Vibe Thursday
SYDNEY · EVERY THURSDAY

Vibe Thursday

Sydney · every Thursday morning

A table of people who build things, over coffee, talking about what they are doing with AI and where they are stuck. Got something to show? Go ahead. Only want to listen? Also fine. A product, an automation, a content pipeline, an ad playbook, a prompt system, or an idea that does not work yet all count.

When
Thursdays · doors 10:30am, starts on the dot
Where
The Avenue · Chatswood465 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood →
Cost
Free, just order a drinkWhat running it costs →
Next · Thu, 24 Sept · 10:30am

We carry on over lunch from noon. On school pickup, or need to get back to work? Leave at twelve.

§ 01 — What this is

A group of people around one table every Thursday morning, showing each other what they built with AI.

Borrowed from the weekly Thursday meetups in Beijing's Zhongguancun. The point is not who presents best, it is finding people on your wavelength in Sydney. Same time, same place, every week; come often enough and it becomes your circle. The first session ran on 6 August 2026: 26 signed up and 18 to 20 turned up, from indie developers to lawyers, accountants and business owners.

Not a lecture

No keynote, no status-report slides, no stage. Laptops get passed around and you interrupt with questions.

Unfinished is fine

It does not have to be a working product. Something half-built, a piece of content, an idea you are still turning over — all of it is worth five minutes. Nobody is grading how finished it is.

Show, don't sell

What you built is your best marketing — show it properly. Just don't turn someone else's turn into your pitch. Recruiters working the room, agencies hunting clients, people collecting contacts and leaving: not welcome.

§ 02 — What has accumulated

Who you will meet, what they are asking, what they have built.

These three are the only things on this site that get thicker over time. Every other section describes a Thursday; this one is what the Thursdays so far have left behind.

AI 在地产行业的应用Kevin Wang教培和AI结合David H想认识在澳洲做 AI / SaaS / GTM 的朋友，也想聊聊 Voice Agent 在本地企业里到底有哪些真实需求。Alicia
Member wall

Who you will actually meet.

Everyone who comes has a card: what they are building, their business, a channel, a community — or just one line about what they are looking for. The two fields that do the work are «looking for» and «can help with» — a cofounder, a first batch of users, someone who has already hit the wall you are hitting, mostly get found through those two. No product needed; there are always more listeners than presenters here.

The Wharf

Know what people are asking, before Thursday.

The line people write on the sign-up form — what they most want to ask — ends up on the Wharf. See one you can answer, and Thursday is ten minutes with that person instead of an hour working out who to talk to.

Go down to the Wharf1 questions this week
Works

What this room has built.

A dozen products, half of them shipped or earning, and some that still only run on somebody's laptop. All of it comes off the member wall — being stuck somewhere is usually the more interesting conversation.

§ 03 — Who it is for

Anyone actually building with AI, or seriously about to start.

  • Indie developers
  • AI startup founders and their teams
  • Creators: newsletters, podcasts, video, social
  • Freelancers and digital nomads
  • Engineers, PMs, designers, marketers
  • Team leads getting AI into real workflows
  • Lawyers, accountants, grant and compliance people — serving those fields, or rebuilding them with AI

"Building" is not limited to software — a content pipeline, an automation, a prompt system, an ad playbook all count. It does not have to be finished, and it does not have to be good.

§ 04 — Run of show

Same rhythm every week.

10:30–10:45am
Doors · order a drink · open chatNo rush to start. Order a drink on your way in — a waiter taking orders mid-session cuts across whoever is talking. The venue does not open before 10:30, so there is nothing to gain by arriving early, and arriving late costs you nothing.
10:45–10:55am
First-timers introduce themselvesForty-five seconds, three things: your name, what you are building, what you want to walk away with. Regulars skip it — thirty people take half an hour to go around, and nobody remembers thirty names anyway.
10:55–11:50am
Small tablesThree or four tables, one topic or one product each. Move between them whenever you like — you do not have to wait until a conversation dries up, and leaving needs no hello and no goodbye. That is how this format is meant to work.
From 12:00pm
Keep talking · lunchEntirely optional. Stay on if you want to keep going, leave at twelve if you do not. Last time the hour after we wrapped was the best part.
§ 05 — Sign up

Sign up and I will send you the address.

The venue follows the headcount — a big table at a cafe when we are small, a room with a screen once we are not. So signing up genuinely helps me book the right thing.

Both fields are visible only to me, the organiser. Never published, never passed to anyone else, never used for marketing.

One line is enough. This is the line most likely to get you helped on the day — the more specific it is, the more likely someone picks it up. It shows on your member card as "This week", and you can change it every week. Leave it blank if nothing comes to mind.

Tick this and your name, what you are working on, and what you want to talk about this week show up at vibethursday.com/members, so people can work out who to find before they arrive. Your email and WeChat ID never appear there. You can edit it or take it down whenever you like.

Want to host a table this time?

The bar is low: it does not have to be finished, there are no slides, and something you are half-way through and stuck on makes for a better table than something that works. You do not even need a product — one question is enough to host a table.

Thursday mornings are working hours for a lot of people. Pick this and you are still on the list — if an evening or weekend one ever happens, this is who I go to.

What other times could you make?

Optional, pick as many as apply. This is the only thing deciding whether a second session happens and when — enough people on one slot and that slot runs.

A few more, all skippable: how you heard about this, which AI you use
Which AI models do you mostly use?

Overseas

China

Optional, pick as many as apply. It tells me how the room splits between overseas and Chinese models — which decides what gets demoed on the day, and whether shared subscriptions or China-hosted APIs are worth a table.

Optional. No need to open a billing page — pick whichever line sounds most like you. This is about how heavily you use the stuff, not about the money. In USD.

It is free and stays free. A venue does charge a minimum spend or a room fee each week, usually a hundred or two, which I cover — what running it costs. Chipping in is optional and changes nothing either way.

§ 06 — The room

A few shots from every session.

Recognisable faces are covered to protect the people who came. Open a session to see everything from that morning.

The full record of each session
Session seven · 2026-09-17First one since the move to Chatswood: a glass room, vines overhead, the street outside. 20 signed up, 15 checked in, plus two who talked for the whole morning and forgot to. Three talks and then a Q&A. A team doing GEO on what changes when AI search leaves only three to five recommendation slots and the long tail disappears; an AI startup founder on FDE, and on earning a client's trust one small project at a time, a few hundred to a few thousand dollars each; a researcher on how a company is supposed to manage a few hundred agents, which nobody has an answer to yet. The Q&A's three questions: how someone without a technical background gets into AI; why a boss who already uses AI would pay someone else to build with it; and where a bricks-and-mortar business that has not even gone digital should start.6 photos
The long table in the glass room, vines overhead, laptops, menus and coffee on the table
From the far end of the long table, a row of people along the wooden bench, the street outside
Someone standing at the table talking, the rest seated and listening, the building across the road through the glass
A row of people on the bench against the glass wall, agaves outside
One person on her feet talking, the whole table turned towards her
A small table in the corner, four people around one laptop
Session six · 2026-09-1019 signed up; counting from the photographs, a little over twenty came. The structure changed this time. Two demos to open — a map-based app for real-estate agents, and one person's experience of cutting social video with AI — then a Q&A the whole room answered together. That morning's question: in the AI era, should an ordinary person go deeper on one skill or broader across several? The last half hour was left for meeting people.10 photos
The long table by the windows, every seat taken, Darling Harbour outside
From the far end of the long table, a whole row of people along the glass
The long table from close up, the bar's bottle shelves at the far end
Another angle on the long table, columns and floor-to-ceiling glass, someone talking
A few people standing at the bar, talking
A small table by the windows, a few people around it, water outside
People standing by the bar in conversation, the bottle shelves overhead
After it ended, a group walking outside, a glass-fronted building behind them
The same group on the way to lunch
Three people at a small table, one of them mid-gesture
Session five · 2026-09-0322 signed up. The opening talk was on building an audience — how to make content that keeps bringing people in. After that each table carried on by itself until noon.8 photos
Quarter past ten, the early arrivals already seated at the small tables by the windows, Darling Harbour outside
Past the curtain, two tables with a few people at each, water through the glass
Around half past ten, the tables by the windows full, someone standing at the glass talking
Another angle on the same room, tables running the length of the windows
Looking past the column, every small table taken
The row of small tables by the windows, coffee cups and glasses on them
Someone standing at a table talking, the rest sitting around listening
Eleven o'clock, each table deep in its own conversation, Darling Harbour outside
Session four · 2026-08-2720 signed up, 18 turned up. Three people opened by showing what they are building — one with a few shipped apps and a growth problem, one who has replaced most of his agency with agents. Four tables after that, and fifteen of us went to lunch together.5 photos
Around half past ten, people arriving, tables not yet full behind them
The long table along the windows over Darling Harbour, a conversation already going in the corner
Another angle on the same room, the row by the windows filling up
The corner booth, a few people gathered around one laptop
A group standing and talking before the start, two laptops open on the table beside them
Session three · 2026-08-2021 signed up, a little over 20 turned up. Four tables this time — growth and business, B2B, B2C, and hands-on AI. You picked one on the way in, and took another if the one you wanted was full.6 photos
A fruit platter, bread and a white rose on the table, people talking behind it
Session three, the long table full on both sides, someone standing at the far end
Another angle on the table, Darling Harbour through the windows
Looking down the table from the other end, a row of people along the windows
The far end of the table, two people talking by the bar
Around the end of the session, some still seated, some standing by the bar
Session two · 2026-08-1335 signed up, around 30 turned up. People carried on downstairs for another hour after we wrapped, and the ones who stayed for lunch kept going into the afternoon.4 photos
The venue before anyone arrived, a long table along the windows over Darling Harbour
Session two, around thirty people along the table by the windows
A fruit platter on the table, a row of people down the length of it
Coffee, a croissant and a single white rose on the table
Session one · 2026-08-0626 signed up, 18 to 20 turned up, from indie developers to lawyers, accountants and business owners.4 photos
The first session, a long table full of people
The Darling Harbour side, someone talking about what they are building
Another angle on the room
The venue before anyone arrived
§ 07 — House rules

All five of them.

  1. 01It runs even if two people show up.
  2. 02The time never moves — Thursday mornings, always. The next few sessions are at The Avenue in Chatswood, right by the station; the address is on the first screen. If a venue ever has to change, it is posted the day before.
  3. 03Free, no tickets. Signing up is only so we know how many chairs.
  4. 04Hosting a table is always optional. Host one if you want to, otherwise move between them and listen. People who only come to listen are equally welcome.
  5. 05Show, don't sell. What you built is your marketing — present it properly at your own table, just never over someone else's. People here only to harvest contacts or hunt will be asked to leave.
§ 08 — Questions

The ones people ask first.

I have not built anything yet. Can I come?

Yes. Hosting a table is optional, and there are always more people moving between tables than hosting one. The bar for hosting is low too: nothing has to be finished, there are no slides, and something you are stuck half-way through beats something that works. You do not even need a product — one question is enough. The only real bar is genuine interest — this is not a networking room.

Do I need to code?

No. What you made with AI does not have to be code — a content pipeline, an automation, a prompt system all count.

What language is it in?

Mostly Mandarin right now, and there is no plan for an English session yet. The language is not a limitation, it is why the conversation goes deep — Sydney is not short of English-language AI meetups, it was short of this one. If an English session ever happens it will be a separate one, not this one translated.

Where exactly?

The Avenue, 465 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood NSW 2067 — the round building on the corner of Brown and Railway Streets, right by Chatswood station; come in through the courtyard. That is the venue for the next few sessions. You get the address again after signing up.

Does it cost anything?

No. No tickets, no membership fee, and that will not change. Everyone at the table orders a drink — coffee, tea, whatever you like — and that is your own tab. It is not costless though: a venue charges either a minimum spend or a room fee, usually a hundred or two, and I currently cover it. If you ever want to help carry that, there is a page for it. Chipping in is entirely optional, with nobody able to see who did and who did not. Separately, there is no pay-for-stage-time sponsorship: floor time is earned by building something, not bought. Someone offering a room with no strings attached is a different question.

Can I promote my own product here?

Yes, that is the format, not a loophole. Showing what you built is marketing. Looking for users, a cofounder, or feedback belongs on your member card, or at a table you host yourself. The only line is that someone else's table is not your stage. That applies to everyone, me included.

Why mornings, not afternoons?

3pm collides with school pickup, which rules out anyone with kids. Mornings also fix a practical problem: plenty of Sydney CBD cafes shut by mid-afternoon. If mornings are working hours for you, do not just close the tab — sign up and pick "mornings do not work for me" instead. If an evening or weekend session ever happens, that list is who I go to.

I cannot make this week. Can I come next week?

Of course. It runs every week and you do not need a streak. Just come back and pick the session before each one you are coming to — I book the table off that number. After the first time it is two taps; your details are remembered.

§ 09 — Contact

Can't find us? Add me on WeChat.

Venue changes, questions before you come, or you're lost downstairs on the day — scan and message me directly. Faster than email.

James's WeChat QR code
Scan with WeChat