Charlotte Gets Its Own AI for Business Meetup — And the Return of Lunch and Learns

Take a look at this map from a16z and Pave: nearly half of all AI/ML talent in America sits in California. North Carolina? Under one percent. I'm fired up about this — we have the universities, the Research Triangle, the companies, and, as 116 people in Charlotte just proved, the hunger. Our goal is to get that number up to at least #2 in the nation. That's the mission of All Things AI.

This edition is what that mission looks like in practice: Charlotte's getting a seat at the table with Corey Ganim's new free monthly meetup at Tabbris in South End — built for business owners who don't have time for a coding bootcamp but know AI matters. No developer jargon, no hype, just what's actually working. And the Lunch and Learn series you kept asking about? It's back. Four sessions, starting August 25.

Most AI meetups are built for developers. This one isn't. AI for Business is a free monthly gathering at Tabbris Coworking in Charlotte's South End, where non-technical business owners meet to learn specific, usable AI tactics — the kind that save time, make money, or make the work better, not the kind that sound good in a keynote. Mark Hinkle was at his first meetup and Corey blew his socks off.

Running it is Corey Ganim — founder of a $16 million e-commerce business, co-founder of Return My Time (an AI services company), and host of the Build With AI podcast. If his name is familiar, it's because he was a guest speaker at Build an Agent Day Charlotte. Now he's bringing that same audit-optimize-automate practicality to the Queen City, once a month, in person. Mark was there for the first Meetup and can vouch for it firsthand.

This month's session: how to use Claude Cowork inside your small business — Corey demos it live and shows exactly how an average business owner puts it to work, no engineering team required. The agenda runs doors and networking at 5:30, presentation and Q&A at 6:00, structured networking (trade your #1 AI problem with other owners) at 6:30, and wraps by 7:00.

Thursday, August 27, 5:30–7:30 PM — Tabbris, 1300 South Blvd Unit D, Charlotte, NC. Free, but space is limited.

🎫 Register for AI for Business, Charlotte →

We heard you. The Lunch and Learn series — one of the most popular things we've run — is back starting August 25, online, free, and on your lunch break. Four sessions on the calendar so far — Mark Hinkle presenting three of them, plus a guest expert in between.

August 25 — Vibe Coding for Business Users

Describing what you want in plain English and letting AI write real, working web apps you own outright. No lock-in, no coding background required.

September 1 — Tokenomics 101: Spending With Intention on AI

Guest speaker Don Shin, CEO of CrossComm, breaks down why your AI bill keeps climbing even when the subscription price doesn't — and the habits that stretch a paid plan or a free tier a lot further.

September 8 — Build Skills: Teach Your AI Agents How You Work

Write a skill once, and every AI tool you use runs it your way from then on — plus the trick of chaining skills into a full pipeline.

September 15 — Vibe Coding, Take Two

The honest follow-up on what it actually takes to ship an AI-built app you can trust with real customers and real data.

Between sessions, we'll also recap Build an Agent Day Charlotte — the same energy as Corey's Charlotte meetup above, back on your lunch break. More on that below.

🎫 Register free: August 25 · September 1 · September 8 · September 15

Charlotte showed up. Build an Agent Day wrapped July 28 at the Dubois Center at UNC Charlotte Center City with 116 people in the room — non-technical business owners, government leaders, and educators — building real, working AI agents across all three major stacks (Claude Cowork, ChatGPT Work, and Manus) in a single eight-hour day. Everyone walked out with an agent they built themselves, wired to a real workflow they'd been putting up with for too long.

Corey Ganim spoke at the lunch session, running the room through his Audit → Optimize → Automate framework in twenty minutes flat — the same framework anchoring his new Charlotte meetup above.

Next stop: Atlanta. Build an Agent Day lands at Atlanta Tech Village in Buckhead on Monday, November 16, 8:30 AM – 6:00 PM. Same format — eight hours, three stacks, one working agent to take home, plus a year of community access to All Things AI, All Things Open, and AIE Network events. Early-bird pricing ($297) is capped at the first 100 registrants per city; standard price after that is $397.

🎫 Reserve your seat in Atlanta →

One of our All Things AI attendees, Aloyse Brown, built Big Sister OS — an AI "big sister" powered by agents working together in the background to remember what's going on in your life and business, sort through it, do the work it can, and bring back what matters when you need it.

Aloyse is competing in the Build with Gemini XPRIZE, where real paying customers and their feedback count toward the score. If you want to back one of our own — subscribe by August 15 to lock in the $10/month founding rate. Cancel anytime, refunds available.

🎫 Subscribe to Big Sister OS →

The AI Safety Awareness Project — a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) that runs public workshops in cities across America — is bringing a free, in-person session to our backyard: Saturday, August 22 at the Cary Main Library (315 Kildaire Farm Rd, Cary, NC).

The workshop, "Where is AI in 2026 and Where is it Going?", is a beginner-friendly look at where AI may be in the next one to five years and what that means for daily life — jobs, crime, relationships — with live demos and interactive forecasting exercises. No technical background needed. If you know someone who's curious about AI but hasn't found an entry point, this is a good one to forward.

🎫 Register for the AI Safety workshop →

All Things AI is the community but The Artificially Intelligent Enterprise is Mark's flagship publication, read by 250,000+ business professionals. Four editions a week, each week working one theme from headline to how-to to boardroom move. Here's what the last month covered:

🖱️ Computer-Use Agents — AI Gets Hands

The Week AI Agents Got Hands · How to Put AI's Hands on Your Keyboard · Your New IT Department Is a Browser Tab

💰 Vendors, Markets & Your Money

Read an AI Vendor's 10-K in 20 Minutes · The Renewal You Should Renegotiate This Quarter · The AIE Index at Two Years — Up 96%

👥 AI & the Workforce

The Week Workers Sued, Struck, and Got Re-Interviewed · Rebuild a Job Description for the AI Era · The Human-Decision Ledger · What Do You Owe the People the Robots Replace?

🧾 Tokenomics — The AI Bill Comes Due (great warm-up for the September 1 Lunch and Learn)

Cheaper Tokens, Bigger Bills · Cut Your AI Token Bill With a 20-Minute Audit · The One-Page Policy That Stops Runaway AI Spend · The Token Reckoning

🛡️ Agent Governance & Guardrails

Governance Comes Down From the Mountain · Guardrails Your Agent Can't Ignore · The One Question Before an Agent Touches Production · One Agent Is a Pilot. A Hundred Is a Coin Flip. ·

🎫 Subscribe free at theaienterprise.io →

AI is moving fast. We're here to make sure no one gets left behind. Thank you for being part of a community that learns together and builds responsibly.

Best Regards,

Mark & Todd