AICHR | Build and Demo Night (with prizes)

About this event

**🚀 Build & Demo Night — Where Hampton Roads Ships Real AI** Something's building here. Every **Month**, the AI Collective turns into a working garage: laptops open, ideas flying, and real projects taking shape in the room. This isn't a lecture or a watch-along. It's a **build night.** **Here's how it works** Come with an idea, a half-finished project, or just curiosity. Spend the night building — solo or on a team. Then we **demo.** Show what you made, get real feedback, and see what everyone else is shipping. Working demos beat perfect slides, every time. **Andrew and a crew of experienced devs** will be in the room the whole night — to pair up, debug with you, talk architecture, or help you scope something you can actually finish by the end of the session. Stuck? We'll get you unstuck. Just want to talk through an idea? That's what we're here for. **👇 But here's the bigger picture** These nights aren't the finish line — they're the **on-ramp.** * **🔧 Build & Demo Night** → sharpen your skills, form teams, and get a project off the ground. * **⚡ Hackathons** → take those teams and projects into focused sprint competitions and ship something real in 24–48 hours. * **🏆 Regional & National Stages** → the strongest projects go on to compete at events like the **Startup World Cup** (global pitch competition, $1M grand prize) and **SCSP's AI hackathons** ($50K+ prize pools, frontier-AI & national-competitiveness focus) — and whatever comes next. Local reps → competitive teams → a shot at the biggest stages in tech. The people who show up to build on a random weeknight are the same people who'll be repping Hampton Roads at a national final. **That path starts here.** **Who should come** * **Developers** who want to build more, and build faster * **Founders & entrepreneurs** with an idea to prototype * **Designers, PMs, and "non-technical" folks** who want to team up with builders * **Anyone AI-curious** who learns best by doing You don't need to be an expert.…