AI Native DevCon Showed Us the Future and Why It Belongs in Brooklyn

AI events at Industry City are quickly positioning Brooklyn as a rising AI hub, and that momentum was clear during AI Native DevCon. Bringing more than 300 developers and platform engineers to the campus, the event demonstrated why Industry City has become a natural home for AI-native communities and hands-on innovation.

In his widely shared DevOps.com recap, Techstrong Group’s Alan Shimel described walking into the event and instantly recognizing the same creative electricity that defined early DevOps and early cloud native. His takeaway was simple and defining:

“No shade to Manhattan, but this event simply couldn’t have happened there.”

He’s right. And the reasons why speak directly to what Industry City has been quietly building: a B2B event ecosystem and AI infrastructure backbone designed for hands-on innovators, not convention centers.

Why AI Events at Industry City Are Transforming Brooklyn’s Tech Scene

Unlike a traditional conference venue, Industry City is an urban innovation campus: a place where office suites, maker studios, industrial floors, design labs, breweries, and tech companies operate side-by-side every day.

That mix creates a backdrop tailor-made for a developer-driven event. This wasn’t a corporate conference. It was a working community in motion, which is exactly the ethos of the AI Native Dev movement. And the campus is built for it

Events like AI Native DevCon are part of a broader rise in AI events at Industry City, where developer communities gather to build, test, and collaborate.

How AI Events at Industry City Signal a Shift in Developer Culture

Industry City’s event environment is unique in New York:

As more teams adopt AI-native workflows, we expect AI events at Industry City to continue growing alongside the campus’s expanding tech ecosystem.

Large-Scale Conferences + Summits

The Box Factory: a raw, 18,810 SF industrial hall with a 33,000+ SF courtyard supports thousands of attendees, large expo builds, live demos, and multi-day programming.

Workshops, Breakouts & Labs

Five-Two-A, with 11,183 SF and wraparound windows, provides natural light, modular partitions, technical infrastructure, and dedicated WiFi/hardline drops.

The Landing offers two floors of conference-ready environments perfect for workshops, off-sites, and technical sessions.

Indoor/Outdoor Flow for Real Collaboration

Courtyards like 3/4 and 5/6 extend events outdoors, enabling networking, brand activations, and evening receptions under string lights and open air.

Combined, these spaces form a year-round B2B event campus, one that feels more like a working tech village than a convention center.

Why AI Communities Are Choosing Brooklyn and Industry City

Beyond the event spaces, Industry City offers something increasingly rare in NYC: enterprise-grade connectivity, AI-ready infrastructure, and room to scale.

1. NYC’s Most Connected Campus

• Direct access to NYC’s internet backbone via DataVerge, Brooklyn’s only carrier-neutral interconnection facility.
• 40+ ISPs with high-capacity routes and low-latency connectivity built for AI workloads.
• Pre-wired fiber/copper across the entire 35-acre campus.
• Redundant connectivity for mission-critical AI operations.

2. AI-Ready Colocation Data Center On-Site

Companies can run training jobs, analytics pipelines, and high-throughput processing directly from the campus, thanks to on-site colocation with:

• Redundant cooling
• Backup power
• Direct global network routes
• 24/7 security
• Dedicated substation access.

3. Room to Grow

AI and ML teams can start in small suites and scale into full floors without leaving the campus, maintaining continuity as headcount and compute demands grow.

This combination makes Industry City uniquely equipped to support AI-native teams at every stage: from 10-person model ops teams to enterprise-scale platform engineering groups.

AI Native DevCon as a Signal: Brooklyn Is Becoming the AI Hub of NYC

Shimel’s recap points to a deeper shift:

AI Native DevCon felt like the early days of DevOps: small, high-caliber, and foundational.

The presence of leaders like Patrick Debois, Guy Podjarny, and Simon Maple signaled authenticity: this wasn’t another hype cycle conference. It was the builders, the people shaping what AI-native software development will actually look like.

And they chose to meet here.

Industry City is rapidly becoming:

• A physical hub for AI-native startups
• A destination for platform engineering and developer conferences
• A gathering place for global B2B tech communities
• Brooklyn’s emerging AI innovation district

The campus isn’t just hosting events about the future; it’s where the future is being built.

The Takeaway

Alan Shimel captured the moment perfectly:

“I saw DevOps’ future and its name is AI Native Dev.”

For Industry City, the message is clear:

That future has found its home in Brooklyn, and it’s being built at Industry City.