• Watch the 2023 recap video here

Introduction

We’ve found two tinkerers in our city who are low-key bad asses.

On the surface, one makes memes for a living, and the other writes fiction.

But that’s not what we’re here for, right?

Come learn about client-side ML inference with Yacine, and the ethical considerations of LLM & AGI with Xe.

Yacine’s an independent software engineer. Currently, he is bootstrapping a software and consulting business. Previously, he worked at Stripe as an ML software engineer. Yacine is active on twitter at @yacineMTB, and growing an image editing app called dingboard.

If you’re a software engineer spending any time online reading technical blogs, you might have read Xe’s work. Xe is currently Senior Technophilosopher at fly.io; they ‘ve worked at Heroku, Tailscale, and written blogs viewed by thousands of developers. You can check out their work like this article on using Fly.io’s scale-to-zero GPU offerings to save energy and cost while inferring your LLMs through Ollama and their website.

Event schedule

(5:30 - 6:30) Mingle and network

(6:30 - 6:50) Intro & what’s new in AI

(7:00 - 7:30) Yacine Brahimi - Dingboard & client-side inference

(7:45 - 8:15) Break

(8:30 - 9:00) Xe Iaso - AI: the not-so good parts

There will be drinks and appetizers served, courtesy of our sponsors.

Who are AI Tinkerers?

Our chapter was founded by Hai Nghiem, Greg Meldrum and Abror Kamalov in 2023.

Context:

Ever been to a meetup about something you want to geek out on, but it turns out to be a sales pitch in disguise?

Ok. That doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it blows.

The existing meetups were at giant legacy corp offices and, as we remembered, was a bunch of vendor demos and not enough Q&A.

At one point, someone asked a question about the mechanism behind RLHF to the presenters, and to which he said, “we can’t tell you, that’s our secret sauce.”

Our city didn’t have a space for AI / LLM practitioners to share knowledge and open-source code.

So we started a thing🫡.

Our chapter welcomes developers of all backgrounds.

This is not your typical AI meetup full of people pitching their startups and vender demos.

If you’re passionate about the technicalities behind developing AI systems, this is a home for you.

Our promise is to provide a stage for open-source AI developers to share code and the lessons they’ve learned from experimentation.

Keep yourself up-to-date

Join us at our next meetup by subscribing for updates here: ottawa.tinkerer.ai

And join our Discord

Check out previous online webinars we’ve done with tinkerers around the world here.

If you’d like to speak at our events

Please reach out to any of us on Discord or LinkedIn (you can find our links embedded on our names)

AI Tinkerers Ottawa organizers:

• Hai Nghiem: Founder @ Cats with Bats

• Greg Meldrum: Principal Developer @ Solace

• Abror Kamalov: Co-founder @ DreamLinked

• Eric Fillion: author of Happy Transformer

• Rami Alhamad: Founder @ Push / UWaterloo ‘08

• Jen Schellinck: Cognitive Science @ CarletonU / CEO @ Sysabee / AI Guides

Previous meetups

Greg giving a workshop on running open-source LLMs in Google Colab.

Eric Fillion presenting Happy Transformer, an open-source library that he authored to help with fine-tuning HuggingFace models.

Chris Bartholomew demoing LangStream, an event-driven LLM framework by DataStax.

Food and beverages are often sponsored by our partners (in this case, Invest Ottawa)

Hai Nghiem opening the 3rd meetup.

What is AI Tinkerers?

AI Tinkerers is a meetup designed exclusively for practitioners who possess technical, machine learning, and entrepreneurial backgrounds and are actively building and working with foundation models, such as large language models (LLMs) and generative AI.

If you’re deeply passionate about creating LLM-enabled applications, have hands-on experience in building such systems, and are eager to connect with like-minded individuals who share your level of commitment, then this group is the perfect fit for you.

With AI Tinkerers meetups taking place in multiple cities, we cater to a dedicated community of practitioners.

Who is this for?

We’re not “AI Enthusiasts”, we are AI Tinkerers.

The core essence of AI Tinkerers lies in active collaboration surrounding early-stage discovery and innovation, which requires a high degree of experimentation, vulnerability, openness to sharing challenges and learnings, and collaboration among individuals with a shared level of expertise.

This unique environment allows us to push the boundaries of what’s possible with AI and LLMs while maintaining a strong sense of camaraderie and mutual support.

Seattle

San Francisco

👑 Sponsors

The in-person meetup and hackathon are generously sponsored & hosted by Invest Ottawa and Bayview Yards.

Invest Ottawa helps accelerate your growth and success, leverage the best programs, people and places, and make your mark in Ottawa, a global tech hub and collaborative business community.