Spacewalk 2026 Summary – 300+ attend
January 16, 2026
More than 300 technologists from all over the RTP attended our annual kick-off event, Spacewalk, on Tuesday evening, January 13. It was standing room only.
The Marbles Museum IMAX Theater served as host location. It’s a unique and memorable location and enabled lots of networking both before and after programming.
Seven (7) world-class speakers were featured with each discussing their “one big AI idea” for the upcoming year.
Speakers and topics included:
- AI Tooling in 2026 – Mark Hinkle, CEO/Founder @ Peripety Labs
- AI Governance – Nithya Ruff, Head of the Amazon Open Source Program Office/Chair Linux Foundation Board
- Severing the Tether: Why Cloud AI Can’t Run the Real World – Matt Hamann is the CTO and Co-founder of LlamaFarm
- AI-powered voice agents and production-ready voice AI systems – Andre Lassiter, Managing Partner, MS3IT Business Solutions
- Tech Education in the Age of AI – Eli “the Computer Guy” Etherton, Silicon Dojo
- AI & Accessibility – Maria Lamardo, Sr. Accessibility Program Manager, GitHub
- AI & DevRel in 2026 – Director of Product Ecosystems (DoPE), Budhaditya Bhattacharya, Tyk
Watch the entire meetup, including talks
Special thanks to the team at Marbles and IMAX for making the evening memorable and smooth in every facet.
Plan now to attend our next meetup taking place Tuesday evening, February 10 at Wake Tech’s RTP campus in the RTP/Morrisville. See the details and RSVP.
Spacewalk 2026 Pictures
