We Won’t See You There: Why Our Virtual GTC’s Bigger Than Ever

by Claudia Cook

Call it an intellectual Star Wars bar. You could run into just about anything at GTC.

Princeton’s William Tang would speak about using deep learning to unleash fusion energy, UC Berkeley’s Gerry Zhang would talk about hunting for alien signals, Airbus A3’s Arne Stoschek would describe flying autonomous pods.

Want to catch it all? Run. NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference has long been almost too much to take in — even if you had fresh sneakers and an employer willing to give you a few days.

But a strange thing happened when this galaxy of astronomers and business leaders and artists and game designers and roboticists went virtual, and free. More people showed up. Suddenly this galaxy of content and connections is anything but far away.

100,000+ Attendees

GTC, which kicks off April 12 with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote, is a technology conference like no other because it’s not just about technology. It’s about putting technology to work to accelerate what you do, (just about) whatever you do.

We’re expecting more than 100,000 attendees to log into our latest virtual event. We’ve lined up more than 1,500 sessions, and more than 2,200 speakers. That’s more than 1,100 hours of content from 11 industries and in 13 broad topic areas.

There’s no way we could have done this if it wasn’t virtual. And now that it’s entirely virtual — right down to the “Dinner with Strangers” networking event — you can consume as much as want. No sneakers required.

For Business Leaders

Our weeklong event kicks off with a keynote on April 12 at 8:30 a.m. PT from NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang. It’ll be packed with demos and news.

Following the keynote, you’ll hear from execs at top companies, including Girish Bablani, corporate vice president for Microsoft Azure; Rene Haas, president of Arm’s IP Products Group; Daphne Koller, founder and CEO of Insitro and co-founder of Coursera; Epic Games CTO Kim Libreri; and Hildegard Wortmann, member of the board of management at Audi AG.

They’ll join leaders from Adobe, Amazon, Facebook, GE Renewable Energy, Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce, among many others.

For Developers and Those Early in Their Careers

If you’re just getting started with your career, our NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute will offer nine instructor-led workshops on a wide range of advanced software development topics in AI, accelerated computing and data science.

We also have a track of 101/Getting Started talks from our always popular “Deep Learning Demystified” series. These sessions can help anyone get oriented on the fundamentals of accelerated data analytics, high-level use cases and problem-solving methods — and how deep learning is transforming every industry.

Sessions will be offered live, online, in many time zones and in English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Participants can earn an NVIDIA DLI certificate to demonstrate subject-matter competency.

We’re also working with minority-serving institutions and organizations to offer their communities free seats for daylong hands-on certification classes. GTC is a forum for all communities to engage with the leading edge of AI and other groundbreaking technologies.

For Technologists

If you’re a technologist, you’ll be able to meet the minds that have created the technologies that have defined our era.

GTC will host three Turing Award winners — Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, Yann LeCun — whose work in deep learning has upended the technological landscape of the 21st century.

GTC will also host nine Gordon Bell winners, people who have brought the power of accelerated computing to bear on the most significant scientific challenges of our time.

Among them are Rommie Amaro, of UC San Diego; Lillian Chong of the University of Pittsburgh; computational biologist Arvind Ramanathan of Argonne National Lab; and James Phillips, a senior research programmer at the University of Illinois.

For Creators and Designers

If you’re an artist, designer or game developer, accelerated computing has long been key to creative industries of all kinds — from architecture to gaming to moviemaking.

Now, with AI, accelerated computing is being woven into the latest art. With our AI Art Gallery, 16 artists will showcase creations developed with AI.

You’ll also have multiple opportunities to participate. Highlights include a live, music-making workshop with the team from Paris-based AIVA and beatboxing sessions with Japanese composer Nao Tokui.

For Entrepreneurs and Investors

If you’re looking to build a new business — or fund one — you’ll find content by the fistfull. Start by loading up your calendar with our four AI Day for VC sessions, April 14.

Then browse sessions spotlighting startups in industries as diverse as healthcare, agriculture, and media and entertainment. Sessions will also touch on regions around the world, including Korean startups driving the self-driving car revolution, Taiwanese healthcare startups and Indian AI startups.

For Networking

While this conference may be virtual, GTC still offers plenty of networking. To connect attendees and speakers from a wide array of backgrounds, we’re continuing our longstanding “Dinner with Strangers” tradition. Attendees will have the opportunity to sit down, over Zoom, with others from their industry.

NVIDIA employee resource communities will host events including Growth for Women in Tech, the Queer in AI Mixer, the Black in AI Mixer and the LatinX in AI Mixer. We’re also launching “AI: Making (X) Better,” a series of talks featuring NVIDIA leaders from underrepresented communities who will discuss their path to AI.

Enough About Us, Make GTC About You

GTC offers an opportunity to engage with groundbreaking technologies like AI-accelerated data centers, deep learning for scientific discoveries, healthcare breakthroughs, next-generation collaboration and more.

Our advice? Register now, it’s free. Block off time in your calendar for the keynote April 12. Then hit the search bar on the conference page and look for content related to what you do — and what interests you.

Suddenly, the conference that’s all about accelerating everything is all about accelerating you.