Plug in

Check activity, not existence: on the event platforms (Meetup and the newer event tools), sort Austin AI/ML groups by most-recent event rather than member count — dead groups keep their thousands of members forever. An active group has an event scheduled within the next six weeks and photos from the last one. Two clicks tell you more than any directory, including ours.

Bring one sentence about what you are building or want to build, ask three people what they are working on, and skip the anxiety about seniority — Austin's events run unusually mixed, students to staff engineers, and demo nights reward the person who shipped something small over the person with the grand deck. Follow up within a week; the scene is small enough that twice-met is known.

Organizers are permanently short of speakers — a working demo and a direct message gets you on most calendars within a cycle or two. Speaking is also the fastest known route from newcomer to regular: one ten-minute demo produces more introductions than a quarter of attending.