Anyone on HN that publishes and attends the big ML venues: There has been a lot of discussions about them being flooded. Our recent experience with NeurIPS confirms this. Tickets sold out within hours; many more submissions than reviewers can handle; organizers that are overwhelmed.

Have you considered or attended any alternative venues that still felt similar in spirit to how the big ML conferences should be?

Personally I always liked the openreview process, as well as the idea that one could submit short works in progress in dedicated workshops. Especially the latter is important to my research bubble, as it blends life sciences with AI applications.