lu.ma
SF Bay Area Tech Events: May 21–22
A curated morning digest of 14 events covering tonight (Thursday, May 21) and tomorrow (Friday, May 22) across San Francisco, Berkeley, Stanford, and Santa Clara. Thursday highlights: CapCut × Design Buddies AI Design Hackathon (MacBook Pro prize), ValkaAI GenAI Real-Time Video deep dive, and the GitHub Assistive Tech Hackathon (Day 1). Friday: OSS4AI full-day AI in Production conference (free, 43K-member community) and Google DeepMind’s Post-I/O builder hangout at Corgi Cafe.
Google I/O has wrapped — Thursday's events are where the real post-I/O conversations start, with a GenAI deep dive, an AI design hackathon, and a founder pickleball session, while Friday delivers a full-day production-track conference and Google DeepMind's official builder hangout.
Coverage window: tonight (Thursday, May 21) and tomorrow (Friday, May 22).
Tonight — Thursday, May 21
Open Source Assistive Technology Hackathon — Day 1 (all day)
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM PDT |
| Venue | GitHub Headquarters, 88 Colin P Kelly Jr St, San Francisco, CA 94107 |
| Host | GitHub, NV Access, Center for Accessibility and Open Source, Northwest Center for Assistive Technology Training |
| Category | Hackathon — open source / accessibility |
| Access | Free — light breakfast, catered lunch, and dinner on Day 1 provided; ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation and CART (real-time text captioning) available |
| Register | eventbrite.com — Open Source Assistive Technology Hackathon |
A two-day hackathon at GitHub HQ focused on building and improving open source assistive technology — software tools for users with disabilities. Both experienced contributors and first-timers are welcome; core GitHub contribution workflows are taught on-site. Participants can contribute to featured accessibility projects or bring their own ideas. 1
This is part of GitHub Maintainer Month 2026. Day 2 continues Friday with the same hours and lunch. If you've been meaning to make your first open source contribution, this is a structured environment for it.
Agent Builders Breakfast — SOMA founders & builders
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 8:00 AM – 9:30 AM PDT |
| Venue | SOMA, San Francisco (one of SOMA's Mexican restaurants/bars — address shared with registrants) |
| Host | Michael Ducker (former PM at Mercury, Chime & Twitter) and Feifan Zhou |
| Category | Networking — breakfast |
| Access | Free, RSVP required — breakfast tacos and drip coffee provided by Valet.dev |
| Register | lu.ma/v53ex8ug |
A casual morning gathering for founders, PMs, and engineering leads building AI agents inside tech companies. No agenda, no pitches. Valet.dev (a developer tooling startup) is sponsoring breakfast — including gluten-free, dairy-free, and vegan options. The event was previewed in yesterday's digest; at last check, 90 people had RSVPed. 2
The attendee profile skews toward engineers using Claude Code, Cursor, and agent-native tooling. If you're building agents at a company and want a low-pressure start to the day, this fits.
Berkeley Robotics Community Showcase (outside SF — Berkeley)
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM PDT |
| Venue | Berkeley, CA (address shared with registrants) |
| Host | Berkeley Gateway Accelerator |
| Category | Showcase / demo day |
| Access | Free, RSVP required |
| Register | lu.ma/epx1waw5 |
A three-tier robotics demo day — high school, university, and startup teams each presenting four to five minutes. Keynote by Ken Goldberg, UC Berkeley Distinguished Professor of Engineering with 450+ publications and 10+ US patents in robotics. Six to eight teams presenting, including Berkelium (FRC Team 5419, 80+ members). 3
Good afternoon option if you're near the East Bay.
Scrappy (AI) Founders Play Pickleball (invite-only)
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 4:00 PM – 7:00 PM PDT (pickleball 4:00–5:30 PM, dinner until 7:00 PM) |
| Venue | San Francisco, CA (address not public) |
| Host | 12 Scrappy Founders (Denis Belyavsky) |
| Category | Sports networking — founders |
| Access | Invite-only — for seed-stage or early-revenue founders; capacity: 12 founders |
| Register | lu.ma/w52qaztf |
Private courts, equipment and coaching provided, followed by a light dinner. Fondo (accounting automation for 1,000+ startups) is co-sponsoring. A tight-capacity session from the same community that has run Go-Karting events in SF and the Bay Area. 4
What Silicon Valley can learn from Japanese innovation (outside SF — Stanford)
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 4:15 PM – 5:30 PM PDT (registration 4:00 PM) |
| Venue | Bishop Auditorium, 518 Memorial Way, Stanford, CA 94305 |
| Host | Japan Society of Northern California & Stanford US-Asia Technology Management Center |
| Category | Lecture / panel — hybrid |
| Access | Free, RSVP required — in-person and online attendance available |
| Register | lu.ma/i41i04a3 |
The John Thomas Memorial Lecture. Keynote by Dr. Richard Dasher, Director of Stanford's US-Asia Technology Management Center, followed by a panel with Allen Miner (Founder & Chairman, SunBridge Corp) and Ray Hatoyama (Venture Partner, Sozo Ventures). The discussion covers Japan's technology innovation strengths and opportunities for cross-border collaboration. 5
Parking on Memorial Way or near Lasuen St. & Roth Way; meters and A/C permits are free after 4:00 PM (except near the Oval, which stays paid until 6:00 PM).
GenAI: Real-Time Video Generation — Tech Deep Dive Vol. 2
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 5:30 PM – 9:30 PM PDT (doors 5:30 PM, first talk 6:15–7:00 PM, networking 7:45–9:30 PM) |
| Venue | European Startup Embassy, 461 Bryant Street, San Francisco, CA |
| Host | ValkaAI and European Startup Embassy |
| Category | Technical deep dive — AI / video generation |
| Access | Free, RSVP required — refreshments at doors |
| Register | lu.ma/ndd8f9d0 |
The second session in ValkaAI's real-time video generation series, following the first edition in February. Speaker for the 6:15–7:00 PM slot: Weipeng Xu, former Meta engineer and currently Senior Researcher at ValkaAI, presenting on the technical state of real-time video generation. A second session runs 7:00–7:30 PM (speaker not yet announced). Networking continues until 9:30 PM, with possible use of the rooftop. 6
CapCut × Design Buddies AI Design Hackathon
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 6:00 PM – 10:00 PM PDT |
| Venue | Pebblebed VC office, San Francisco |
| Host | Design Buddies and CapCut (ByteDance) |
| Category | Design hackathon |
| Access | Free, RSVP required — free CapCut account needed to receive AI credits; food, drinks, and swag provided |
| Register | lu.ma/design-hackathon |
Individual competition using CapCut's AI Design Studio, a browser-based image generation tool. Participants receive a prompt and build creative concepts for judging. Prizes: 1st place — 14-inch MacBook Pro; 2nd/3rd — AirPods Pro 3; top 10 — three-month CapCut Pro membership plus branded swag. The CapCut team is traveling from China to attend in person. 7
Venue is the Pebblebed VC office, founded by Pam Vagata (co-founder of OpenAI, former head of AI at Stripe) and Keith Adams (founding member of Facebook AI Research, former Chief Architect at Slack). Open to graphic designers, product designers, UX designers, and anyone working with visual AI tools.
Loading link preview…
Private Dinner: Scaling Shopify DTC Brands in 2026 (invite-only)
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 6:00 PM – 8:30 PM PDT |
| Venue | San Francisco, CA (location shared with approved attendees 7 days prior) |
| Host | Sehaj Brar and Manish Agrawal (QuietSpark; formerly Google Ads Engineering Director) |
| Category | Founder dinner — DTC / e-commerce |
| Access | Invite-only; dinner and drinks covered by the QuietSpark team; capacity: 5–7 leaders |
| Register | lu.ma/qc2fp9nn |
An extremely small dinner for DTC brand founders and operators. Agenda: a peer-to-peer discussion on 2026 scaling challenges (rising customer acquisition costs, AI-driven brand disintermediation by ChatGPT and Gemini, attribution gaps, agency inefficiencies), plus a preview of Maya AI — an agentic orchestration engine for Shopify stores designed to recover return on ad spend across paid and organic channels. 8
BayLISA: "The 3AM Page That Convinced Me AI Alone Won't Fix Ops" (outside SF — Santa Clara)
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 7:00 PM – ~9:00 PM PDT (social 7:00–7:30 PM, talk at 7:45 PM) |
| Venue | Santa Clara, CA (address provided upon RSVP) |
| Host | BayLISA (Bay Area Large Installation System Administrators) — monthly free meetup, 30+ year history in Silicon Valley |
| Category | Tech talk — SRE / AIOps / incident response |
| Access | Free, RSVP via Google Form |
| Register | forms.gle/wkhG4ScfsY4GbUUv6 |
Speaker: Sridhar Rajarao, former Director of SRE at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Object Storage, where he ran a 45-person org and scaled the platform from 4 to 100+ global regions. His talk covers why most AI SRE agents currently shipping don't solve the core problems in incident response, including a comparison of AWS DevOps Agent vs. Azure SRE Agent, a case study of a production data deletion that wiped a business database in under 10 seconds, and a three-step framework for pairing AI with human ops to compress mean time to resolution. 9
Where is AI in 2026 and where is it going? — Public workshop (outside SF — Berkeley)
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM PDT |
| Venue | Berkeley Public Library — North Branch, Berkeley, CA |
| Host | AI Safety Awareness Project (Spyder McHenry, Mike Mantell, Sahar Mor / Bond AI) |
| Category | Workshop — AI literacy / safety |
| Access | Free, no technical background required |
| Register | lu.ma/73k7v2bp |
A public workshop covering AI's near-term trajectory across employment (mass unemployment vs. new work categories), crime (scams, hacking, physical crime), AI companions (emotional bonds, romantic relationships), and social impact — drawing on forecasts from leading researchers. The session includes live demos and an interactive forecasting exercise. Originally scheduled for May 5; rescheduled after one of the organizers fell ill. 10
Tomorrow — Friday, May 22
Open Source Assistive Technology Hackathon — Day 2 (all day)
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM PDT |
| Venue | GitHub Headquarters, 88 Colin P Kelly Jr St, San Francisco, CA 94107 |
| Host | GitHub, NV Access, Center for Accessibility and Open Source, Northwest Center for Assistive Technology Training |
| Category | Hackathon — open source / accessibility |
| Access | Free — light breakfast and catered lunch provided; ASL interpretation and CART real-time captioning available |
| Register | eventbrite.com — Open Source Assistive Technology Hackathon |
Continuation of Thursday's hackathon at GitHub HQ. Same format, same teams — projects continue through the second day with a goal of making mergeable contributions by end of day. 1
AI in Production Mini Conference, May 2026
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 9:30 AM – 6:00 PM PDT |
| Venue | San Francisco, CA (address shared with registrants) |
| Host | OSS4AI (Open Source for AI) |
| Category | Conference — AI in production / open source |
| Access | Free, RSVP required |
| Register | somo.social — AI in Production Mini Conference |
A full-day free conference from OSS4AI, the community behind the r/AI_Agents subreddit (330,000+ members) and nearly 200 events. Three scheduled speakers: Yujian Tang on multi-agent system architecture, Talon Miller from Redis on production AI data infrastructure, and Cory Waddingham from Guild AI. The afternoon includes three workshop sessions and a Startup Demo Day — teams competing include MEGA Code (Chanwoo Song), SuperBryn (Nikkitha Shanker), and Swytchcode (Aditya Rohit); the winner earns a shoutout on the r/AI_Agents wiki. 11
One of the higher-volume free events this week. The focus is squarely on deployed systems rather than research benchmarks — talks assume you're actually running something in production.
Mastering Midjourney — Virtual AI design workshop (virtual, $30)
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | Friday, May 22 (exact time not listed) |
| Venue | Online |
| Host | Design Bay Area |
| Category | Workshop — AI design / image generation |
| Access | Paid — $30 ticket |
| Register | designbayarea.org — Mastering Midjourney |
A 60-minute session on Midjourney V7 led by Carolina de Bartolo, a creative director, long-time instructor at Academy of Art San Francisco, and author of the award-winning book Explorations in Typography. Topics: prompt crafting, reverse prompting, anti-prompting, and draft mode, with live demo and real-time troubleshooting. No technical background required. 12
Check the event page for the session time before registering.
Post-I/O: After Work with Google DeepMind
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Time | 5:00 PM – 9:00 PM PDT |
| Venue | Corgi Cafe (24/7 startup hub), San Francisco, CA |
| Host | Google DeepMind Developer Experience Team |
| Category | Networking — after-party / post-conference |
| Access | Free, RSVP required — limited by venue capacity; 329 RSVPs at time of research |
| Register | lu.ma/b8tg4qst |
An informal gathering for developers and builders in the days following Google I/O 2026. No stage, no microphones — just DeepMind team members available for conversations on what was announced and what it means for builders. The format is intentionally low-key: coffee, laptops, direct access to the people who built what was on the keynote slides. 13
At 329 RSVPs, this is the highest-demand single event of the two-day window. Check the lu.ma page for current availability before heading over.
Quick-reference
| Event | Day | Time (PDT) | Location | Access | Register |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub Assistive Tech Hackathon — Day 1 | Thu 5/21 | 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM | GitHub HQ, 88 Colin P Kelly Jr St, SF | Free | Eventbrite |
| Agent Builders Breakfast | Thu 5/21 | 8:00–9:30 AM | SOMA, SF | Free RSVP | lu.ma/v53ex8ug |
| Berkeley Robotics Showcase ⚠️ | Thu 5/21 | 1:00–4:00 PM | Berkeley | Free RSVP | lu.ma/epx1waw5 |
| Scrappy (AI) Founders Pickleball | Thu 5/21 | 4:00–7:00 PM | SF (private) | Invite-only | lu.ma/w52qaztf |
| Japanese Innovation @ Stanford ⚠️ | Thu 5/21 | 4:15–5:30 PM | Bishop Auditorium, Stanford | Free / hybrid | lu.ma/i41i04a3 |
| GenAI Video Deep Dive Vol. 2 | Thu 5/21 | 5:30–9:30 PM | European Startup Embassy, 461 Bryant St, SF | Free RSVP | lu.ma/ndd8f9d0 |
| CapCut × Design Buddies Hackathon | Thu 5/21 | 6:00–10:00 PM | Pebblebed VC, SF | Free RSVP | lu.ma/design-hackathon |
| Shopify DTC Dinner | Thu 5/21 | 6:00–8:30 PM | SF (undisclosed) | Invite-only | lu.ma/qc2fp9nn |
| AI Safety Workshop ⚠️ | Thu 5/21 | 6:00–7:30 PM | Berkeley Public Library — North Branch | Free | lu.ma/73k7v2bp |
| BayLISA AIOps Talk ⚠️ | Thu 5/21 | 7:00–9:00 PM | Santa Clara (RSVP for address) | Free | forms.gle |
| GitHub Assistive Tech Hackathon — Day 2 | Fri 5/22 | 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM | GitHub HQ, 88 Colin P Kelly Jr St, SF | Free | Eventbrite |
| AI in Production Mini Conference | Fri 5/22 | 9:30 AM – 6:00 PM | SF (RSVP for address) | Free RSVP | Somo.social |
| Mastering Midjourney (virtual) | Fri 5/22 | TBD | Online | $30 | designbayarea.org |
| Post-I/O: After Work with DeepMind | Fri 5/22 | 5:00–9:00 PM | Corgi Cafe, SF | Free RSVP (limited) | lu.ma/b8tg4qst |
⚠️ = outside SF proper (Berkeley, Stanford, or Santa Clara)
Coverage window: tonight (Thursday, May 21) and tomorrow (Friday, May 22, 2026). Verify times, addresses, and registration availability on each event's page before heading out.
Cover photo: AI-generated illustration.
References
- 1Open Source Assistive Technology Hackathon — GitHub via Eventbrite
- 2Agent Builders Breakfast — Michael Ducker via lu.ma
- 3Berkeley Robotics Community Showcase — Berkeley Gateway Accelerator via lu.ma
- 4Scrappy (AI) Founders Play Pickleball — 12 Scrappy Founders via lu.ma
- 5What Silicon Valley Can Learn from Japanese Innovation — Japan Society of Northern California via lu.ma
- 6GenAI: Tech Deep Dive into Real-Time Video Generation Vol. 2 — ValkaAI via lu.ma
- 7CapCut x Design Buddies Design Hackathon — Design Buddies via lu.ma
- 8Private Dinner: Scaling Shopify DTC Brands in 2026 — Sehaj Brar via lu.ma
- 9BayLISA: The 3AM Page That Convinced Me AI Alone Won't Fix Ops — BayLISA via Meetup
- 10Where is AI in 2026 and Where is it Going? — AI Safety Awareness Project via lu.ma
- 11AI in Production Mini Conference, May 2026 — OSS4AI via Somo.social
- 12Mastering Midjourney — Design Bay Area
- 13Post-I/O: After Work with Google DeepMind — Google DeepMind via lu.ma
Add more perspectives or context around this Drop.