Free AI Workshops in Michigan: Where to Learn AI Hands-On

I remember the exact moment I decided to start doing free AI workshops. I was at a networking event in Grand Rapids, and a marketing director -- someone running a 12-person team at a mid-size manufacturer -- told me she'd been "meaning to learn ChatGPT" for eight months. Eight months. She knew it mattered. She just didn't know where to start that wouldn't cost her a weekend or a thousand dollars.

That conversation stuck with me. Because here's the thing about AI education in 2026: there's no shortage of courses. Anthropic just dropped 13 free online courses. Coursera has hundreds. YouTube is an ocean. But if you're a working professional in Michigan who wants to sit in a room, watch someone actually use these tools on real work, and ask questions when you get stuck? The options are shockingly thin.

Ruben Hassid, who made over a million dollars selling AI education, recently wrote on Substack that “everything you need is free and valuable. It simply takes time.” He's right about the content — OpenAI Academy, Anthropic's learning hub, Google's Gemini guides all offer comprehensive training at no cost. Where he's wrong is the implication that self-study is enough. The bottleneck isn't access. It's accountability and community. A free online course has a 5-15% completion rate. A cohort-based program with live instruction hits 85%. The difference is showing up in a room with other people.

That's why I started Show & Tell. And that's what this post is about -- a straightforward guide to where you can learn AI hands-on in Michigan, for free, in person.

What is Show & Tell?

Show & Tell is a free monthly event I run through Crash That Course. The format is simple: I get on stage with a laptop and a projector, and I demo AI tools -- live, unscripted, on real work. Not slides. Not theory. Actual screen-shared workflows using ChatGPT, Claude, automation tools, no-code platforms, whatever I've been using that month.

The audience is deliberately mixed. You'll find marketing managers sitting next to small business owners sitting next to college students sitting next to retirees who are genuinely curious about what this technology actually does. Some people have been using AI for a year. Some have never opened ChatGPT. Both groups leave with something they can use the next day.

There's no pitch at the end. No upsell. No "and if you want the REAL training..." moment. It's just a free lunch-hour session where you watch someone use AI tools in real time, ask your questions, and leave smarter than you walked in.

The model isn’t unique to us. AICamp has built a community of over 500,000 developers through expert-led workshops and crash courses. Hardware Meetup runs demo-based events across 40+ cities with 40,000 members — their recent San Francisco event drew over 1,000 RSVPs. Even Microsoft launched a 50-day AI Skills Fest featuring live community events. The biggest companies in the world are moving toward free, community-based AI education. We just got there first at the local level.

Where and When: The 2026 Schedule

Show & Tell runs on the fourth Monday of every month. Here's what's coming up:

Grand Rapids (Monthly)

The home base. Every session happens at Bamboo Grand Rapids -- 2 Fulton St W, Grand Rapids, MI 49503. Enter at the corner of Division and Fulton. Free parking in the ramp across the street.

Detroit & Ann Arbor (New for 2026)

This year, we're expanding. The Grand Rapids sessions proved that the format works -- people want live demos, not webinars -- so we're bringing the same energy to Southeast Michigan.

Detroit and Ann Arbor events are quarterly to start, with the same free format and the same hands-on approach. The first sessions are in April:

What You'll Actually Learn

Every session is different because I demo whatever I've been working with that month. But to give you an idea, here's what recent episodes covered:

Episode 4 -- Wading into Claude Code: I walked through Anthropic's AI coding assistant live. Built a real feature, hit real errors, debugged in real time. The audience got to see what "AI-assisted coding" actually looks like when it's not a polished demo reel.

Episode 3 -- Marketing Automations for Non-Developers: No-code workflows using Zapier, Make, and AI triggers. Showed how a two-person marketing team can build the kind of automation that used to require a developer.

Episode 2 -- ChatGPT Marketing Sprint: Rapid-fire practical ChatGPT use cases for content creation, strategic messaging, and growth. Not "here's how to write a prompt" -- more like "here's how I generated a month's worth of social content in 20 minutes."

Episode 1 -- Fractional Hacks for Lean Teams: Live demos of tools that help small teams punch above their weight -- Readdy.ai, OpusClip, freelance platforms. The theme was "you don't need a bigger team, you need better tools."

You can watch all past episodes for free on the Show & Tell Library. Recordings go up within a week of each live session.

Who Shows Up (And Why That Matters)

One of the things I'm proudest of with Show & Tell is the mix. At our March session, the room included a VP of Marketing from a $50M manufacturer, a freelance graphic designer, two nonprofit directors, a college sophomore studying data science, and a retired teacher who wanted to understand what her grandkids were talking about.

That mix is the point. AI is not a tech-industry thing anymore. It's a "everyone's job is changing" thing. And the questions that come from a diverse room are infinitely better than the questions you get in a room full of engineers.

The marketing director asks, "Can I use this for my email campaigns?" The nonprofit director asks, "Can this help us write grant applications faster?" The college student asks, "Is this going to replace my career before it starts?" All of those questions get answered live, with tools open on screen, not with a PowerPoint slide that says "AI has many applications."

Why It's Free (The Real Reason)

People always ask this, so I'll just be transparent. Show & Tell is free because it's the front door to everything else I do.

I run Crash That Course as a business. We do custom AI training for corporate teams -- workshops built around your tools, your skill gaps, taught by me. We also partner with workforce development organizations like Salesforce Workforce Navigators to deliver AI-anchored learning pathways.

The free monthly events aren't a loss leader in the sleazy sense. They're how I stay sharp (you learn a lot when you have to demo tools live in front of 50 people), how I meet potential clients naturally, and how I build a community of people who actually use AI instead of just talking about it. If one person in the room decides their team needs custom training six months later, great. If nobody does, that's fine too -- the event still happened and people still learned something.

No bait-and-switch. No "free session is just 20% of what we cover in the paid workshop." The free sessions are complete, valuable, and worth your lunch hour on their own.

How to Get Started

Here's what I'd suggest if you've never come to one:

1. Pick a date. Check the events page and RSVP for the next session near you. Grand Rapids runs monthly; Detroit and Ann Arbor are quarterly.
2. Just show up. You don't need to prepare anything. You don't need a laptop (though you're welcome to bring one). You don't need to know anything about AI.
3. Watch a past episode first if you want context. The episode library is free and gives you a sense of the vibe.
4. Bring questions. Seriously. The best parts of every session are the audience questions. "Can AI help me with [specific thing]?" is always a great one.

Other AI Learning Resources in Michigan

Show & Tell is what I know best, but it's not the only option. Here's what else is out there:

• Anthropic Academy -- 13 free online courses covering everything from Claude basics to building with the API. Self-paced with certificates. Excellent if you want structured learning at home.
• Grand Rapids Public Library -- Periodic tech workshops including AI introductions. Check their events calendar.
• Michigan SBDC -- Small Business Development Centers across the state occasionally run AI-for-business workshops. Geared toward small business owners.
• University of Michigan Continuing Education -- Paid courses, but thorough. Good option if you want something more academic.
• Midwest Marketing Meetup -- Our sibling community at midwestmarketingmeetup.com. Free bi-monthly events focused on marketing with a heavy AI thread. Runs at Bamboo GR and other Grand Rapids venues.

The Michigan AI community is growing fast. Amanda Lewan’s Midwest Humble newsletter tracks the ecosystem closely. In Detroit, REBRANDX (Hajj Flemings) and Think Technologies (De’Lon Dixon) host frequent AI-building events. In Royal Oak, Bamboo hosts a vibe coding meetup via MySALT AI. In Grand Rapids, Innovate AI Workshop Series and Bryce Kaiser’s AI MVP workshops are building local capacity. As David Baird from MySALT AI puts it: “Michigan is more than automobiles, mobility, and insurance. The resilience of the founders here in Michigan I would put up against anywhere in the world.”

But if what you want is someone standing in front of you, using the tools live, answering your questions in real time, and not charging you for the privilege? That's Show & Tell. And it's happening every month.