ICML in Seoul: Nothing Is Impossible

An after-party for ICML

This week ICML, the International Conference on Machine Learning, was held at COEX in Seoul. I'm not a researcher, so I knew nothing about it. But so many ICML side events kept popping up on Luma that I asked one of our developers about it, and they told me that for grad students it's basically the Olympics. Last year it was in Vancouver, and this year it was Seoul. With so many people from the global AI world in Seoul at the same time, I thought we should do something too. After going back and forth, I settled on an "ICML Bar Crawl" at the last minute and rented out my friend Teddy's entire bar for an after-party.

Seoul as a global city

I've always had doubts about whether Seoul can really become a global city. Honestly, I still don't know. What encouraged me was how excited the people from overseas were just to be in Korea. Since they'd made the trip, they wanted to enjoy the culture, hang out with locals, have a lot of conversations and try new things, and they told me they wanted to come back. Of course, we're so far from both the US and Europe that they'll need a very good reason to make the trip again. Still, I like to dream that one day, instead of us always flying out to meet people, they'll come to us.

The DJ problem

It wasn't a big event, but we hosted around 130 researchers from overseas for a modest party, and the vibe felt just like New York. One fun (and nerve-racking) episode: when I booked the DJ, I accidentally told them the event ran until 10 p.m. It actually ran until midnight, and I had a bad feeling the mood would die the second the music cut out. I only realized this 30 minutes before the start, and Teddy and I immediately huddled up. Shouting "Nothing is impossible," we asked the DJ, feeling terrible about it, whether we could borrow their gear for a bit, take good care of it and return it the next day.

The catch was that you need a laptop to DJ. Teddy rushed to install DJ software on their own laptop, and among our foreign guests we found someone who DJs in Hongdae (Seoul's nightlife and indie music district) as a hobby. Even better, they just happened to have a USB stick with the playlists they use at their gigs. We got them ready in 30 minutes and swapped them in for the original DJ without a hitch. Looking back, it might not seem like a big deal, but in the moment, small surprises like that had me sweating.

Who was in the room

In the end, the after-party wrapped up without trouble. Our friends from abroad told us again and again that they'd met a lot of great people in Korea and thanked us for helping them close out ICML on a high note. More than anything, it felt surreal to have top AI researchers from all over the world in one room: OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Alibaba, plus Stanford, ETH Zurich, Peking University and more.

Next stop: Singapore

And today I'm in Singapore again. Here we're putting on a Bloom event together with the local Claude community. While I'm here, I'm also running a seminar for Cliwant, my company's main business. I never imagined a community could expand overseas. We're not selling a product, so it doesn't turn into money right away. But these days I feel networks matter more than ever, and I'm hoping that small bits of global momentum like this will add up and become the seed for something bigger someday.

Originally written in Korean on Brunch, July 12, 2026.