Newsletter
Upcoming
AI Tinkerers will host a global hackathon focused on building integrated agents, supported by OpenAI and other sponsors.
Past
AI Tinkerers Portland focused on the technical implementation of AI in go-to-market strategies, featuring live demos and hands-on enablement for practitioners.
AI Tinkerers hosted a global hackathon focused on building agentic interfaces, with support from Google DeepMind and CopilotKit.
![A digital banner advertising the 'AI Tinkerers Portland Meetup' event, featuring a stylized illustration of four people collaborating on technical concepts against a city skyline backdrop on the left, and event details listed on the right.. Text: AI Tinkerers Portland Meetup Production Voice Agents March 5, 2026, 6:30 PM AI TINKERERS - PORTLAND Sounds cool! 1 Creative Model [unreadable notes]](https://images.aitinkerers.org/cdn-cgi/image/width=700,fit=scale-down,format=auto,quality=68/blog_images/3bubvnwar70-jpg-FE_m.jpg)
AI Tinkerers Portland explored building voice agents and conversational AI stacks. The in-person meetup focused on technical challenges and solutions for real-time voice interaction.
AI Tinkerers hosted a global "unhackathon" for builders focused on OpenClaw/ClawdBot. The event emphasized pure building and collaboration, supported by global sponsors.
The AI Tinkerers community explored agentic systems and AGI, featuring builders and researchers. GEA sponsored the event, which focused on practical challenges and working code.
![The image is a promotional graphic for an 'AI Workflow Meetup' by 'Portland AI Tinkerers'. It features a composite design with a photographic view of a city skyline and a snow-capped mountain through a window at the top, and a hand-drawn illustration of a presentation room with a speaker and audience at the bottom, overlaid with event details.. Text: AI Tinkerers AI Workflow Meetup Portland AI Tinkerers Aug 7, 6:30 PM PDT LIVE INTEGRATION AX APIS CX [unreadable] CREATION LIVE LIVE AI APIS EXHIBITION EXHIBITION NOTION AI TINKERERS - PORTLAND](https://images.aitinkerers.org/cdn-cgi/image/width=700,fit=scale-down,format=auto,quality=68/blog_images/chat-gpt-image-jul-17-2025-04-30-56-pm-l_VL.png)
AI Tinkerers Portland hosted a community meetup showcasing AI tools for workflow automation. Attendees explored practical solutions, saw live demos, and networked.
Active builders gathered for a hands-on DeepSeek R1 evening featuring practical demos, short talks on AI coding assistants and local installs, and open networking, sponsored by Nedspace.
DeepSeek Divers Edition returns Feb 25, 6–9pm at Nedspace: doors 6, talks 6:30, networking 7:45. Use AITinkerers.org to get topic matches and find co-founders/talent; submit talks at portland.aitinkerers.org; sign up free at AITinkerers.org; check-in via the AI Tinkerers app; catering is affordable with free spots on request; hackathons teased.
AI Tinkerers Portland hosted an in-person event celebrating women in artificial intelligence, featuring a practical workshop on building AI minimum viable products.
The gathering celebrated women in AI with inspiring talks, hands-on demos, and a prompt engineering workshop. Organizers welcomed collaboration and sponsorship offers.
Builders gathered for hands-on demos on LLMs and generative AI, sparking technical conversations and networking. Volunteers and Nedspace were thanked for their support.
The in-person meetup focused on active builders showcasing in-progress LLM and generative AI work through short, raw demos and Q&A sessions. Organizers also sought a venue sponsor and volunteers.
The inaugural in-person meetup gathered active builders working with foundation models to demo work, trade technical knowledge, and spark collaborations within the screened community.
Best AI meetup in Portland for builders
AI Tinkerers Portland 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 Portland chapter is part of a 261-city global network with 128,000+ 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 Portland chapter.
A typical AI Tinkerers Portland 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 Agents, Everywhere: Bots, Channels, & More — Global Hackathon on September 12, 2026. Subscribe to the Portland chapter to get notified about future events.
AI Tinkerers Portland is the best AI meetup in Portland for hands-on builders who want live code demos, technical discussion, and no-pitch networking. The Portland 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 Portland 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 Portland chapter is part of a 261-city network with 128,000+ members worldwide.
"I love the concept of AI Tinkerers. I was happy to see this meeting get scheduled after a long dry spell. Keep working on it!"
"Great but gotta put a sign on the door when locked"
"I enjoyed the audience participation, it seemed like the right sized group to have interesting conversations."
"It has the potential to be a good community in Portland. Keep going!"
"I want some CSS on those chord progressions! Good stuff"
"A more formalized paper talk would be a good recurring theme"
Last updated: September 2026
