Ten Commandments of AI Parties
A guide for the perplexed
In May of this year, my friend Nathan wrote a saucy little tweet about Yacht parties at NeurIPS.
This tweet corresponded with a moment in my year where I had recently had much of the trajectory of my future forcibly altered for the worse, and for whatever reason it grew from an amusing little idea into A Big Plan.
I’ve been to some great things at NeurIPS over the time that I’ve been going, but I have almost never been to a great party. NeurIPS at its most crude level operates as a wrapper for Luma; especially this year when the conference organization was faltering and the conference app was catastrophically bad.
Starting this June I had the idea that maybe the best way to ensure an actually good party at NeurIPS was to do it ourselves, and Model Ship was born.
Afterwards, I was asked by some friends in events & AI about what makes a good party, here’s my list.
Ten Commandments of throwing a good party for AI researchers
Thou shalt host, not merely organize.
Thou shalt not suffer tranquilizing forces.
Thou shalt have within a space to rage, and a space to play.
Thou shalt nurture thine guests curiosity.
Thou shalt coax forth the meek with low light.
Thou shalt deliver highbrow culture & lowbrow music.
Thou shalt not push, only pull.
Thou shalt be generous in guests, and parsimonious in sponsors.
Thou shalt, like Noah before thee, gender balance.
Thou shalt not suffer Luddites nor Yuddites.
Thou shalt host, not merely organize.
Your job is to make certain from the moment that anyone steps through the door, they feel welcome, excited and relaxed. Great parties start by relaxing everyone quickly and then building their energy back up as a great motive force.
Don’t confuse hosting and organizing; hosts introduce you to new friends, make sure your immediate needs are met, and set the vibe- organizers make sure that the bathrooms stay clean. These are different roles.
Thou shalt not suffer tranquilizing forces.
If you serve exclusively oily carbs, people won’t want to dance. If you have big sofas and cuddle spaces immediately available, people will park themselves there. A great party circulates, undulates, moves and shimmies. Likewise, don’t invite literal tranquilizing forces into your party- a party is not tranquil. This can also apply to anything that could drain energy from your guests- even little things like bad temperature control, lack of air circulation, lack of bathrooms, etc. If you want the party energy to build to a fun night, don’t let it be tranquilized. This seems stupid to have to repeat it, but take it seriously in your planning and you’ll be rewarded.
Thou shalt have within a space to rage, and space to play.
A great party has a dance floor, period. The single best predictor of your party being fun is if people danced- not just because dancing is fun, but because dancing is a natural product/end game of a fun party.
AI people are not going to show up and bust out like moves like they just wrapped a Broadway musical. They need to make their way into that energy- they live in front of screens, their minds in latent space. They must be encouraged back into the soft animal bodies they seek to transcend, and this is done by having a playful relaxing space to begin the night in. Fill it with things that will make them smile, with things that will make them play, with things that will make them feel special.
Thou shalt nurture thine guests curiosity.
AI people get bored faster than any cohort of humans who have ever lived. They exist at a tempo of slack messages, model releases, zoom calls and paper deep-dives that requires them to process 10x more information per minute than a conversation normally provides. Each one of them has access to that firehose of information and dopamine at any moment they desire; so make room for curiosity at your party, and your hosts must stalk through the party for the first hour and immediately charm anyone who has their phone out.
Thou shalt coax forth the meek with low light.
SF loves to light parties like surgical wards. Turn the lights down, please. Light small little lights and candles, sit in the chairs and lean on the counters the night before and if you are squinting, you messed up. Please, for the love of god, light your party like everyone who is coming is interested in looking good and laughing, because they are.
Thou shalt deliver highbrow culture & lowbrow music.
Bring some culture to your parties. In case you haven’t been on the internet outside of TPOT, most art/culture people are growing to hate us. Bring these worlds closer together- SF has had many moments in its history where forces of tech and art stood united in optimism for a better future- cultivate a bit of art, a bit of culture. Invite someone to perform, to exhibit, to do something with AI art, to remind us of the broader cultural forces.
The one narrow window of culture that AI people do cultivate tends to be music, but please don’t take too many risks here- you might like Chilean minimalist techno while you code, but the rest of us want to flirt with a cutie, dance with our friends, and sing along to the Great American Pop Cannon.
Thou shalt not push, only pull.
I have been to so, so many parties where they push a vibe onto guests- in October I went to a robot fight night and there were lectures about AI safety and they hushed us every 2 minutes so that the speakers could be heard through their terrible mics. This is a mortal party sin, The Cruciatus Curse of a vibey party. Do not push any vibe onto people- pull them in. Invite them into something you want them to experience. Expect that half the people there want to continue their conversation and just chill. If you must push, do it with class- think when the intermission ends at a play. Don’t ruin your party vibe in service of a marketing message, a sponsor, a call to action, or a KPI. You know those Dwarkesh ads where you don’t realize its even an ad? Bring this energy.
Thou shalt be generous in guests, and parsimonious in sponsors.
Invite ‘nobodies’ to your parties. Be sincere in the invites, make them feel welcome, and let them know that you’ll host them. There are a lot of humble, cool, fun, adventurous people in the Bay, and they don’t all work in leadership at frontier labs. If you invite the AI equivalent of “I arrived here on the Mayflower” then there will be a familiarity that won’t spark curiosity and spontaneity. For our NeurIPS party we made literal “Golden Tickets” like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We gave them to great people we met at NeurIPS, and a whole bunch of them came to the party.
If you want or need sponsors for your party, pick carefully and don’t pick more than 3. This goes for corporate sponsors as well as individuals who are paying, donating space, or whatever. Each time someone commits resources, the circle of people who are not guests who must be kept happy grows. This means you might have to make a decision thats not in the best interest of your guests, which is generally speaking antifun. Pick them carefully, update them regularly, and make them look good.
Thou shalt, like Noah before thee, gender balance.
Contrary to what X might tell you, AI is full of cool women. Invite them to your party. If you don’t know enough women to gender balance your party, sounds like you might be the organizer, not the host. Parties are fun when they are gender balanced; not because of some seedy reason, but because that is the recipe for the most guests feeling comfortable when they arrive. Comfort early means you’ve done like 60% of the work to have a good party. Note that this means that your guest list pre-party should be 60+% women, as generally speaking no-shows are slightly higher for women than men.
Thou shalt not suffer Luddites nor Yuddites.
AI people are not going to have a fun time if they feel like they’re being judged by either Rats or Troglodytes. We work in AI, we spend a lot of our spiritual energy defending our life’s work to these two camps. Parties should refill this energy, not drain it. There are great places to have those convos, like debates and conferences and literally anywhere but the space you’ve specifically created to let people relax, unwind, let loose and have fun.
The Big MS2025 thank you-
Michelle was my co-organizer for Model Ship, and because she doesn’t read substack she’ll not be embarrassed by me saying how excellent it was to work with her. She and I hired 12 artists to make custom art and swag, huge teams for music, AV, food, drink, etc. and the whole process was easy and fun. She remembered everything, took care to treat our hosts and sponsors well, and made sure that nobody crashed the party. Michelle, you’re a fucking queen.
Even More Beyond
We’ll be back with more Actually Fun Parties For AI Researchers in 2026, alongside the return of 10 minute researcher interviews (we did 211 at NeurIPS 2025!). Can’t wait to see y’all back aboard.
