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- AI Austin Community Hackathon coming soon + AI House @ SxSW!
AI Austin Community Hackathon coming soon + AI House @ SxSW!
Sign up to the 2nd AI Austin Community Hackathon before it's too late!
AITX Team
February 21, 2025
Hello everyone! AITX Team here with more updates this week.
If you’re new here, welcome! 👋 At AITX, we aim to:
Connect you with like-minded peers passionate about AI.
Provide a space for sharing ideas and receiving feedback on AI projects you’re building.
Share helpful tools and invaluable resources.
Before we jump into the regular news, a few housekeeping items:
February AITX Meetups:
Our upcoming meetups:
Austin Meetup: February 25 | sign up here!
To stay in the loop on all our monthly meetups and other community organized events, subscribe to our AITX calendar here.
Check out our Community Directory:
We recently started a community directory where you can fill out your profile and find other members of the AITX community.
If you haven’t filled out your profile yet, please follow the link HERE and submit your information.
We want to get to know you better! Please fill out this form if you haven’t already:
2nd Austin AI Community Hackathon! 🤠
We are getting closer to webAI’s & AITX’s Austin AI Community Hackathon!
A huge thank you for the support from webAI, RedHat, Toolhouse, Meta, and Groq for making this possible.
When: From February 28 - March 1
🚪 Registration is now on waitlist
We’ve reached capacity for hackers. If you weren’t able to get into this one, you can still register to be waitlisted. We still encourage you to come to the Hack Fair the next day!
🎡 Sign up for the Hack Fair!
The Hack Fair will be a science-fair style showcase open to the broader Austin community where participants will demo their projects to the public for a chance to win the Community Choice Prize.
🏠️ AI House @ SxSW
AITX is excited to announce a 2-day event in collaboration with Manifold Labs, Akash, Toolhouse, and Groq: AI House @ SxSW.
In the spirit of SxSW, this event will shine a light on local AI talent to show the best of what the Austin AI ecosystem has to offer. There will be company demos, fireside chats, panels and opportunities to connect.
We’d like to thank Manifold Labs and Akash for opening up their new DeAI space for this event.
📝 Register Now!
Come out to support local AI companies, learn from others in the space and have some free food & drink.
In this week’s edition you’re getting:
5 Upcoming Events
3 AI Community Stories
1 Community Highlight
So let’s jump in!
UPCOMING EVENTS
When: Thursday, February 27 | 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM CST
Where: Register to see address
What: Showcase your projects, connect with other builders, share learnings, and learn about tools & frameworks
When: Wednesday, February 26 | 6:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Where: Albert B. Alkek Teaching Theatre (ALK 250)
What: thought-provoking evening hosted by ACM AI, where we'll dive deep into the ethics of this novel technology. Discover how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the way we create, work, and think with a panel of experts passionate about AI's role in our lives.
When: Monday, March 3 | 5:00 PM - 8:30 PM CST
Where: Meta Austin’s 3rd & Shoal office 607 West 3rd St Austin, TX
What: You’re invited! Register Here by February 26 to join Meta during SXSW EDU for a reception with appetizers, drinks, and a panel discussion about the value of open-source AI and immersive tech for education. Experience Meta AI demos on Ray Ban Meta AI glasses, try Quest 3S mixed reality headsets, and network with innovators, developers, and educators building for education. If you are using Llama to make an impact with education, skills development, or job training, the team at Meta wants to meet you! Please contact [email protected] if you want to get involved with this reception.
When: Sunday, March 9 | 8:30 AM – 6:30 PM CST
Where: 309 E 3rd Street Austin, TX
What: SeedAI House programming will explore the leading edge of AI and public policy, featuring an electric mix of key policymakers, industry visionaries, and subject matter experts. Register here to join Meta and SeedAI for a day full of panel discussions, open-source AI demos led by developers from Texas and across the country, and experience Ray Ban Meta AI glasses and Quest 3S mixed reality headsets.
When: Thursday, March 6 | 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM CST
Where: Capital Factory 701 Brazos St, 16th Floor · Austin, TX
What: A monthly mini-hack session for developers all over the Austin area to build cool stuff related to AI. The first Thursday of each month, they host a meetup revolving around a certain theme or AI technology, like Voice AI, Large Language Models, Computer Vision, etc.
COMMUNITY STORIES
University of Texas researchers have developed an AI system that converts brain activity into continuous text, requiring just one hour of training - a dramatic improvement over previous methods that needed 16+ hours.
Why it matters: This non-invasive approach could transform how people with conditions like aphasia, ALS, or paralysis communicate, offering a faster path to "mind reading" technology without requiring surgery.
Need-to-know:
System uses fMRI and AI to decode brain activity while users watch silent videos
Works even for those who struggle with language comprehension, unlike previous methods
Technology includes built-in safeguards - only works with willing participants and can't be used for unauthorized mind reading
Learn more here.
A massive expansion of AI data centers in Texas, including Trump's $500 billion Stargate initiative, is putting unprecedented strain on the state's power grid and water resources.
Why it matters: ERCOT predicts Texas' energy demand will double within 6 years, with AI data centers accounting for over half that increase - raising serious questions about the state's infrastructure readiness.
Need-to-know:
Texas is set to host at least 10 new AI data centers, with the flagship Stargate campus in Abilene using enough power for 240,000 homes
State will need 3,000 miles of new power lines costing $30 billion, likely paid by consumers
Water demands are also concerning - AI data centers globally will soon use as much freshwater as half the UK
Learn more here.
Sierra Digital launches the city's first SAP AppHaus location, creating a dedicated space for AI innovation and business technology development in collaboration with software giant SAP.
Why it matters: The new hub positions Houston to become a stronger player in business AI innovation, joining a select network of only 25 such facilities globally and just two in the U.S.
Need-to-know:
The facility can host over 100 participants for workshops, tech discussions, and hackathons
Sierra Digital brings expertise in modernizing legacy systems with over 30 pre-built AI business applications
The hub will focus on applying AI to streamline operations across oil and gas, manufacturing, retail, and public sectors
Learn more here.
COMMUNITY HIGHLIGHT
This week, we’re highlighting Mark Heaps, Chief Tech Evangelist and VP of Brand/Creative at Groq (one of our other partners for this upcoming hackathon).
His work, leading a team of designers, writers, engineers, communicators, and more. Their projects connect to every department within Groq as they collaborate on features, prototypes and demos, messaging, community awareness, and much more.
Mark often crafts the demos with the team that feature the inference speeds and quality attainable when using Groq LPU based solutions.
When not working on Groq projects he lives in Austin with his family, works on multiple passion projects, exploring on his motorbike, and playing music with friends.
Here is his message to the AITX Community:
We are always so inspired by the creativity of the current day developer. I consider the people in these communities to be the artists of this era demonstrating the art of the possible with their creations.
I am always keen to see great work, hopefully Powered by Groq in some way, that we can feature and share with the world via our channels
Sign up at console.groq.com to get a free API key and tokens to build your next idea!
That’s all for now, folks!
If you enjoyed this, consider sharing with a friend by sending them to sign up here.