Christchurch Artificial Intelligence

Every week, Caelan Huntress hosts an Open Office Hours in the AI Coaching Academy for OpenClaw users. For TechWeek, he is opening the doors to any lobster fans who want to drop in and have a chat.

• Learn best practices for keeping your OpenClaw agent online
• Access projects and prompts you can hand off to an OpenClaw
• Trade ideas with other OpenClaw users
• Ask questions about secure OpenClaw installations

As an AI consultant, Caelan has installed dozens of OpenClaw agents for clients. He offers OpenClaw installation as a service (it comes with a Mac Mini).

Come share what you've been building with your OpenClaw, and meet other lobster babysitters, in this 1-hour Zoom meeting.

RSVP here to get the Zoom link, or join the weekly Open Office Hours in the AI Coaching Academy, hosted by Caelan Huntress.

• AM Workshops (8:00–11:45am) → https://events.humanitix.com/epic-ai-conference-am
• Coffee & Jam (12:00–1:15pm) → https://events.humanitix.com/ministry-of-awesome-coffee-and-jam-371
• PM Presentations (1:30–5:00pm) → https://events.humanitix.com/epic-ai-conference-pm
• Evening Panel (5:30–7:00pm) → https://events.humanitix.com/epic-ai-conference-panel

Each session is registered separately on Humanitix. RSVP for the whole day, or only the parts that suit you.

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The EPIC AI Conference is a full day of workshops, community conversation, presentations, and leadership dialogue at EPIC Innovation, as part of TechWeekNZ 2026.

14+ speakers, panelists, founders, and facilitators. One community hub. Four linked events across one shared TechWeek day.

The morning is hands-on: five fast workshops covering AI coaching, meeting transcription, opportunity mapping, nonprofit impact, and visual creation. Lunchtime brings Ministry of Awesome's Coffee & Jam — Christchurch's longest-running founder meetup. The afternoon moves into operational excellence, AI safety, privacy infrastructure, and the long-term future AI may unlock. The evening closes with a leadership panel on trust, capability, and adoption.

This is local capability, shared learning, and practical experimentation, rooted in Christchurch's innovation community.

• 📍 Where: EPIC Innovation, 100 Manchester St, Christchurch
• 📅 When: Thursday, 21 May 2026, 8:00am–7:00pm
• 💰 Cost: $10 per event, $30 for the whole day
• 🎟 Tickets: Humanitix only (links above & below)

Full programme details: https://christchurch-ai.com/epic-ai-conference

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🔗 One more time, because Meetup RSVPs don't count:

• AM Workshops → https://events.humanitix.com/epic-ai-conference-am
• Coffee & Jam → https://events.humanitix.com/ministry-of-awesome-coffee-and-jam-371
• PM Presentations → https://events.humanitix.com/epic-ai-conference-pm
• Evening Panel → https://events.humanitix.com/epic-ai-conference-panel

See you at EPIC. ☕

5:30–6:00 pm — Drinks & Networking
6:00–6:45 pm — Agent Management: The Next High-Value Skillset — Caelan Huntress
6:45–7:30 pm — Agent Habits with an Engineer's Mindset — Blake Burgess
7:30–8:00 pm — Drinks & Open Q&A

This month's Meetup dives into the management skills agentic AI demands, and the daily habits of an engineer already working alongside agents.

Agent Management: The Next High-Value Skillset — Caelan Huntress
AI agents are changing the way work gets done. As agentic systems become more capable, our real advantage will not come from technical proficiency. It will come from knowing how to manage AI agents well.

Scoping agentic projects, managing autonomous systems, evaluating their performance, and designing the information environments that make agents effective — these are the skills of the future. This intermediate-level session is for proficient AI operators, team leaders, and decision-makers who want to understand the next layer of AI capability.

In this session, you will learn:

• What AI agents are, and how they differ from simple chat-based tools
• Which new skills matter when agents start taking action on your behalf
• How organisations can identify useful agentic projects
• What tools can be used to build agent harnesses
• What it takes to manage, monitor, and improve AI agents in production
• Why context engineering, system prompts, and performance evaluation are becoming core professional capabilities

Agent Habits with an Engineer's Mindset — Blake Burgess
What are AI agents, really, and what can they actually do? Blake brings 20 years of programming experience to a motivational, actionable walkthrough of agents in practice. Expect serious local agents and cloud agents, explained simply.

We will work through some jargon because words are important, and with a newfound understanding of "harnesses" and "models" we will look at how a senior engineer approaches agents — for work stuff, and other stuff. You will start to see the habits, hooks, and opportunities where agents can play a part, and then you can try it, too.

You will learn:

• The difference between local agents and cloud agents in everyday use
• How a senior engineer thinks about harnesses and models
• Where agents fit into existing workflows without rebuilding them
• Practical habits and hooks you can adopt straight away

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When: Monday, 8 June, 5:30–8:00 pm
Where: EPIC Innovation, Christchurch
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Sponsored by the AI Coaching Academy. Come have some 🍻 beer and wine🍷 and raise a glass with your local AI Community!
https://ai-coaching.academy/