There are certain sentences I did not expect to be writing when I started this newsletter, began running bootcamps, and started poking around with AI workshops in Palm Desert almost three years ago.
Here’s one:
On September 12, the Coachella Valley will join cities around the world for a global AI hackathon sponsored by OpenAI.
And, yes, the notice is a little ridiculous.
It came together rather quickly — because apparently our agentic future continues to have absolutely no respect for anybody’s marketing calendar.
The event is called Agents, Everywhere: Beyond the Chatbot, and it’s being organized through the new AI Tinkerers Coachella Valley chapter, where I’m a co-organizer.
Getting one of the big foundational AI companies — OpenAI, Anthropic, somebody at that level — involved here in the Coachella Valley has been on my roadmap for a long time.
I just didn’t quite expect it to happen this way.
OpenAI is the headline sponsor, joined by OpenRouter and CopilotKit. And, of course, I didn’t actually go out and convince the makers of ChatGPT to sponsor an event in our little corner of the universe.
But still. I’m counting it.
You’ll be joining builders in AI Tinkerers cities around the world, all spending the day working on the same global challenge.
Which leaves me with one fairly important question:
Where are all the Coachella Valley builders?
I know you’re here. You’ve been to the workshops.
Engineers. Developers. Coders. Systems people. Data people. Researchers. Technical founders. AI-native experimenters.
I mean, if you’ve been noodling around with an AI project, prototype, side hustle, agent, strange little tool, half-finished repo, or idea you haven’t quite known what to do with — dust it off.
Bring it.
Or come with an idea you’ve been thinking about and find a collaborator, co-founder, or small team in the room.
If you’ve never been to a hackathon, that’s completely fine. If you have, even better — you have scar tissue.
Bring it.
This isn’t one of our usual “come learn about AI” workshops.
It’s a builders’ room.
You’ll spend the day building, testing, breaking things, fixing them, meeting potential collaborators, and finishing with something we can actually show.
At the end of the day, teams will submit their projects into the global competition. There’s no formal local judging; projects from participating cities go into the larger global review and prize process.
And yes, there will be prizes. Or so I’m told.
Attendance is by application, and space is intentionally limited.
There’s another reason I care about this one.
For the last couple of years, a lot of our work through AICV has been about helping people here understand what AI is becoming — workshops, conversations, practical tools, workforce development, and a lot of experimenting in public.
But eventually a region needs more than people who know how to use the technology.
It needs people who can build with it.
So I’m thinking of September 12 as a little flag in the sand.
Nothing grandiose.
Just a marker that says:
The Coachella Valley is part of the global AI builder community now, too.
Agents, Everywhere: Beyond the Chatbot
Saturday, September 12
10 AM–5 PM
Palm Desert
Location shared with accepted builders
If you have a question, an idea, or know someone I should personally drag into the room, hit me up.
Let’s make this one count.
Flag in the sand.
If any of this resonates, pass it along - consider it an invite with a forwarding button. This is a community project. It grows the same way communities do, one conversation at a time.
Sat Singh runs SunshineFM and AICV from his home studio in Rancho Mirage. He hopes to attract Anthropic as a sponsor when he’s not busy managing his Saturday Morning AI workshops, reporting the AI beat for InformedIE, and organizing the new AI Tinkerers Coachella Valley chapter.