I was fortunate to be able to attend NeurIPS 2018, the largest artificial intelligence conference in the world! Since the tickets were sold in 11 minutes, I applied to be a volunteer during the event with a letter of recommendation, as requested by the organizers. Even with that in hand, I was refused as a volunteer!
You can understand the joy that I experienced when Element AI contacted me, and offered to give me an all access ticket to attend with them. Since they were sponsors this year, they also offered a ticket to my friend Kristof!