Speaking: Research-to-Practice AI Implementation

Speaking

Julien Simon is a sought-after speaker at major AI and machine learning conferences worldwide. Since 2015, he has appeared at over 650 in-person and online events, traveling 1.5 million kilometers to meet developers and professionals in 95+ cities in 37 countries.

With over 30 years of tech experience, Julien delivers engaging keynotes, technical workshops, and thought leadership presentations.

You can contact Julien at julien@julien.org for speaking inquiries and availability.

Looking for presentation slides and materials? Over 330 PDF decks from AWS talks (2015-2021) are available at https://github.com/juliensimon/my-aws-talks-2015-2021. You can also find many more presentations on Slideshare.

Americas

Asia Pacific

Africa

Europe & Middle East

Upcoming 2025 Events

MCP Conference Berlin — Europe's First Developer Conference Dedicated to Model Context Protocol — September 16, 2025
AWS GenAI Day France — October 7, 2025 • Paris, France
AWS Generative AI Loft, London — October 14, 2025 • London, UK
ODSC West — October 28-30, 2025 • Burlingame, CA

Past 2025 Events

2025

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AWS "Let's Build a Startup" live show

Twitch • Video • September 9, 2025 • Online

Live streaming session on AWS Twitch channel discussing startup building strategies and AWS services for entrepreneurs.

Live Stream AWS Startup Twitch Online

"Open, Private, Cost-Effective AI: Arcee.ai Foundation Models on Intel Xeon"

Intel AI Innovators Across Industries Webinar • Webinar • August 12, 2025 • Online

Webinar presentation on Arcee Foundation Models (AFM)—a family of small, efficient language models delivering state-of-the-art AI quality on Intel Xeon CPUs. AFM provides comparable performance to much larger models while significantly lowering hosting costs and infrastructure complexity. Designed for enterprises that demand cost-efficiency, privacy, security, and regulatory compliance, AFM offers full transparency with open weights and architecture, eliminating vendor lock-in.

Webinar Intel Xeon Small Language Models Enterprise AI Cost-Effective AI Online

Real-world Applications of Optimized Models on Arm with Meta, AWS, Arcee AI, AIZIP, and Stability

Arm Partner Summit • Conference • August 6, 2025 • Cambridge, UK

Panel discussion on real-world applications of optimized models on Arm architecture, featuring collaboration with Meta, AWS, Arcee AI, AIZIP, and Stability. Exploring practical implementations and performance optimizations for AI models on Arm-based systems.

Conference Panel Arm AI Optimization Cambridge

Trying to figure out MCP by actually building an app from scratch with open source and SLMs

MCP Conference London • Conference • July 24, 2025 • Slides

Europe's first developer conference dedicated to the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Presentation on building applications from scratch using open source tools and Small Language Models, exploring how MCP standardizes AI data integration and enables new possibilities for AI system development.

Conference MCP Small Language Models Open Source London

Building and working with Small Language Models

Paris AI, ML and Computer Vision Meetup • Meetup • July 16, 2025 • Slides

Practical session on using small open-source language models (SLMs) in enterprise settings. Exploring modern workflows for adapting SLMs with domain-specific pre-training, instruction fine-tuning, and alignment. Introducing and demonstrating open-source tools such as DistillKit, Spectrum, and MergeKit, which implement advanced techniques crucial for achieving task-specific accuracy while optimizing computational costs. Also discussing models and solutions built by Arcee AI.

Meetup Small Language Models Enterprise AI Paris

Implementing High-Quality and Cost-Efficient AI Applications with Small Language Models

Budapest ML 2025 • Conference • June 17, 2025 • Budapest, Hungary

This session focuses on practical techniques for using small open-source language models (SLMs) in enterprise settings. We first highlight the limitations of proprietary models in terms of privacy, compliance, and cost. Then, we explore modern workflows for adapting SLMs with domain-specific pre-training, instruction fine-tuning, and alignment. Along the way, we will introduce and demonstrate open-source tools like DistillKit, Spectrum, and MergeKit, which implement advanced techniques that are critical in achieving task-specific accuracy while optimizing computational costs. We'll also discuss some of the models and enterprise solutions built by Arcee AI.

Conference Small Language Models Enterprise AI Cost-Efficient AI Budapest

Building an AI Retail Assistant at the Edge with SLMs on Intel CPUs

Cisco Live • Conference • Blog • June 8–12, 2025 • San Diego, USA

Featured in the Intel Showcase (#3035) at Cisco Live 2025, the Edge IQ Retail Assistant demonstrates how AI can transform retail operations without relying on GPUs. Powered by Intel Xeon 6 CPUs running in a Cisco UCS server, this technical demonstrator showcases a chatbot interface powered by open-source small language models and real-time data analytics. Store associates can interact naturally through voice or text, receiving immediate information about product availability from Chooch's inventory system or crowd density from WaitTime's analytics platform. The solution runs three sophisticated small language models entirely on Intel Xeon processors using OpenVINO optimization, highlighting the capabilities of modern CPU-based AI inference for edge computing applications.

Conference Edge Computing Small Language Models Intel Xeon Retail AI Cisco San Diego

AI and Machine Learning for Public Investors

The World Bank, Washington DC • Conference • June 9–13, 2025

Presentation on AI and machine learning applications for public investment and development projects.

Conference Public Investment AI Applications

Implementing High-Quality and Cost-Efficient AI Applications with Small Language Models

ODSC East • Conference • Slides • May 13, 2025 • Boston, USA

Session focusing on practical techniques for using small open-source language models (SLMs) for real-life projects. Covers limitations of proprietary models in terms of privacy, compliance, and cost, then explores modern workflows for adapting SLMs with domain-specific pre-training, instruction fine-tuning, and alignment. Introduces and demonstrates open-source Arcee AI SLM, and libraries like DistillKit, Spectrum, and MergeKit, which are critical in achieving task-specific accuracy while optimizing computational costs. Discussion includes why SLMs are a great fit for advanced scenarios like model routing and agentic workflows.

Conference Small Language Models Enterprise AI Cost-Efficient AI ODSC Boston

Optimiser vos workloads AI/ML sur Amazon EC2 et AWS Graviton

AWS Summit Paris • Conference • April 9, 2025 • Paris, France

Session GAI307 focusing on optimizing AI/ML workloads on Amazon EC2 and AWS Graviton. Presentation covers Small Language Models (SLMs), AWS Graviton 4 performance benefits, cost optimization strategies, and practical demonstrations of Arcee AI models running on Graviton instances. Discussion includes quantization techniques, performance comparisons, and enterprise AI deployment recommendations.

Conference AWS Graviton Small Language Models AI Optimization Paris

CloudFest

Europa-Park, Germany • Conference • March 19, 2025

Participation in CloudFest conference discussing cloud computing and AI technologies.

Conference Cloud Computing AI

Knowledge Distillation: Transferring Capabilities from Large to Small Language Models

AWS AI and Data Conference Ireland 2025 • Conference • March 13, 2025 • Lyrath Convention Centre, Kilkenny, Ireland

Knowledge distillation transfers capabilities from large language models to smaller, faster models while maintaining performance. Organizations can achieve dramatic improvements in throughput and cost efficiency. Learn how to implement distillation using Amazon Bedrock or to build a custom solution on Amazon SageMaker. Julien Simon will showcase how Arcee AI uses distillation to develop industry-leading small language models (SLMs) based on open architectures. He will also introduce the open-source DistillKit library and demonstrate several newly distilled SLMs from Arcee AI.

Conference Knowledge Distillation Small Language Models Amazon Bedrock Amazon SageMaker DistillKit Arcee AI Kilkenny

Conquer AI performance, cost, and scale with AWS AI chips

AWS EMEA Innovate Generative AI+Data Conference • Conference • Session GENAIT5S3-P • Level 200 • March 6, 2025 • Online

Generative AI promises to revolutionize industries, but its immense computational demands and escalating costs pose significant challenges. To overcome these hurdles, AWS designed and purpose built AI chips AWS Trainium and Inferentia. In this session, get a close look at the innovation across silicon, server, and datacenter and hear about how AWS customers built, deployed, and scaled foundation models across various products and services using AWS AI chips.

Online AWS AWS Trainium AWS Inferentia AI Chips Foundation Models EMEA

4th IFC Workshop on Data Science in Central Banking

Bank of Italy, Rome • Workshop • February 18–20, 2025 • Rome, Italy

Workshop co-hosted by the BIS Irving Fisher Committee on Central Bank Statistics and the Bank of Italy, focusing on generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its potential applications in central banking. The event emphasizes ongoing projects and exchange of experiences to foster in-house expertise and reduce reliance on external service providers. Topics include generative AI methods, cloud computing, open-source software for official statistics, data architectures, and addressing data privacy and security concerns in data-driven environments.

Workshop Central Banking Generative AI Data Science Bank of Italy Rome