Hotels in downtown San Francisco are fairly expensive.
Even the cheaper ones are $130.
One cheaper option would be a hostel, which is around $40.
Although there are also a few cheap hotels which are much more budget-friendly and you still get your own room, like this one for $59.
I like the name of this bar, the Endup, because it's where you end up after you're done elsewhere.
Cleaning up lots of garbage.
This guy has a lot of old parking passes and paintbrush wrappers in his car.
Neat hanging lights.
This guy is parked way up on the curb.
I was in San Francisco for the AI User Conference.
I had originally purchased a 2-day pro pass for $700. The pro pass lets you go into all of the smaller workshop rooms; a general pass only lets you in to see the main stage. A few days after I bought the pass, they had a sale for $99 per day for a pro pass, so I asked if I could cancel my $700 pass and get a $198 pass. Thankfully, they let me, so I saved $500.
The main stage speakers.
And the ones in the workshop rooms.
They had some exhibitors set up with desks.
Canva was giving out USB-A to USB-C adapters; those are useful.
The logo.
The conference was at The Hibernia, which used to be a bank.
It had some beautiful skylights.
Another one.
A workshop in one of the side rooms. Lots of attendees using laptops.
Although most of the power strips didn't work. That doesn't seem like a good sign for a computer-focused event. Hopefully everyone charged their laptops beforehand.
Many of the developers had multiple uses for their programs.
The workshops in the smaller rooms had developers demonstrating their programs. The main stage had more general interviews with the developers.
Sometimes there were some useful tips.
Most of them had created or worked with other tech startups as well.
There were more workshops down in the basement.
In two separate rooms.
There was also a little resting room between them.
A food vendor.
On the other side of the basement was where they had old telephone rooms.
More seating space.
Another discussion.
About the broader ideas of what their programs do for you.
You could only go into the side workshop room, the basement for the workshops there, or the second floor if you had a propass.
The second floor had a larger room.
With free pizza.
It was pretty cold in the building, so at lunchtime, I ran over to Ross to get a hoodie. They actually had a line to get in.
And a long line at checkout.
You don't see that at many stores outside San Francisco.
It looked like the cops were arresting this guy for stealing some fruit. Shouldn't they be focusing on the thieves who break into cars and steal tons of expensive items instead?
Warmer now with my new hoodie.
More presentations.
Better to be simpler and have the person facing you.
Although I'm not sure how good their results are.
Because some of the images they used as examples had both good and bad parts.
Another presentation on marketing.
That's a lot of areas.
Saving a lot of hours.
This guy down in many of the basement workshops was actually my favorite presenter. He didn't work for the companies, so he'd point out many of the problems with the programs as well.
Cool lights.
At my hotel right across the street from the conference.
Don't check in after 10pm.
My room is pretty small.
And the showers are shared. That seems to be common among these very cheap hotels.
This guy is still parked up on the curb, although it looks like he got a ticket.
The lights in this alley are on now.
I grabbed some dinner there.
Some guy was trying to sell the cashier these glasses.
And there were guys doing drugs right outside.
More of them, right by the pretty murals.
Dinner.
Some jack o'lantern murals outside my window.
They're pretty gruesome.
My car is parked in a lot down this alley which also has a fair number of homeless people.
Thankfully my car wasn't broken into.
Back at the conference. There are a lot of cool rooms on the second floor.
They each are completely different.
But all very funky.
With all different types of furniture.
Nobody is there yet, although it fills up later in the day.
Day two schedule.
A main stage presentation.
On Buzzy.
A basement workshop.
With the CEO of the company.
Some more tips.
They say that before AI, everyone focused on their specific area.
And now it will be more mixed.
There were lots of attendees.
Another workshop, with the CEO showing off his product.
It's neat to see them work in real time on it.
This one turns a drawing of an app into code.
Another main stage presentation.
To make a website with AI. This view shows how all of the pages connect.
The website is to sell shirts. Did it actually set up any kind of purchasing, creating, and distribution system for the company, though? I don't see how it could go to China to source manufacturers.
Tips for talking to AI.
This was interesting. Her program wasn't working, so she went into the code to fix it. Good to see some of them actually know how to code.
Another panel.
All done, and more cars parked very illegally.
Many homeless by the parking lot with my car.
An article about some problems that one of the companies that presented had. I didn't hear him discuss this during his talks. The big thing I took away from the conference was that all of these apps essentially work on top of / use data pulled from only a few major AI programs, like ChatGPT, and they don't seem to have any licensing agreements with those major programs, so if those programs change how they work, all of these apps might stop working, so it's rather dangerous to rely on them, especially for anything long-term.