blog ₊⁺‧₊｡･*.☆

Overview

• Turnout: ~100 people (initially planned for 15)
• Location: DTLA, switched to bigger venue literally the day before
• Time: Doors at 2pm, presentations at 2:30, wrapped by 3:45
• Organizers: Robin + JM, self-funded with sponsor support
• Energy: Unreal. Room was packed, loud with excited conversation, but quiet and respectful the moment presentations started
• Cost: Lost a bunch of $$$ overall but last minute sponsors helped stop the bleeding. Thankfully the friends we make along the way are priceless?

Setup

Dennis (co-founder of Definitive, sponsor) showed up early and was invaluable — helped with logistics: food/drink placement, table arrangement, chair setup, creating aisles for seating. You could tell he had just orchestrated a massive event himself (his wedding). Huge shoutout!

The Crowd

• People showed up right on time at 2pm, no fashionably late problem
• By 2:30, 60-70 people already there
• Incredibly diverse: way more women than expected, all age ranges, not just young devs or older adults
• Half of the presenters were women!
• Every person was extremely thankful and excited to be there
• Tons of organic conversation — the room was loud with excitement. You almost couldn't talk fast enough
• Was worried it would be too loud / people would want to continue talking during demos, but everyone sat down and paid close attention! Extremely respectful.

Welcome

• Welcomed everyone, thanked sponsors
• Saying "we did this out of pocket and we're bleeding money" and immediately transitioning to introducing sponsors got some good laughs
• Dennis also said "what's with all the crypto sponsors?" right as he shared his crypto trading platform
• Audience super engaged

Demo Highlights

1. The Meta Agent Presentation – Ryan

One person wanted to demo something but had no idea what; ultimately had his OpenClaw agent figure it out end-to-end: draft a presentation, build a website, deploy it, come up with its own topic and voice. So for his presentation he simply loaded a website, hit play, and the agent presented itself and how it helps Ryan day-to-day. Even flipped through all the slides by itself. Very cool meta touch.

2. The Fitness Tracker – Vasilisa

• Seemed like an athletic influencer type, not who you'd stereotypically expect at this event
• Uses her agent to track all workouts via Oura ring signals
• Agent designs custom workouts every morning based on previous activity and energy levels: how long to run, what exercises, fully tailored
• Was onboarding friends by writing Soul.MDs for them — "hey, I made this agent for you"
• Built one friend an agent to vent to about his toxic girlfriend because she was tired of hearing about it 😂 — huge laughs from the crowd

3. ⭐ The Homeschool Mom – Corinne (best demo imo)

• Older woman, homeschools two kids (ages 11 and 12)
• Built an incredible personal dashboard — a full mission control website:
  • Curriculum planner: every subject (math, reading, science) with full curriculum, mini lessons, daily plans
  • Daily schedule: calendar-like view with color-coded labels per family member
  • Summer camp planning: entire section for managing and planning summer camps
• Her kids have their own agents:
  • Daughter (12): agent helps her organize and track her magic tricks — lesson planning, mastered tricks, videos
  • Son (11): agent helps him design, code, and launch a video game
• Agent-to-agent chat: built a chat room in the dashboard where all family agents can talk to each other
• By far the most impressive demo
• Really pushing boundaries of what's possible as a parent with AI
• Shows that this tech can really up-level anyone's life (with the right agency)

4. The Filmmaker – Gabriel Cowen

• Background in film and TV, collaborated with some incredible film studios
• Had previously paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to build software tools for the industry. Was able to build the equivalent platform with OpenClaw in a week.
• Now building all kinds of things completely on his own with AI
• Killer quote: "I thought I was a person who just had too many thoughts and wanted to do too many things (ADHD), with not enough time. It turns out I just didn't have the right tools."

Takeaways / Common Themes

1. Gratitude

People were deeply thankful. Common sentiment: "I thought I was going crazy talking to my friends about this stuff. Glad to have found my people."

2. Demand for More

Folks asking "so when's the next event?" even though this was initially set to be a one-off.

Amazingly there were a lot of people who were willing to offer event space: studio spaces, office spaces (TikTok / Snap / Google), another person based in k-town.

3. Community

Everyone wanted to keep in touch. Plan to create a Telegram group chat to start — keep it simple, don't overplan or micromanage.

After the Event

• People didn't want to leave!
• Nearly 50 people hung around in the parking lot afterwards, continuing conversations
• 20-30 people went to a bar down the block with outdoor space, kept connecting and talking
• Tons of lingering energy — people really didn't want to stop
• Debriefed with JM in the parking lot after everything died down, reflected on how incredible it all was

Shoutout to JM

• This was his idea from the start — came to me with a shot in the dark just two weeks ago (he had an epiphany while at Carnival in Brazil)
• JM threw together an intro-to-OpenClaw segment after Robin's sponsor speech, before demos kicked off. People seemed to find it really insightful and took photos of slides
• Identified through the sign-up form that many attendees were actually beginners who hadn't used OpenClaw yet
• Rather than throwing people into the deep end, he gave an overview so beginners could follow along — great thoughtfulness
• Wants to make sure beginners don't feel left in the dark after the event, and wants to follow up with resources

Future Event Ideas

• Beginner workshop: smaller crew, longer session (a few hours), people bring their laptops/Mac minis, actual hands-on setup walkthrough
• Technical-only meetup: for experienced builders, deeper demos and discussions
• Irvine meetup: closer to home

TODO

• thank sponsor friends