Posted live from the floor • May 23, 2026
Agent Camp 2026 is happening right now in Fort Lauderdale, and the energy in the room is too good not to share as it unfolds. More to come once the day wraps; for now, here’s what’s going down.
The setup
We kicked off with everyone getting their environments wired up: Azure accounts spun up, free credits applied, Visual Studio Code locked and loaded, and Microsoft Foundry plus the Copilot/AI Toolkit pieces installed and authenticated. The Global AI Community team made this part painless — and where it wasn’t, there were volunteers everywhere, walking the room and pulling up a chair to help one-on-one.
That’s the part I keep coming back to. This isn’t a passive “watch slides for 8 hours” event. Every workshop is hands-on, and if you get stuck, someone is at your shoulder within about thirty seconds.
The turnout
Packed. Genuinely packed. And here’s the thing I want to be loud about: this is not a developer-only event. The room is everyone. Career devs, sure, but also students, career-changers, business folks, hobbyists, retirees curious about what all the AI noise is about, and — no exaggeration — young kids sitting next to their parents building agents. Ages all over the map, backgrounds all over the map. If you’ve ever talked yourself out of going to a tech event because you “aren’t technical enough,” this is the kind of room that would have changed your mind in about ten minutes.
That mix is the magic. Free community event, South Florida AI community out in force, and the workshops are built so you can follow along whether it’s your first time touching VS Code or your fifteenth year shipping production systems.
If you want to see what’s on offer or catch the next one: globalai.community/agentcamp.
The lineup
Four workshops, four community favorites running them, ninety minutes each, all hands-on with one-on-one support throughout. I will share more details on the workshops throughout the day.
A moment of nostalgia
I’ll admit it — standing in the back of this room hit me with a wave of déjà vu. This feels exactly like the energy back when .NET was first coming out. Same vibe: packed rooms, Microsoft handing out resources, community trainers walking newcomers through their first “hello world,” that giddy sense of we’re all figuring this out together and something big is starting.
I’ve now seen enough platform shifts up close to know what one looks like when it’s actually landing — and this one will shape how we all work, no matter what we do.
More to come
I’ll update this post with takeaways, photos, and links to the workshop repos once we close out. If you’re in South Florida and missed this one, get on the Global AI Community list — these don’t stay secret for long.
