About AISAT
AISAT stands for AI Strategy, Automation & Transformation. It is a UK community for people putting AI to work: the ones writing the prompts, wiring up the automations, sitting through the security review and carrying the consequences once it ships.
Who it is for
Practitioners. If you are building something with AI (a product, an internal tool, an automation that quietly gives a team back three days a month) or you are the person accountable for an AI decision you would rather not get wrong, this is your room.
In practice that means engineers, data and ML people, product managers, operations leads, founders, and the consultants doing the unglamorous integration work that makes any of it real. Job titles matter much less here than whether you have shipped something and can say what it cost.
It is a poor fit if you are after a keynote about how AI will change everything by 2030, or a room full of prospects to work. There is plenty of the first elsewhere, and we are deliberately protective about the second.
Why it exists
The useful conversations happen off the record
Most public AI content skips the parts that decide whether a project lives: what the data actually looked like, what the evaluation missed, what inference costs at volume, how long procurement took, whether anyone used the thing after launch. Those conversations do happen, quietly, between practitioners who trust each other.
AISAT exists to make that room easy to walk into. A regular date in the diary, people vetted enough that you can be candid, and a format that rewards specifics over slideware. Talks are short, the questions are the point, and “we tried it, it did not work, here is why” is a very welcome talk title.
Four chapters
We meet in person in London and Leeds, online for everyone outside those two cities, and we run a dedicated Women that Use AI chapter. Each has its own organisers, its own dates and its own character. Members are welcome at all four.
- London MeetupsOur biggest chapter. Practitioner talks, demos and an unusually good room to ask hard questions in.
- Leeds MeetupsThe northern home of AISAT. Same format, smaller room, and you will actually meet everyone.
- Online MeetupsFor everyone outside London and Leeds. Shorter, sharper sessions you can join from anywhere.
- Women that Use AIA chapter centring women working with AI: its own events, its own speakers, and a deliberately supportive room. Open to everyone.
A chapter, not a side event
Women that Use AI
A chapter centring women working with AI: its own events, its own speakers, and a deliberately supportive room. Open to everyone. It runs on exactly the same principle as everything else here: practitioners talking about work they have actually done, in front of people who will ask hard questions about it.
It exists because the room matters. Speaker line-ups in AI do not diversify on their own, and a deliberately supportive room produces different questions, including the ones people are slightly embarrassed to ask, which are usually the ones worth answering.
The events are open to every member, whatever their gender. The chapter centres women’s work and women speakers, but nobody is turned away on the basis of sex or gender. Come as an ally if that is what you are. Just let the questions come from the people the evening is for.
Everyone in this chapter is a full AISAT member: the same WhatsApp group, the same AI Directory, the same welcome at the London, Leeds and online events. If you would like to speak at it, host it, or send people from your team, get in touch.
Membership
How joining works, and why we vet it
Membership is by application. Three steps, one of them ours.
Apply with your LinkedIn profile
The form takes a couple of minutes: who you are, where you work, and why you want in. LinkedIn is required, because it is what the review is based on.
An organiser reads it
A person, not a filter. They are checking that you are real, that you are close enough to the work, and that the community is a fit both ways.
You get the WhatsApp invite
Approved members get an email with the link to the community WhatsApp group, and can add themselves to the public AI Directory straight away.
The vetting is not gatekeeping for its own sake. An open WhatsApp group with a few hundred people in it becomes a recruitment and vendor spam channel almost immediately, and candour depends on roughly knowing who is listening. Reviewing LinkedIn profiles is a deliberately low bar: we are not filtering on seniority, employer, or how impressive your job title is. We are checking that there is a real person behind the application with a real reason to be in the room.
It is also why the form asks what you are working on. That is the single most useful thing to know about a new member, and it is what makes introductions in the group actually work.
The AI Directory
The public half of AISAT
Members list themselves, and companies list what they actually do (capabilities, sectors, the stack they work in) on pages that are public, indexed and linkable. The WhatsApp group is where the community talks; the directory is how it gets found.
It is there for two reasons. Members get found: for work, for speaking slots, for the “do you know anyone who has done this before?” message that starts most good projects. And somebody outside the community with a real AI problem gets a straight route to people in the UK who have already solved something like it.
Listings are reviewed before they go live. It is a directory of practitioners, not a link farm.
Browse the AI DirectoryGetting involved
AISAT only works because members do things. There are three obvious ways in, and all of them start with a message.
Speak
We would rather have twenty honest minutes about something you actually shipped, including the part where it went sideways, than a polished vendor deck. If you have never spoken at a meetup before, say so in your message. That is not a problem.
Pitch a talkSponsor
Sponsorship pays for venues, food and the kit that keeps the online sessions watchable. If your company sells to this audience, sponsoring is the straight way to be in front of it, and we will always tell the room who paid for the evening.
Talk about sponsorshipOrganise
Every chapter needs co-organisers, and if you want to start one in another UK city we would like to hear from you. It is real work: venue, speakers, turning up every single time. It is also the fastest way to know everybody.
Offer to help
Come and join us
One short application, one LinkedIn check, and then the WhatsApp group, the meetups and the directory. If you are building with AI in the UK, you will find your people here.