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Communities

Communities for AI practitioners building AI-first companies. Developer communities, professional networks, conferences, and open source communities where the topics in the book are actively discussed.

Developer Communities

Online communities where AI engineers, researchers, and builders share knowledge and collaborate.

Community Platform Focus URL
Hugging Face Web + Discord The central hub for open source AI -- model sharing, datasets, Spaces for demos, and active discussion forums. https://huggingface.co
r/MachineLearning Reddit Research-focused discussion of ML papers, techniques, and industry developments. 3M+ members. https://reddit.com/r/MachineLearning
r/LocalLLaMA Reddit Focused on running open-weight models locally -- Llama, Mistral, quantization, and self-hosting. Relevant to the open-source model discussion in Chapter 3. https://reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA
r/artificial Reddit Broader AI discussion covering industry news, ethics, and applications. https://reddit.com/r/artificial
LangChain Discord Discord LangChain and LangSmith builders collaborate on LLM applications with chains and agents. https://discord.gg/langchain
LlamaIndex Discord Discord LlamaIndex users building RAG systems and data-connected LLM applications. https://discord.gg/llamaindex
Weights & Biases Community Discord + Forums ML practitioners sharing experiment tracking, model evaluation, and production ML practices. https://wandb.ai/community
MLOps Community Slack + Web Practitioners focused on ML operations, deployment, and production systems. https://mlops.community

Professional Networks

Professional communities and groups for AI leaders, executives, and practitioners.

Network Platform Focus URL
AI Infrastructure Alliance Web + Slack Community of practitioners building AI infrastructure and tooling. https://ai-infrastructure.org
Chief AI Officer Network LinkedIn + Events Peer network for executives leading AI strategy at the organizational level. LinkedIn (search "Chief AI Officer Network")
Women in AI Web + Local chapters Global community promoting gender diversity in AI. Chapters across 130+ countries. https://www.womeninai.co
AI Tinkerers Meetup + Web Local meetup groups in major cities for hands-on AI building and demos. https://aitinkerers.org
Latent Space Community Discord Community around the Latent Space podcast -- AI engineers discussing infrastructure, products, and tools. https://discord.gg/latentspace
Eleuther AI Discord + Web Open research collective focused on AI alignment, interpretability, and open source model development. https://www.eleuther.ai

Conferences

Major conferences covering AI research, engineering, and business applications.

Research Conferences

Conference Focus Typical Schedule URL
NeurIPS (Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems) Foundational AI/ML research. The largest annual AI research conference. December https://neurips.cc
ICML (International Conference on Machine Learning) Core ML research across theory, algorithms, and applications. July https://icml.cc
ICLR (International Conference on Learning Representations) Deep learning research with emphasis on representation learning. May https://iclr.cc
AAAI (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence) Broad AI research including planning, NLP, robotics, and vision. February https://aaai.org

Industry & Engineering Conferences

Conference Focus Typical Schedule URL
AI Engineer Summit Production AI engineering -- building, deploying, and scaling AI applications. Practitioner-focused. Multiple events per year https://www.ai.engineer
Google I/O Google's developer conference. Major AI and Gemini announcements. May https://io.google
Microsoft Build Microsoft's developer conference. Azure AI, Copilot ecosystem, and enterprise AI. May https://build.microsoft.com
AWS re:Invent Amazon's cloud conference. Bedrock, SageMaker, and enterprise AI infrastructure. December https://reinvent.awsevents.com
NVIDIA GTC GPU technology conference covering AI hardware, software, and infrastructure. March https://www.nvidia.com/gtc/
Ray Summit Conference for the Ray ecosystem -- distributed computing, LLM serving, and AI infrastructure. September https://raysummit.anyscale.com

AI Business & Strategy

Conference Focus Typical Schedule URL
AI World Congress AI strategy and business transformation for enterprise leaders. Various https://aiworldcongress.com
VentureBeat Transform AI and data in the enterprise. Business-focused with technical depth. July https://venturebeat.com/events

Open Source Communities

Communities organized around specific open source AI projects. See also Open Source Projects for the projects themselves.

Community Focus Where to Engage
LangChain LLM application framework GitHub: langchain-ai/langchain, Discord
LlamaIndex Data framework for LLM applications GitHub: run-llama/llama_index, Discord
Hugging Face Transformers Model library and inference GitHub: huggingface/transformers, Forums
vLLM High-throughput LLM serving GitHub: vllm-project/vllm
Ollama Local model running GitHub: ollama/ollama, Discord
CrewAI Multi-agent framework GitHub: crewAIInc/crewAI, Discord
Semantic Kernel Microsoft's AI orchestration SDK GitHub: microsoft/semantic-kernel

Getting Started Recommendations

If you are a technical practitioner:

  1. Join the Hugging Face community and explore model repos
  2. Join the LangChain or LlamaIndex Discord based on your stack
  3. Follow r/LocalLLaMA for open-weight model developments
  4. Attend the AI Engineer Summit for production AI engineering

If you are a business leader:

  1. Subscribe to the newsletters listed in Courses & Learning
  2. Join AI Tinkerers in your city for hands-on exposure
  3. Attend NVIDIA GTC or AWS re:Invent for enterprise AI perspectives
  4. Connect with the Chief AI Officer Network on LinkedIn

If you are building a team:

  1. Start with the 90-Day AI Fluency Program
  2. Use MLOps Community Slack for production ML questions
  3. Use Weights & Biases community for experiment tracking practices
  4. Attend Ray Summit for scaling AI infrastructure