EEML 2025 Wrap Up!

Bringing EEML to Sarajevo: A story about chairs, ćevapi, and controlled chaos

It’s been a couple of weeks now since the Eastern European Machine Learning Summer School wrapped up in Sarajevo. I’ve had some time to unwind, reacquaint myself with the concept of a full night’s sleep, and finally try to put into words what was, frankly, one of the most insane and deeply rewarding projects of my life.

Bringing a major academic event like EEML to Bosnia had been a quiet dream of mine for quite a while. I remember seeing an internal DeepMind post (back in the good old Slack days) about EEML around seven years ago and I immediately thought how amazing it would be to have something like this in Bosnia. A year or two prior, I had co-founded the Association for Advancement of Science and Technology (ANNT in Bosnian) and organizing a major science conference was something we were slowly building toward as it aligned perfectly with our mission. We started from the ground up with a local yearly STEM youth camp and since then grew it to host around 80 college students. Honestly, I assumed our path would be to grow our own event over time. I never imagined that, in such a short time, we would be partnering to bring an event of EEML’s scale home.

So, how did it happen so fast? Even after joining the EEML team in Serbia last year, the dream of hosting in Bosnia still felt at least a few years away. But, as luck would have it, the reinforcement learning keynote speaker had to cancel, and I stepped in at the very last minute. The talk was a success, and in hindsight, I believe that moment gave the team that extra bit of confidence needed to greenlight EEML in Sarajevo this year.

The gentle art of persuasion

After returning from last year’s EEML in August, I had no idea a chance for Bosnia would come so soon. There’s an unwritten rule that a country hosts a workshop a year prior to test the waters, and when discussions began in November, Croatia seemed like the natural next step. Matko had been part of EEML for a few years and they’d already held a workshop in Zagreb. However, Matko was also working to bring the Mediteranean Machine Learning Summer School (M2L) summer school to Croatia. Since that plan worked out, hosting a second major event was no longer feasible for them, which suddenly put EEML 2025 on the table for Bosnia.

Our local team from ANNT was super excited, but we had to show that we (since I’m the only local and non-local organizer 😅) could handle the logistics from scratch. We needed to prove we could sort out the venue, accommodation, and food for around 250 people (at the time 😆) and that there was enough local interest to make the event both successful and valuable for the community.

We made our case, and to our delight, it was convincing enough. We got the green light in December, and just like that, my entire year ahead was transformed! From that moment on, it was full steam ahead.

In hindsight, I do have to admit I might have overestimated the local community’s readiness a little. With ANNT, we had just finished a project to map out the AI landscape in Bosnia, and on paper, it looked like a lot was happening. The reality was a bit quieter, but thankfully, we still managed to bring out the best out of the local community.

The great venue puzzle

The minute we started planning, we hit our first major hurdle: the accommodation. In the past, EEML participants were usually housed in student dorms, but the dorms in Sarajevo generally don’t have A/C, which was out of the question for a summer school in July. This forced us to look elsewhere, and we narrowed our choice down to two hotels.

We faced a trade-off: one hotel outside the city versus a more expensive one in the heart of it all. This choice added to the overall complexity and cost, but we decided that being within walking distance of the city center would provide a much better experience for everyone. We chose one of Bosnia’s most iconic hotels, built for the 1984 Winter Olympics—a pricier option that we had to subsidize heavily to keep things affordable for our participants.

With accommodation sorted, the next puzzle was the lecture venue. The university had one lecture hall large enough, but it lacked A/C. So we made another big decision: to host the lectures in the same hotel. It was more expensive and meant we had to figure out how to turn a conference hall into a proper lecture theatre, but it simplified the logistics slightly and created a better, more integrated experience. For the first time, EEML was organized in a hotel, with students and lectures under one roof. Is that how you scale it up?

The decision to go all-in on a pricier hotel and subsidize the accommodation had a major ripple effect. It meant we needed more sponsors. But EEML is not an event where anyone can simply buy a seat; it’s a prestigious school where admission is based on academic excellence and we carefully curate both participants and sponsors to ensure the best possible experience.

To maintain this balance, for every new sponsor we brought in, we also had to accept more students. This kicked off a challenging cycle: more students led to higher costs, which in turn complicated the logistics and created a need for even more sponsors. It’s a delicate balance that can quickly get out of hand. And that is how our initial target of 250 participants ballooned to 350, making EEML 2025 the largest in-person edition to date, with participants from around 50 countries joining us in Sarajevo.

Top three logistical nightmares

As EEML approached, some logistical worries kept me up at night right until the very end.

• The Food: How do you feed 350 people, on a budget, without just serving dry sandwiches? Our friends at Zmaj, a fantastic local restaurant, became our unsung heroes. They’re famous for their ćevapi but completely transformed their operation just for us. They closed off the main part of the restaurant for a week, cooked whatever we needed, and worked at practically no profit. Their support was incredible, and frankly, they were the only partner who could tick all our boxes, even if it resulted in some long queues (as the memes below will attest).
• The Chairs: This one still makes me laugh. The hotel’s conference hall was big, but their table setup could only fit 250 people. We needed to avoid tables and get our hands on chairs with those little fold-out tables for laptops and notes. After searching all over the city, we found exactly one institution that had them in the quantity we needed: the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology (SSST). They generously lent us over 350 of them, but we had to transport the chairs ourselves. This involved one truck, two trips, and a team of volunteers (myself included) loading and unloading every single chair. Twice. To add a perfect, chaotic cherry on top, on the return journey, a car crashed into our truck, blocking traffic on one of Sarajevo’s busiest streets for nearly two hours. You just can’t make this stuff up.
• The Internet: Anyone who has run a technical workshop knows that bad Wi-Fi can ruin everything. We were especially paranoid because the tutorials required students to download model weights, and the hotel’s internet had a questionable reputation. Thankfully, our platinum sponsor, BH Telecom, stepped in as our savior. They installed a dedicated high-bandwidth fiber line just for the event. We still had a few hiccups on day one, so we also had the hotel max out their own provider’s bandwidth. With two networks running in parallel, we were finally safe.

Going the extra mile (sometimes literally)

Beyond the big three, there was a mountain of smaller challenges leading up to and during EEML. Renting poster stands in Sarajevo was almost as expensive as buying new ones in Mostar, so we bought our own. Then a construction site popped up right in front of the hotel without any warning. We had to constantly monitor the work, especially when they fired up a machine that was literally shaking the entire hotel. And, of course, the noise peaked during one of our most anticipated lectures. 🫠

Throughout EEML, we also tried to add personal touches that went beyond the academic program. We wanted participants to feel looked after from the moment they landed, embodying the true spirit of Eastern European hospitality. This also led to one of our biggest organizational hurdles: picking up every single participant from the airport. It was a massive effort, and yes, even I was playing taxi driver. On top of that, we dealt with a constant stream of small crises, like the A/C failing in a tutorial room, that our team would immediately jump on to fix. It was these small constant interventions that were crucial in making the week run smoothly.

The week itself was a marathon with daily lectures, tutorials, and a packed social schedule with welcome drinks, poster sessions, and a gala dinner. Thursday was usually a half-day off, but this year we decided to organize a trip to the Tunnel of Salvation museum and a guided city tour. The day was further enriched by a brilliant Estimathon competition organized by Jane Street and evening drinks hosted by Credo VC. While the participants networked, the organizers, speakers, and TAs snuck off for a quiet dinner—our well deserved moment of calm.

The last day was shorter, with final lectures and student project presentations. We handed out certificates, including the much-anticipated best meme award, and had to wrap things up a bit sharpish as the hotel had a massive wedding booked for that evening.

The aftermath

Hosting around 350 people from around 50 countries in my hometown was surreal. I’m so incredibly proud to witness ANNT grow from a handful of science enthusiasts into an association capable of successfully organizing a 350-person international event. I feel so happy to be part of a community that made an event like this a huge pleasure for everyone who attended and presented our country in the best of lights. We heard from so many people how they can’t wait to be back, and from some, how it was a life-changing event. That’s the best we could have ever hoped for!

Of course, this would have been completely impossible without the army of people who helped make it happen. A huge thank you to:

• The core EEML team for bringing everyone together and for their passion in fulfilling EEML’s mission.
• The amazing speakers, tutorial leads, and teaching assistants who shared their invaluable knowledge and time.
• The entire ANNT team and our volunteers, who did so much of the heavy lifting and went the extra mile to make sure everything ran smoothly.
• Our sponsors, whose continued financial support is making EEML possible.
• BH Telecom, SSST, and Zmaj, for stepping up to help solve some of our main logistical challenges.
• The many Friends and Supporters who provided help along the way, especially SO.. quantum marketing agency, for the great work with the media outreach.
• The participants for bringing their enthusiasm, questions, memes, and the energy that makes every EEML super special.

This last year was not what I had in mind a year ago. But I like to say that most often we don’t get what we plan for, but with the right mindset, we end up with much more. This experience was certainly that for me!

I’ve tried to capture a small fraction of the EEML 2025 story here, but there were 350 other stories unfolding that week. I’d love to hear yours! If you have a favorite memory please share it in the comments below.

And if bringing science and technology communities together is something you’re passionate about or you’d like to get inolved with ANNT, please don’t hesitate to get in touch!