Is NeurIPS Getting Too Big?

NeurIPS 2019, the latest incarnation of the Neural Information Processing Systems conference, wrapped up just over a week ago. Multiple great blog posts have already summarized various talks and key trends, so the goal of this piece is more humble: to reflect on the experience of attending the conference, and in particular whether its vast size is harmful to its purpose as a research conference. Thirteen thousand attendees, 1,428 accepted papers, and 57 workshops vast. This is 9 minutes condensed down to 15 seconds, and this is not even close to all the attendees! Is that a Rolling Stones concert?