Chester, England
Built for people
already doing
the work.
A private group for AI engineers, technical founders, and applied researchers in Chester and the North West. No spectators. No slides. Just live work and honest conversation.
First session: Tuesday 26 May 2026.
Applications are open. Places are limited.
Built by
practitioners.
AI Foundry Chester is organised by people actively building AI systems.
Not an events company. Not a networking group.
A working environment for people shipping real work.
Organiser
John Igwebuike
Builder
- Building Enprompta (AI infrastructure tooling)
- Focus: LLM workflows, evaluation, and reliability
- Organiser, AI Foundry Chester
Who this attracts
Early applicants include:
- Engineers building LLM-powered products
- Founders working on AI startups
- Operators deploying internal AI systems
This is not a general audience.
Every seat is curated.
How selection works
- Every application is reviewed manually
- Priority is given to people actively building
- We optimise for signal, not scale
- The room is capped at 30
What happens in the room
- Live demos of real systems (no slides)
- Honest discussion of failure modes
- Technical questions, not surface-level takes
- No spectators
If this resonates, you already know if you should apply.
01 — Why now
Chester has builders.
It needs a room.
AI Foundry Chester exists because the room we wanted didn’t.
The North West has serious AI engineers, researchers, and technical founders. What it lacks is a place to speak frankly — about what actually works, what benchmarks miss, and what production looks like at 3am.
Most meetups are too large, too broad, or too commercial. We are starting something different: small, curated, and built around live work rather than polished presentations.
The first session takes place Tuesday 26 May 2026. Applications are open.
02 — The format
Designed around
the work.
Each session has a short agenda followed by open discussion. The agenda frames the conversation — it is not a performance schedule. Cap of 30. Application only.
Live demos
Running code, not slide decks. 15–20 minutes. Failure modes are the interesting part.
Hard-won lessons
Post-mortems over highlight reels. What broke, what you learned, what you would do differently.
Technical depth
Questions from people who have hit the same walls. Not "tell me more about your product."
Open discussion
One contentious topic per session. No consensus required. Disagreement is the point.
Peer feedback
Informal, after the agenda. The most useful conversations happen in the last half hour.
No spectators
Everyone applied. Everyone has skin in the game. That changes what people are willing to say.
04 — Membership
Who this is for
- AI and ML engineers working on production systems
- Product engineers shipping AI features at scale
- Applied researchers with published or near-published work
- Technical founders building AI-native products
- Serious students with shipped code, papers, or live projects
- Engineers exploring new applications with something real to show
Who this is not for
- Generalists still deciding whether to work in AI
- People who prefer to observe rather than contribute
- Service providers here primarily to generate leads
- Recruiters — unless you are an event sponsor
- Anyone with "AI strategy" in their title and no technical depth
Not sure if you qualify? Apply and be honest about your work. The application is the filter.
The first session.
Tuesday 26 May.
Chester.
Small. Deliberate. Worth your time.
We review every application manually. We are looking for evidence of real work — not credentials, not enthusiasm, not plans.
Not ready to apply?
Get notified about upcoming sessions. We send one email per event. Nothing else.