Newsletter
Upcoming
AI Tinkerers OC will host an in-person meetup focused on hands-on LLM and generative AI implementation, featuring live demos and Q&A for builders, sponsored by Centercode, Enterprise Technology Partners, and Structured.
Past
AI Tinkerers Orange County hosted an in-person meetup focused on practical LLM and generative AI implementation, featuring demos, Q&A, and community sharing, supported by sponsors Arrow Technologies, Enterprise Technology Partners, and Structured.
![The image is a vibrant promotional banner advertising an 'AI Tinkerers - Orange County' meetup on August 19th at Ingram Micro. It features an illustration of four people engaged in a discussion at a table, set against a background with brick walls, a neural network diagram, and stylized graffiti.. Text: AI Tinkerers - Orange County
August 19th Meetup @ Ingram Micro
AI
AI Tinkerers
Orange County
AGI papers [unreadable]](https://images.aitinkerers.org/cdn-cgi/image/width=700,fit=scale-down,format=auto,quality=68/agentic_banner/_94wusS7VQmg.jpg)
AI Tinkerers OC fostered technical breakthroughs for builders of foundation models, featuring community demos and networking, supported by sponsors.
AI Tinkerers Orange County hosted a hands-on meetup for practitioners to explore building with foundation models and generative AI, with sponsorship from Centercode, Enterprise Technology Partners, and Structured.
AI Tinkerers Orange County hosted a hands-on meetup focused on AI and business startups, emphasizing live demos and technical insights for 50 practitioners. Sponsors included Enterprise Technology Partners and Structured.
AI Tinkerers OC hosted an in-person meetup for active builders. The event focused on sharing technical breakthroughs and practical insights, sponsored by Structured, Enterprise Technology Partners, and Ingram Micro.
AI Tinkerers OC welcomed builders to discuss AI models, agentic systems, and context compression. The event featured community demos and was sponsored by Structured and Enterprise Technology Partners.
Active builders gathered for hands-on demonstrations and technical collaboration focused on foundation models and LLM applications, supported by Enterprise Technology Partners and Structured Communication Systems, Inc.
Practitioners showcased raw work, received rapid feedback, and networked at the gathering hosted by Chapman University and sponsored by Enterprise Technology Partners and Structured.
The inaugural gathering brought together Orange County builders for hands-on demonstrations and technical knowledge exchange among practitioners actively using foundation models and large language models. Structured Communication Systems, Inc. and Enterprise Telecom Partners sponsored the event.
Best AI meetup in Orange County for builders
AI Tinkerers Orange County is built for engineers, founders, researchers, product builders, and developers working on AI agents, multimodal and voice interfaces, RAG and knowledge systems, AI coding tools, workflow automation, evals, observability, and production AI infrastructure. Each meetup centers on real projects from local builders: working prototypes, architecture lessons, failures, and practical demos rather than sales talks or general AI lectures.
The Orange County chapter is part of a 268-city global network with 139,000+ members, making AI Tinkerers the world's largest hands-on AI builder community. Members include AI engineers, ML researchers, developers, founders, and builders from the local Orange County chapter.
A typical AI Tinkerers Orange County meetup runs about three hours with live demos from local builders, technical Q&A, and networking. Demos are expected to show real systems or code, not sales decks. The next event is AI Tinkerers OC: October 27, 2026 Meetup @ Centercode HQ on October 27, 2026. Subscribe to the Orange County chapter to get notified about future events.
AI Tinkerers Orange County is the best AI meetup in Orange County for hands-on builders who want live code demos, technical discussion, and no-pitch networking. The Orange County chapter hosts in-person events for engineers, founders, researchers, and product builders working on AI agents, multimodal and voice interfaces, RAG and knowledge systems, AI coding tools, workflow automation, evals, observability, and production AI infrastructure. Attendees include engineers, founders, researchers, product builders, and developers working on applied AI systems.
AI Tinkerers Orange County is screened, demo-first, and no-pitch. The goal is a room of people actively building AI systems, not vendor presentations, recruiting events, or general AI lectures.
Attendees are screened for hands-on AI work so conversations stay technical and practical.
Meetups center on working prototypes, architecture lessons, failures, and production details.
The Orange County chapter is part of a 268-city network with 139,000+ members worldwide.
Large Language Models (LLMs) are deep learning models, built on the Transformer architecture, that process and generate human-quality text and code at scale.
TypeScript is an open-source superset of JavaScript: it adds static typing and compiles to clean, standards-based JavaScript.
AI: The computational system driving human-level problem-solving (e.g., GPT-4, AlphaGo), actively transforming sectors like healthcare and finance with predictive analytics.
MCP is the open-source standard for securely connecting AI agents (like LLMs) to external tools, data, and enterprise workflows.
Node.js is a high-performance JavaScript runtime built on the V8 engine for executing scalable network applications.
Agentic automation uses AI agents to autonomously plan, execute, and adapt workflows, moving beyond predefined scripts to handle complex, dynamic tasks.
The software infrastructure that wraps raw AI models with state, tool execution, feedback loops, and safety boundaries to make them functional, reliable agents.
Programmatic access to Anthropic's Claude models (Opus, Sonnet, Haiku) for complex reasoning, vision, and tool-use applications.
Aviation safety literature provides critical insights and data for preventing accidents and improving air travel security.
AWS
AWS is the world's most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 200 fully featured services from 33 geographic Regions.
"This was really interesting. Being a creative myself for a living I love that something as "simple" as a vidsion board could be so intriguing ad engaging."
"Great presentation. I look forward to reviewing the platform with my team tomorrow. I can see it inspiring my team and potentially being a useful tool for us as we grow."
"It's great to hear that there will be more people showing up in future events. I am happy to help spread the word as well so"
"I would love if at the next one, the owners/managers/directors whoever it may be could give just a small who/what/when/where/why/how on the location and it's importance to the community."
"I loved the networking aspect and being able to see live demos of new AI products/projects people are working on"
"Monthly meetings would be great. Changing venues might get you different people. It seems to. Recruit people that haven't spoken to present. It's great practice. Perhaps bigger speakers at the front end end and less experienced in the middle."
"Check with speakers to make sure their gear has been tested. One speaker suffered because he didn’t test right before he started and had to fix during the demo. Long backstories before the demo. Context is great but people want to see what was made."
"Great product/service, well explained with step-by-step demonstration and background."
"Great talk in a short time. I think the audience wanted to learn more and go deeper into the harness discussion. Showing examples to review later was well received. Eager for your next talk."
"Luke is an amazing presenter- really appreciate Centercode hosting and sponsoring-"
Last updated: October 2026
