Louisville, KY / Vol. 02 / September 2026
A place 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.
The room
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.
- Free to attend
- Lunch included
- Small room, on purpose
- Nothing is recorded
Who's behind it
Josh Starr
Solid Giant
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.
The format
Someone shares something real
The architecture, the cost, the parts that broke.
Then we open the floor
No moderator theater, no slide deck required.
The room answers
Half the value is when somebody says "wait, how did you handle that?" and people actually know.
Vol. 01 — May, Story Louisville
Fifteen people, free lunch, and about ninety minutes on production voice agents, HIPAA compliance, and a CRM we rebuilt on Claude that came in 10x cheaper. Good conversation, and a few collaborations came out of it that are still going.
15
People in the room
90
Minutes of notes
10x
Cheaper CRM rebuild
$0
Cost to attend
The bigger idea
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.
Vol. 02 — September 2026
Details are still coming together. I'm locking in the venue and time now, and I'll send everything out as soon as it's set. Same deal: free, lunch included, small room.
Drop your email and I'll make sure you get it first.