Add working draft of SIGGRAPH roundup blog post

Author: swoods-nv

_posts/2025-08-28-siggraph-roundup.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "SIGGRAPH 2025 Roundup: A Fantastic Week for the Slang Community"
+date: 2025-08-28 17:00:00
+categories: [ "blog" ]
+tags: [slang, siggraph, events]
+author: "Shannon Woods, NVIDIA, Slang Working Group Chair"
+image: CHANGEME
+human_date: "August 28, 2025"
+---
+
+What an incredible week at SIGGRAPH 2025! The Slang team had the privilege of hosting three major events in Vancouver, and we're thrilled to share that all of them were exceptionally well attended. It was truly inspiring to meet so many Slang users, developers, and enthusiasts in person. We had developers from major studios and content authoring teams, independent developers, researchers, and students all coming together to learn, share experiences, and help shape the future of modern shader programming.
+
+## Event Highlights and Materials Now Available
+
+### Hands-On Class: Introduction to Slang
+
+Our Sunday afternoon hands-on lab was packed with developers eager to dive into Slang's modern shader programming features. The interactive session covered everything from language fundamentals to advanced features like modules, generics, and automatic differentiation.
+
+Download the lab materials and walk through the examples on your own computer here:
+[Lab Materials](https://developer.download.nvidia.com/ProGraphics/nvpro-samples/SlangLab/Lab.zip)
+[Lab Slides](https://developer.download.nvidia.com/ProGraphics/nvpro-samples/SlangLab/Slides.pdf)
+
+### Birds of a Feather: Developing with Slang
+
+Wednesday's session was part of Khronos's Birds of a Feather day, and Slang developers filled the room! This was our opportunity to share the latest developments, discuss the language roadmap, and hear directly from developers using Slang in production.
+
+[Presentation Materials](ADD LINK HERE)
+[Recording](ADD LINK HERE)
+
+### Neural Shading Course
+
+Thursday's intensive course on neural shading techniques was a deep dive into the cutting edge of graphics programming. Participants learned how to implement neural networks in Slang, leveraging automatic differentiation and modern GPU capabilities.
+
+You can find the slides for this course, along with all example code in our repository:
+[Neural Shading Course Materials](https://github.com/shader-slang/neural-shading-s25)
+
+### SIGGRAPH Best Paper Award Winner Built with Slang!
+
+But the Slang team wasn't the only one having fun with Slang at SIGGRAPH this year: The paper "[Vector-Valued Monte Carlo Integration Using Ratio Control Variates](https://suikasibyl.github.io/vvmc/#/)" (Lu et al) was one of SIGGRAPH 2025's Best Paper honorees. The paper introduces a novel technique called "ratio control variates" for reducing noise in Monte Carlo integration, and the authors implemented their method using Slang. You can check out the source code on [GitHub](https://github.com/SuikaSibyl/vvmc/).
+
+## Thank You
+
+A huge thank you to everyone who attended our SIGGRAPH events, asked questions, shared feedback, and contributed to making the Slang community so vibrant. Your enthusiasm and insights drive us forward and help make Slang better for everyone.
+
+We're already looking forward to next year's SIGGRAPH and the opportunity to connect with even more of our amazing community. Until then, happy coding with Slang!