thank you to all my speakers and partners @MTSlive @thehousesf @near_ai for believing in my event quality and making the event impeccable. 🫶🏻