Florianópolis is ready for Claude.

I want to help build the community.

I'm Thiago, Product Designer, AI researcher and community builder based in Florianópolis, Brazil.

See the proof Get in touch
Thiago speaking into a microphone at a laptop covered in stickers during a workshop at TDC Florianópolis.
TDC Florianópolis, July 2026. Claude + Figma workshop.
Florianópolis, Brazil · 2026

This isn't an idea. It's already happening.

Florianópolis is a startup and technology city: UFSC, ACATE, Startup Summit, TDC, Founder Haus and communities that meet every month. UFSC ran a Google Gemini day in September. A Grok meetup is booked at Founder Haus for September 26. Indicium, an Anthropic Preferred Partner with an office here, runs the online Anthropic Community Brazil group. What is missing is a regular, in-person Claude meetup.

So on September 12 I published a short form to measure local interest in Claude-focused meetups, workshops and hackathons. No paid promotion, shared in the community's own channels.

108

people who asked for Claude meetups in Florianópolis in under 48 hours. 103 of them live in the city or the metro area.

Cumulative form responses over the first 48 hours A stepped line rising from 1 to 36 in the first hour, 67 at 24 hours and 108 at 47 hours and 37 minutes after the first response. 36 1 hour 67 24 hours 108 Sep 14, 14:09 Sep 12, 14:32 Sep 13 48 hours
Responses in the first 48 hours, from the form's log. One per person.
The form as published: Encontros com Claude em Floripa, with The AI Collective Florianópolis logo on a clay banner.
The form. Respondents were told the aggregate might be shown to Anthropic. Names and emails stay with the chapter.

This is not an audience I need to build from zero.

I already have the room.

I lead The AI Collective Florianópolis, the local chapter of a global community focused on AI, technology, discussion and education. We launched online in July and held our first in-person event on August 28.

I'm part of the organizing team of Friends of Figma Florianópolis and spoke at Founder Haus AI Week in August. Next: a station at the Social Good Brasil festival on September 17 and 18, and a joint event with PyLadies Floripa in October.

Group photo of about sixty people at Human × AI, smiling in front of a Brazilian flag.
Human × AI, Founder Haus, August 28. 60 people, official side event of Startup Summit Week.
Thiago at the front of the room inviting people to join the community, a QR code on the screen.
Opening the community to the room.
  • 250people in the chapter's WhatsApp community.
  • 11K+LinkedIn followers.
  • 2.2KInstagram followers.

I don't just use Claude. I build with it.

Claude Code is how I work: the studio, the research, the chapter's tooling. Through MCP it works inside Figma, my browser, Gmail, Calendar, Notion and PostHog, on my own accounts and my own machine. It reads my repositories directly.

I've been exploring what happens when Claude stops being just a chatbot and becomes part of the design workflow. In July, at TDC Florianópolis, I co-ran a 90-minute workshop: each pair connected Claude to their own Figma file through MCP and generated a component from a real frame (the lab is public). In June I co-organized a Figma & Claude roundtable at Friends of Figma. I mentor design teams on Claude Code and Figma MCP.

Screen recording of an online class: a slide reading DEMO, Claude Code open in the editor with a real prompt, and Thiago on camera explaining.
Rota Academy, August 17. Teaching Claude Code live. Recording.
$ find ~/.claude/projects -maxdepth 2 -name '*.jsonl' ! -name 'agent-*' | wc -l
373
$ find ~/.claude/skills -name SKILL.md -not -path '*/_archive/*' -not -path '*/google-slides/*' | wc -l
58
$ ls ~/.claude/agents/*.md | wc -l
8
# September 14, 2026
  • 373Claude Code sessions on this machine since August 14, counted from the local transcripts.
  • 58 skills, 8 agentsWritten for my own workflows: brand governance, Figma handoff, copy review, research, community ops.
  • Claude.ai, Claude Code, APIClaude.ai and Claude Code daily. The API runs inside the studio's content pipeline.
  • This pageBuilt with Claude Code from a brief, directed and reviewed by me. The survey numbers came through the Forms API the same way.

Why Anthropic?

I use many AI products. Claude is the one I keep coming back to.

Responsibility. Anthropic writes down what it is trying to do: a Responsible Scaling Policy, a constitution for Claude. I want the local conversation to start there and stay there as the tools get better.

Human agency. Some of the people who can benefit most from AI are designers, researchers, founders and educators who don't write code. My work is helping them build their own workflows, connect tools and gain autonomy. The judgment stays with them; the tool's job is to sharpen it.

Thoughtful AI. Philosophy, ethics and the social effects of AI are part of my research. I have written on AI governance in public administration and on attention and learning.

A tool for thinking. What keeps me here is using the model to think, investigate, build and learn, more than to generate or automate. Claude can become a thinking and building environment, not just another assistant. That is the version of AI I want more people to meet first.

What I would report back first. For the people I teach, the first wall is still setup. Getting Claude Code and an MCP server running on a designer's machine takes a workshop. That is where I start.

I sit at the intersection of design, technology and AI.

Until June, Global Product Designer at Wellhub. Before that, Lead Product Designer at Multidrop, a German startup, as its only designer, and UX at Laboratório Bridge on a Ministry of Education platform with 14 million users. Author of Design na era da IA, in production with Casa do Código, and co-author of a Best Paper at AIMEDIA 2026.

That intersection is exactly where I believe Claude can create disproportionate impact.

  1. Product DesignerDesign since 2019
  2. Computer ScienceUFSC
  3. AI specialization in RomeSapienza
  4. AI researchLemme lab, UFSC
  5. MentorADPList, 10+ designers, 1:1
  6. Community builderPixel, Friends of Figma, The AI Collective
  7. AI educatorWorkshops, talks, a book

Not another meetup.

A Claude community here can run in more than one format. Each one has a different job.

  1. 01

    Claude for Designers

    Practical workshops on how Claude changes product design workflows: research, specification, prototyping, handoff.

  2. 02

    Claude Builders

    Hands-on sessions to build products and workflows with Claude, MCPs and external tools. People leave with a working workflow or prototype.

  3. 03

    Claude & AI Ethics

    Conversations on safety, ethics, philosophy and the social impact of AI, with researchers and practitioners in the same room.

  4. 04

    Claude for Non-Technical People

    The Builders format, paced for people who have never opened a terminal.

  5. 05

    Claude Research Sessions

    Meetings with researchers, founders and technology professionals on what the models can do, and what they can't yet.

  6. 06

    Claude Community Nights

    Open, lighter events to bring the local community together and bring new people into the other formats.

If I had 90 days.

What gets measured: attendance, repeat attendance, community growth, workshop completion, projects built, local partnerships and what people say afterwards. The first cycle sets the baseline. The numbers get published, whatever they are.

  1. Weeks 1 to 2Map the existing community and partners.
  2. Weeks 3 to 4First meetup, focused on Claude + Figma and MCP.
  3. Month 2Hands-on workshop for builders.
  4. Month 3A larger event bringing designers, founders, developers and researchers together.