Vol. 02 · October 2026 · Louisville

A room for Louisville's AI builders to actually build together.

Founders, engineers, and operators with something running in production, or trying to get it there. No pitches. No AI 101. No conference fluff.

Save a seat for Vol. 02 What happens in the room

What it is

Builders comparing notes. That's the whole thing.

Derby City AI is a small, recurring gathering for people in Louisville who are shipping real AI. Just builders in a room comparing notes on what's working, what fell over, and what we're each figuring out next.

Louisville has more people building serious AI than most people realize. They're just scattered across companies that don't talk to each other. I want this to be the place where those people meet, swap ideas, and end up working on things together.

How it runs

1
Someone shares something real.
The architecture, the cost, the parts that broke.
2
Then we open the floor.
No moderator theater, no slide deck required.
3
The room answers.
Half the value is when somebody says "wait, how did you handle that?" and people actually know.

Last time · Vol. 01 · May 21 at Story Louisville

Fifteen people, a free lunch, and ninety minutes of real notes.

Good conversation, and a few collaborations came out of it that are still going.

What we got into

Voice agents running in production
HIPAA compliance when a model is in the loop
A CRM rebuilt on Claude that came in 10x cheaper

Who's hosting

I'm Josh Starr. I run Solid Giant, where my team builds production AI for companies like Norton Healthcare and TurnPoint Services. Voice agents, custom platforms, the unglamorous stuff that has to work on Monday morning.

I started this because I wanted a room like it in Louisville and couldn't find one. Everything else was either a sales pitch dressed up as a talk or a group of people who'd read about AI but never deployed it.

Josh

Vol. 02 · October 2026

Save a seat.

I'm locking in the date and venue now and will email everything the moment it's set. Same deal as last time: free, lunch included, small room. Seats go to the list first.