The story behind Atlanta's invitation-only gathering for the people actually building with AI. No pitches, no panels, just good people and better conversation over great food.
Atlanta AI Dinner was founded by Will McGinnis in 2025, born from a simple frustration with the way AI professionals were expected to network.
You know the scene. You walk into a room full of people clutching business cards, half-listening to conversations while scanning name tags for their next mark. There's a panel on stage where someone is saying "AI will transform everything" for the hundredth time. The food is forgettable. The conversations are transactional. You leave with a pocket full of cards you'll never follow up on and a vague sense that you wasted your evening.
The idea behind Atlanta AI Dinner was simple: what if AI professionals could just have dinner together? No pitches, no panels, no sponsors, no one trying to sell you a data platform. Just good food and real conversation about the work we're actually doing.
The first dinner was about six people around a table at a restaurant we genuinely wanted to eat at. The conversation covered everything from model performance challenges someone was hitting at work to the ethics of a deployment someone else was wrestling with. Nobody gave a pitch. Nobody handed out a business card. People just talked, the way you do when you're having dinner with friends who happen to work on interesting things.
That intimate format remains the core of what we do. We've grown since then, but the dinners themselves stay small on purpose. Six to eight people around a table is the sweet spot where everyone can be part of the conversation, where you actually remember what people said the next day.
The format is deliberately simple because the format is the point. We're not trying to build a conference or a meetup empire. We're trying to have good dinners with interesting people.
Dinners are typically 6-8 people per table, keeping things intimate enough for real conversation.
Everyone pays for their own meal. No sponsors, no commercial influence, no strings attached.
No pitches, no vendor presentations, no corporate talking points. Conversation emerges naturally.
Model performance challenges, deployment obstacles, ethical considerations, technical breakthroughs.
Between dinners, the conversation continues in our Discord community. People share interesting papers, ask questions about production challenges they're facing, or just riff on the latest developments in the field. It's the same authentic vibe as the dinners, just ongoing.
The best AI conversations don't happen on stage at conferences. They happen around a table, over good food, between people who are deep in the work and trust each other enough to talk about what's actually hard.
In February 2026, we launched something new: Coffee Coworks. These are open public coffee working sessions where anyone in Atlanta's AI community can show up, no invitation needed.
Anyone is welcome to come hack on projects, chat, get or give advice, or just socialize over coffee. Low stakes, no agenda. The first one was at Brash Coffee in The Works, Atlanta, and we've since expanded to Brash Coffee in Buckhead.
Coffee Coworks are different from the dinners by design. The dinners are small, invitation-only, and focused on deep conversation. The coworks are open, casual, and designed for the broader community. Think of them as the front door: anyone working on AI in Atlanta can walk in, grab a coffee, and start a conversation. Some of those people end up at dinners. Some just enjoy the coworks. Both are great.
We typically set up shop at a good coffee spot for a few hours in the morning. People drift in and out, work on their projects, and chat when they feel like it. There's no presentation, no structured networking, no pressure to perform. Just a room full of people working on interesting things, available for conversation if you want it.
Our community includes founders, data science leaders, researchers, consultants, and investors. They come from startups and Fortune 500s alike. Industries represented include financial services, creative agencies, cloud platforms, law firms, Big Tech companies, AI startups, venture capital firms, and local universities.
The specialties are as varied as the people: enterprise AI transformation, ML infrastructure, machine learning research, legal tech, campaign optimization, risk modeling, computer vision, autonomous systems, and more. What everyone shares is that they're actually doing the work, not just talking about it.
Students are not only welcome but actively encouraged. We reserve at least one spot at each dinner for a student working on AI projects, and their meal is on us. Some of the best conversations happen when a PhD candidate shares their research and a seasoned industry practitioner offers a perspective from the production trenches.
Whether you want to join us for dinner or just grab a coffee, there are a few ways to connect with the community.