How to Use AI to Find Events That Are Actually Worth It
Last time, I wrote the intro to the series "How to Use AI to Create Every Possible Opportunity." The core of this series is to share how to use AI agents to find opportunities you didn't know about or couldn't reach before, and to make it as easy as possible for anyone to use and set up.
This post is all about how to use AI to find high-value events.
As I said last time, the most important part of widening your way in is getting real people to see you, and events are one of the most direct ways in. The problem is, there are way too many events, and a lot of them are fluff. Scrolling through them one by one takes way too much time.
So in this post, I'll share three things: a prompt you can copy right away, a checklist for judging whether an event is worth it, and how to have AI send you picks every week, fully tailored to your interests.
01Pick Your Direction
First, I think you need to be clear about your goal. Do you want to land a job in a certain industry? Learn about a certain field? Or network and meet people in certain fields?
This matters, because different goals mean different events are worth your time:
| Your goal | What events to look for first |
|---|---|
| Find a job | Ones where companies or recruiters show up: company open houses, job fairs, meetups run by companies |
| Learn a field | Ones where the speakers actually do the work: talks, panels, public university lectures |
| Meet people | Small ones you have to apply to: workshops, hackathons, small dinners, and so on |
Which field and direction you're into, what times work for you, whether you want online or in person: it's best to figure all this out ahead of time. That way, AI can find high-value events made for you.
02First Search: Tell AI What You Need
Once you know what you want, you can start chatting with AI. Here's an example.
Below is a prompt you can use as a starting point. It's set up for North America. If you're in China, just swap in local platforms.
My goal: find a job / learn a field / meet people (pick one, or be more specific)
City: XX (or online)
Field I'm interested in: AI agents
Time: next 30 days
Online / in person:
Please help me find events worth going to, including industry talks, meetups, workshops, hackathons, startup community events, and public university lectures.
Search Luma, Eventbrite, Meetup, and LinkedIn Events, and also check the official websites of local universities, startup incubators, industry groups, and communities.
Requirements:
- Prefer free or low-cost events that are open to the public.
- First list 10 candidates, remove duplicates, and rank them by value (criteria below).
- For each one, give the name, local date and time, city, type, cost, host, speakers, original event link, and why you recommend it.
- Finally, pick the 3 most worth going to and explain why.
03Tell AI What "High-Value" Means
I send these points to AI along with the prompt, so it has something to go by:
What makes an event high-value:
- Host: well-known companies, universities, incubators, and communities that have run lots of events come first.
- Speakers: people who actually do the work come before people who only have titles.
- Size: when my goal is meeting people, prefer small events.
- Bar to entry: events you have to apply to or get approved for usually draw people who are a better fit.
- Avoid: events that are mainly there to sell courses, sell products, or raise money.
04Fine-Tune: Tell It What You Want
Now it'll give you a list of events. Based on this first answer, you can tweak the format you want. For example, "AI agents" is still a pretty broad topic, and I might not care about some of these events. So I tell it which topics I don't like, say anything hardware-related, and ask it not to recommend those again.
And just like that, you've set up your own SOP for finding events.
05Let It Run Every Week on Its Own
Next, set up a scheduled task. For example, every Monday at 9 a.m., AI lists the events worth going to that week. If I want to know more about anything, I ask it to explain, or I just check the original page.
One thing to watch: pick a scheduled task that runs in the cloud, not one that only runs on your own computer. Take a local task in the Claude desktop app: if your computer is asleep when it's time, that run gets skipped. It only catches up once your computer wakes up, and it might even skip the run completely. Searching for events only needs the internet, not files on your computer, so go with the cloud. Scheduled tasks you create in ChatGPT on the web run in the cloud too.
I'd also suggest connecting Google Calendar, so it can add events straight to your calendar and I don't forget.
Actually, here I'd recommend a personal agent even more, like Grok bot, Muse, or Dots. For one, it can sign you up directly. With the web version, you still have to sign up yourself. When I say I'm interested in XX event, it gets what I need right away (because the SOP is already set up), signs me up, and adds it to my Google Calendar.
06After the Event, Tell It How It Went
After an event, a personal agent will also ask me on its own how it went, so it gets better at recommending events I'll like.
You can have it ask you three questions every time:
- Was it worth going? How much?
- Who did I meet? Should I follow up?
- Should you recommend more events like this, or fewer?
Keeping track of follow-ups and people I've added on LinkedIn by hand is a real pain. So I just screenshot their LinkedIn page, tell AI what we talked about, and have it update a "People I've Met" database in Notion. Later I can set up coffee chats and so on. Or I just keep a record, and that's good too.
The database only needs a few columns: name, company, role, LinkedIn link, which event you met at, what you talked about, and follow-up status.
Finally, you can hand this whole post to AI and start using it to find high-value events.