Year Round AI Learning

The conference is one week in April. The learning is all year: two free happy hours, a hands-on training day, a free Red Hat hackathon, and seven lessons you can use today.

Ask anyone who came up through open source how they learned Linux, and you'll hear about a user group. Not a book, not a course. Someone two chairs over who'd broken the same thing the week before. That's how most of us learn anything new in tech, and AI is no different. You learn it faster in a room full of people figuring it out with you.

A lot of people think of All Things AI as a few days in Raleigh every spring. We get it. That's the big show, and All Things AI 2027 is April 18 through 20. But nobody ever learned anything by showing up once a year. You learn by showing up every month: a lunch and learn on your calendar, a happy hour where you meet the person who already solved your problem, a training day where you put in the reps. So this edition is about where to learn AI with us between now and the end of the year.

We've got two All Things AI Happy Hours on the calendar: one at Boxyard RTP in October, and a holiday one at Morgan Street Food Hall in Raleigh in December. There's a full day of hands-on AI training at All Things Open on October 19. There's a thank-you to Red Hat, our 2026 Presenting sponsor, and a free hackathon weekend they're hosting. There's a short list of local events, plus what our sponsor family is running. And there's our rundown of the last two weeks of The AI Enterprise, every one of them something you can learn and use the same day.

If you do one thing with this email, put both happy hours on your calendar right now, and bring someone who's new to AI.

We're taking All Things AI out of the conference room and into two of the best hangouts in the Triangle. No slides, no sales pitches. Just good food, a cold drink, and a room full of people at every stage of learning AI, from "I've never opened ChatGPT" to "I ship agents for a living." Nobody's too new, and nobody's too senior. That's the whole point.

Wednesday, October 28, 5:30 PM — Boxyard RTP, Durham

The shipping-container village in the middle of Research Triangle Park. It's the week of Halloween, so costumes are optional but very much encouraged. Come swap notes on what's working, find the person who solved the problem you're stuck on, and leave with a few new people you'll be texting next week.

Wednesday, December 9, 5:30 PM — Morgan Street Food Hall, Raleigh

Our holiday happy hour. It's a downtown warehouse with more than twenty kitchens under one roof, so everyone eats what they want and nobody argues about the restaurant. Come celebrate a year of learning AI together with the builders, career-changers and curious people who make this community what it is, and hear what's coming for All Things AI in 2027 first.

Both are free, and both are open to everyone. Bring a friend, a coworker, or the person at your company who keeps asking you about AI. Our summer Lunch and Learn series drew more than 270 registrations, and these rooms will fill up too. Don't be the person who sees the photos on LinkedIn the next morning. Put both dates on your calendar now, and watch your inbox, because RSVP links go out here first.

🎟️ RSVP opens soon on All Things AI (Live)

If the happy hours are where you meet people, this is where you put in the reps. On Monday, October 19, All Things Open runs three all-day AI workshops at the Raleigh Convention Center, 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM. Pick one, bring a laptop, and leave with something working.

AI Agents & Vibe Coding — with Mark Hinkle of All Things AI

You build and deploy a real application with AI agents, and leave with the working app plus a GitHub repository that documents every change the agents made. No coding experience needed. Bring free GitHub and Vercel accounts and an idea you want to build.

AI Agents in Production — with Don Shin of CrossComm

Agent fundamentals, the production patterns that hold up, security and observability, plus tokenomics and small language models. Bring a paid Claude subscription.

AI for DevSecOps — with John Willis of AI CIO

Where AI strengthens security across the delivery lifecycle, how to put controls on AI-assisted work, and a concrete plan for your next initiative. For people who already know CI/CD. No AI background required.

Every workshop includes Tuesday's conference day, with 40-plus AI sessions, plus lunch and networking. It's $299 through Friday, October 13, then $399. And this community gets 25% off either price. Most employers cover it as professional development.

🎫 Register with the All Things AI 25% discount →

Coming as part of our crew? RSVP on the All Things AI (Live) Meetup so we can find each other.

Red Hat was the Presenting sponsor of All Things AI 2026, and we want to say thank you properly, not just with a logo on a slide.

Anyone who came up through open source remembers when Red Hat was a scrappy Linux distribution with a funny hat. It went on to prove something a lot of people doubted: you can build a great business by giving the software away and teaching people how to use it. It's still headquartered right here in downtown Raleigh, and it's still doing that work. Today the focus is open source AI: models and tools you can run, inspect and own yourself. That's the same thing we keep telling you in these pages.

And this month they're making it very easy to learn from them in person.

Saturday, October 17 – Sunday, October 18 — NVIDIA x Red Hat Small Models Hack

A free, in-person hackathon weekend in Raleigh with NVIDIA. You build with small models, 33 billion parameters or fewer, across three tracks: fine-tuned and specialized models, multi-agent systems, and tool calling. Teams of up to three. It's capped at 100 people and requires approval, so apply early.

Monday, October 19 – Tuesday, October 20 — Red Hat at All Things Open

Four talks at the Raleigh Convention Center, including one on running AI agents locally with open source tools, plus a booth full of Red Hat's open source and AI experts. Stop by, ask the hard questions, and tell them All Things AI sent you.

If you've been meaning to learn how small, open models actually work, this is the weekend to do it, and it's free.

🎫 Apply for the NVIDIA x Red Hat Small Models Hack →

The Triangle has more AI learning on the calendar than any one person can get to. Here's the short list worth your time, most of it free.

Wednesday, October 7 — 7 Ways You Can Build an Amazing Dev Career in the AI Era

Bruno Souza at the Triangle Java Users Group in Cary, 5:30 PM. A free career talk for working developers on staying valuable while AI writes more of the code. Food included.

Saturday, October 10 — RTAI Youth Program: AI Education & Ethics Panel + Student Project Showoff

Research Triangle AI in Durham, 2:00 PM. Speakers from UNC and Duke, the NC Department of Public Instruction and an NC Teacher of the Year, plus student demos. Bring the young builder in your house.

Monday, October 19 – Tuesday, October 20 — All Things Open 2026

Much of our sponsor family is on the floor in Raleigh. Red Hat and IBM are Presenting sponsors there, AWS and Neo4j are Platinum, and Auth0, CrossComm and Flox are Silver. Monday's co-located events are free: an AI hackathon for all skill levels, Inclusion & Diversity in Open Source and the Open Source Accessibility Summit. Students and people underrepresented in tech can apply for scholarships.

Friday, November 6 — AI for Global Health

The NC Global Health Conference at North Carolina Central University in Durham, with the Center for Entrepreneurial Development, 8:30 AM to 3:00 PM. A day of practitioners on people-centered AI in health care. Student tickets are $75, with pay-it-forward tickets available.

Thursday, November 12 — NODES 2026

A free, 24-hour online conference from past sponsor Neo4j on AI agents, RAG and knowledge graphs. Catch a few sessions live, or watch the replays later.

Know a local AI event we missed? Hit reply and tell us. We'll put it in the next edition.

If you're newer here, All Things AI is part of The AIE Network. Its flagship, The AI Enterprise, sends four free editions a week, and each one is built so you can learn something and use it the same day. Here's what went out since our last note. Pick one and give it thirty minutes this week.

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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