Agentic AI Summer: Build Night #3 → MCP 2.0 Release Party (Virtual)
Our May Circle kicked off the residency in the weeds — GitOps automation, Kubeflow's MLOps ecosystem, early Hermes Agent experiments. Build Night #2 pushed into security and observability for agentic systems. Build Night #3 picks up the day after the biggest protocol change of the year.
On July 28, the Model Context Protocol's 2026-07-28 specification goes final — the largest revision since launch. AAIF is throwing release parties in London, New York, Austin, San Francisco, Seattle, and Amsterdam. We're celebrating in Madison on the 29th, alongside Amsterdam.
This release rewrites the assumptions underneath every MCP deployment: the protocol core goes stateless — no initialize handshake, no session ID, any request can hit any instance — plus a first-class Extensions framework shipping MCP Apps and Tasks, OAuth/OIDC-aligned authorization, and a deprecation policy with a 12-month floor.
This one's fully virtual. No room, no commute, no cap — we're casting a wider net so the whole regional community (and anyone else who wants in) can join.
Build Night #3: Jul 29 · 5–7 PM CDT · Online
Agenda
- Bridge opens, intros & networking
- MCP 2.0 overview: what actually shipped in 2026-07-28
- Open discussion and community Q&A
The Forward Festival Schedule is now live — with over 50 RSVPs already!
Cloud Native Madison presents the AI & Open Source Mixer! Following our massive Agentic AI Summer, we're heading to The Rigby Pub for a night of technical networking focused on the real-world side of innovation. Talk shop with experts from Red Hat, Solo.io, and more while enjoying complimentary food and refreshments, plus a drink ticket to get you started. We're also giving away a $999 Ardan Labs Mastery Bundle (Go, Rust, and K8s) to one lucky builder.
RSVP for Forward Fest today: https://sched.co/2P0Gi
Huge thanks to solo.io, StartingBlock, and Ardan Labs for fueling this series!
