AI-Wednesday 01: Creating the 2026 plan for AI Wednesday while reflecting on the past year activities and improvement areas

AI Wednesday saw a successful run in 2025, marking a huge jump in both the consistency and quality of sessions taken. Among the 53 total sessions taken, 31 of them were taken this year with around 188 unique attendees and 12 Organisers

Though consistency during the later half of 2025 has improved, the major challenge remains the less number of hosts to take the sessions. The focus on the topics for the sessions have also switched to a much detailed approach leading to a higher involvement of more serious participants.

Summary report

2025 marked a turning point for AI Wednesday - not just in numbers, but in purpose. What began as a space to casually exchange updates on AI trends gradually evolved into a focused learning-driven community. Early sessions leaned toward showcasing projects, discussing breakthroughs, and exploring newly released tools. These conversations helped build momentum and attracted a diverse group of curious minds, but as the year progressed, a deeper realization emerged: attendees weren’t just looking to know what’s new - they wanted to understand how things work.

This shift shaped the second half of the year. Sessions became more structured, topic-driven, and intentional. Instead of broad overviews, each AI Wednesday began centering around a single concept that participants could meaningfully take away - something they could later explore, build upon, or apply. Knowledge became the north star. As a result, engagement deepened, discussions became more thoughtful, and participants walked away feeling that their time had genuinely added value to their learning journey.

Complex and high-impact topics such as Agentic AI and MCP were explored in depth, sometimes spanning multiple sessions to do justice to the subject. This approach not only improved conceptual clarity but also encouraged continuity - participants returned week after week to build on what they had learned earlier. The community itself grew stronger through this consistency, drawing in a wide demographic ranging from school students to experienced working professionals, all united by a shared intent: to learn AI seriously and meaningfully.

By the end of 2025, AI Wednesday had matured from a discussion forum into a learning ecosystem—one that values depth over hype, understanding over surface-level trends, and community-driven growth over passive consumption. This foundation now sets the stage for a more ambitious and impactful 2026.

Future plans

During the review and planning discussion, we aligned on the following actions for the coming year:

• Topic Planning: Topics should be expanded to include more in depth learning of the theoretical basics like machine Learning and Deep Learning, rather than sticking to mostly Generative AI.
• Documentation: From 2026 onwards, every AI Wednesday will be documented. The host is responsible for a short journal entry, following simple guidelines, giving visibility to both the host and the community.
• Intro to AI: A pre-curated session would be held every month called Introduction to AI where beginners can get their initial exposure to what AI is and the basics of computing.
• Practical Projects: Encourage a more practical approach to learning AI, with topics such as local hosting and inference and Edge AI.
• Physical AI Collaboration: Work with Maker Thursday to explore Physical AI, focusing on AI running on hardware, while setting up a project that can be displayed on Tinkerspace.
• Inference Guide: Explore and curate a guide that updates the cost of AI inference with suggestions on use cases for leading models.