A quarterly, half-day gathering for developers building agentic AI systems — curated talks, real networking, a product-integrated sponsor experience, and a live mini-hackathon.
Gen AI Grove brings together 40–80 practicing developers (2–5 years, hands-on with agentic systems) for a half-day quarterly meetup. It's not a passive talk series — it's curated community talks, structured networking, a hands-on mini-hackathon, and a product-integrated sponsor experience that puts your product in developers' hands, not just on a slide.
| Attribute | Detail |
|---|---|
| Community | Applied, engineering side of Generative & Agentic AI — agents, tool-use, RAG, orchestration, evals, multi-agent systems. |
| Experience | 2–5 years — mid-level, past the beginner stage, deep enough to build. |
| Focus | Developers entrenched in agentic systems — building agents, tools, pipelines, evals. |
| Mindset | Builders, tinkerers, early adopters, opinionated about tooling. |
Anyone can apply. A lightweight LLM-assisted pipeline scores submissions to shortlist, and a human organizer makes the final call.
| Relevance | Fit to agentic / GenAI engineering theme |
| Depth & credibility | Demonstrated expertise & profile |
| Novelty | Fresh angle vs. recycled intro-to-LLM content |
| Practicality | "I can use this Monday" |
| Delivery signal | Evidence of clear communication |
You are a program-committee reviewer for "Gen AI Grove", a meetup for developers (2–5 yrs experience) building AGENTIC AI systems. Evaluate the submission below. Score each criterion 0–5 and return STRICT JSON: { "relevance": n, "depth": n, "novelty": n, "practicality": n, "delivery": n, "avg": n, "verdict": "shortlist|maybe|reject", "reason": "1-2 sentences" } Rules: - Penalize generic "Intro to LLMs/ChatGPT" content for this audience. - Reward concrete architectures, evals, failure modes, production war-stories, and live tooling demos. - Consider profile links for credibility (don't over-index on follower counts). SUBMISSION: Title: {{title}} · Abstract: {{abstract}} Speaker: {{name}}, {{role}} @ {{company}}, {{years}} yrs Links: {{links}} · Format: {{format}} · Takeaway: {{takeaway}}
Scan to connect with fellow builders, share projects, and grow together.
Connect on Meetup ↗A 15-minute slide deck gets ignored. Instead, the sponsor gets a product-integrated activation that forces genuine hands-on interaction. Pick one — or combine.
The sponsor's product/API becomes the featured tool of the mini-hackathon. 40–80 devs create accounts and build with your product in one hour — the deepest possible eyeballs. Sponsor provides free credits + a 5-min quickstart (not a pitch) and mentors roam to help teams.
A staffed booth where devs bring a real problem and the sponsor's engineers solve it live using their product. Interactive, memorable, value demonstrated organically.
A 15-min interactive challenge (quiz / speed-run / leaderboard) using the sponsor's tool. Prizes for top scores. Gamified = attention + hands-on.
Structured 15-min small-group product feedback for pre-launch / early products. Devs get swag/credits; sponsor gets gold-standard qualitative feedback from their exact ICP.
Attendees get 10 min with the product, then 2–3 volunteers demo how they'd use it; sponsor reacts. Turns the audience into the presenters.
| Tool | Free offering | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| v0 (Vercel) | Free tier | UI + app scaffolding from prompts |
| Bolt.new | Free daily tokens | Full-stack app in-browser |
| Lovable | Free tier | Quick full-stack prototypes |
| Replit | Free plan + AI | In-browser IDE, instant hosting |
| StackBlitz | Free | Instant web sandboxes |
| Tool | Free offering | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Google AI Studio (Gemini) | Generous free tier | Fast to get a key |
| Groq | Free API tier | Very fast inference |
| Cerebras | Free API tier | Fast inference |
| OpenRouter | Some free models | One key, many models |
| Together AI | Free starter credits | Open models |
| Mistral | Free tier | Good open models |
| Tool | Notes |
|---|---|
| LangGraph / LangChain | Agent graphs, tool-use |
| CrewAI | Multi-agent crews |
| LlamaIndex | RAG + agents |
| n8n (self-host) | Visual agentic workflows |
| Langflow | Low-code agent builder |
| Tool | Use |
|---|---|
| Tavily | Agent web search (free tier) |
| Firecrawl | Web scraping for agents (free tier) |
| Composio | Tool / integration layer (free tier) |
| Supabase | DB / auth / vectors (free tier) |
| Devpost | Host + submissions + judging |
| GitHub + Codespaces | Repos + cloud dev env (free tier) |
| Space | Room/hall for 40–80, seating + open floor for teams |
| Wi-Fi | Reliable guest access for ~80 devices |
| A/V | Projector / screen + mic |
| Hi-tea / snacks | For 40–80 (can be co-funded) |
| Power | Enough outlets / strips for laptops |
| Point of contact | On-site coordinator for the day |
| Area | Organizer (Grove) | Host / Sponsor |
|---|---|---|
| Speaker curation & schedule | Yes | — |
| Attendee registration (Meetup) | Yes | — |
| Hackathon theme & judging | Yes | Featured tool + mentors |
| Venue, Wi-Fi, A/V | — | Yes |
| Hi-tea / snacks | Co-planned | Yes (fund / cater) |
| Trial keys / credits | Coordinate | Yes — provision |
| Prizes / swag | — | Yes |
| Photos / recap / social | Yes | Amplify |
| Code of Conduct enforcement | Yes | Support |