All Things AI

All Things AI

AllThingsOpen.ai is a community-driven initiative focused on democratizing artificial intelligence through open source, education, and collaboration. It organizes free monthly meetups and a flagship annual conference to connect technologists, entrepreneurs, and practitioners. The platform fosters practical knowledge-sharing around open models, responsible AI deployment, and the evolving AI toolchain for real-world use.

A Community and Conference for AI Practitioners and Users

All Things AI is a practitioner-first community and conference series focused on the technologies, processes, and people driving real-world artificial intelligence adoption. Designed for builders and decision-makers alike, it offers a vendor-neutral forum to explore how modern AI gets implemented—at scale and in production.


From retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and vector databases to prompt engineering, model tuning, and responsible deployment, All Things AI connects the dots between cutting-edge tools and enterprise-ready practices. Monthly meetups, workshops, and an annual conference provide opportunities to learn from peers, demo new solutions, and shape the future of applied AI.


Whether you’re engineering LLM applications, evaluating infrastructure, or leading AI transformation efforts, All Things AI is where technical depth meets practical impact.

Highlights of 2025 All Things AI

Held March 17–18, 2025, at the historic Carolina Theatre in Durham, NC, the inaugural All Things AI Conference brought together 1,600+ AI practitioners, technologists, and executives to explore the future of artificial intelligence—through the lens of technology, process, and people.

Built on a foundation of openness and inclusion, the conference was a spinout of the successful open source-focused All Things Open series. The event rebranded from “All Things Open AI” to All Things AI to avoid confusion with OpenAI and better reflect its support for both open source and proprietary innovations.

 

Key Stats

 

  • 2,145 total registrations
  • 1,600+ total attendees
  • 750+ students trained on generative AI
  • 40+ sessions and talks
  • 3 hands-on AI training workshops
  • Attendees from 31 states
  • 68.8% held buying influence or decision-making roles
  • 75,000+ unique website visitors
  • Hosted by Mark Hinkle (Founder, The AI Enterprise) and Todd Lewis (Creator, All Things Open)

Program Highlights

 

Keynotes

Thought leaders from enterprise, open source, and academia addressed open model innovation, agent-based systems, and responsible AI governance.

 

Breakout Sessions

 

Tracks covered GenAI, RAG, AI infrastructure, open source LLMs, prompt engineering, AI operations, and regulated deployment.

 

Workshops

 
  • AIOS SuperUser Bootcamp by Mark Hinkle – 500+ trained on ChatGPT and AI agent frameworks (Acorn/Obot)
  • RAG Pipeline Deployment by John Willis – 200+ attendees
  • IBM Granite Models by BJ Hargraves – 50-person hands-on lab (waitlisted)

Community & Networking

 

Developer meetups, roundtables, sponsor lounges, and hallway tracks enabled real connections across startups, enterprise teams, educators, and researchers.

 

Attendee Profile


Role Category % of Attendees
Technical Evaluators 28.7%
Executive Buyers 23.1%
Decision-Makers 3.4%
Influencers 13.6%
Other Professionals 31.1%

Attendees included developers, engineers, data scientists, IT leaders, educators, and C-suite executives. The cross-functional mix fostered deep, interdisciplinary conversations on AI implementation and adoption.