Build with Chiang Mai, not just around it.
Three afternoons in the middle of Main Week. Thai builders and people passing through the city meet, form mixed teams, take a real problem apart, build a prototype, put it in front of users and pitch what they made.
Come without a team. Come without an idea. You do not need to be technical.
Builders Camp
Sept 23 to 25, 2026 · Chiang Mai
Builders Camp takes a small cross-cultural team the whole way from a problem to something a real person can try:
Connect → Discover → Build → Test → Refine → Share
You might turn up as a designer, founder, developer, marketer, researcher, student or someone with an interesting perspective and nothing else. Teams are mixed on purpose, so different skills and ways of working run into each other.
This is not a conference track and it is not only for coders. The whole time goes on doing: understanding a problem, making something tangible, putting it in front of people, and improving it with what they tell you.
Free to join, three ways in
- Thai builders20 places
- University students10 places
- Nomads and visitors20 places
Places are limited and ShakeSphere select applicants, so a Main Week pass does not put you in the room by itself. Apply on their page.
Three afternoons, one team, one thing built
Nobody sits and listens for three days. Each afternoon moves your team one step on: from meeting people, to understanding a problem, to building and testing something real, to showing it.
- Day 1
Connect and discover
Wednesday 23 September
2:00 to 5:00 PM
The First Church of Chiang Mai, Chanpeng Hall
View map →A room of Thai and international participants turns into mixed teams with something worth working on.
- Meet the Thai participants and the wider Builders Camp community
- Hear 90 second idea and problem pitches from anyone who wants to propose something
- Join a team around a problem you care about, with facilitators mixing skills and backgrounds
- Take part in an ideation and user research session
- Learn how to talk to users and challenge your problem before jumping to a solution
- Agree team roles and what you need to find out next
- Day 2
Build and validate
Thursday 24 September
Afternoon
Mövenpick Suriwongse Chiang Mai, Navarat 1-2, 3rd Floor
View map →The main build day. The goal is not to make something impressive, it is to learn fast enough to make something useful.
- Sharpen the problem with your team and speak to potential users
- Join the Problem-to-Prototype vibe coding workshop and turn an idea into something testable in hours
- Build with whatever fits: AI, no-code, code, design tools, paper mockups
- Put the prototype in front of real users and collect feedback
- Change the idea based on what people do and say, not what the team assumed
- Get hands-on help from mentors and facilitators, and start shaping the pitch
- Day 3
Share and celebrate
Friday 25 September
Afternoon
Mövenpick Suriwongse Chiang Mai, Navarat 1-2, 3rd Floor
View map →Tighten the prototype, decide what matters in the story, and show it. Then the Potluck After Party.
- Final refinement and pitch preparation with your team
- Meet the judges and walk through the pitch rules and judging criteria
- Present the problem, what users told you, and the prototype
- Answer questions from the judges
- See what the other teams built and what they found
- Awards, the official close, then the Potluck After Party
RSVP and check times in the app
The CosmoLocal app carries the live schedule for Main Week, including Builders Camp Day 1 and everything happening around it. If you are joining, RSVP there so the team knows to expect you. Collect your pass at Main Week Registration first, from 11:00 AM on the Wednesday.
Prompts, not boxes
You do not pick a theme before joining. These are here to start ideas off.
Local to global products
Start with a problem found in Chiang Mai or Thailand and work out how the answer could travel much further.
Connecting Chiang Mai talent to the world
Ideas that create more visibility, work and global opportunity for talented people based here.
Chiang Mai's creative soul
Music, art, culture, cafés and creative communities, and how more of that energy reaches the world.
Health, wellness and living better
Products and services that help residents, travellers and globally mobile people live better.
Services for nomad communities
Build for people who travel, work remotely, create independently or live between countries.
Thai × nomad collaboration
How local and international talent could work together better, through hiring, projects or communities.
Reframing Chiang Mai
New ways to tell the city's story and help the world see it past the seasonal stereotypes.
Wildcard
Something completely different. If the problem matters and you want to build, it belongs here.
You do not have to call yourself a builder yet
Builders Camp works when the room holds different kinds of people. Strong teams need far more than developers.
Who joins
- Founders and entrepreneurs
- Designers and researchers
- Developers, AI builders and no-code makers
- Marketers, storytellers and creators
- Product and project people
- Students and early-career talent
- Business professionals with domain expertise
- Community builders, and anyone who likes solving problems
What to bring
- A laptop, or whatever tools you normally work with
- Curiosity. You do not need to arrive with an idea
- An open mind. Your teammates may think and work very differently
- Energy to take part. This works when everyone contributes
- A willingness to talk to real users instead of building on assumptions
A team from a previous Thai × Nomad build event carried its idea on afterwards into Nomad Dental, connecting nomads with dental care. Builders Camp is built to make that kind of thing possible: the event ends, the project does not have to.
A way in for Thai talent
Builders Camp is free to join. The scholarship is a separate thing: it covers the Main Week pass itself, so a Thai applicant can be in the talks, workshops and rooms across the whole week and not only the three build afternoons.
ShakeSphere is supporting up to 20 qualified Thai applicants with full scholarships, a pass worth THB 5,500 each. If the full-scholarship quota is filled, eligible applicants can still receive a 50% subsidy on the Local Pass, with ShakeSphere covering the other half.
ทุนสนับสนุนสำหรับคนไทย เพื่อเข้าร่วม Cosmo Local CNX Main Week
ShakeSphere สนับสนุน ทุนเต็มจำนวนสูงสุด 20 คน สำหรับผู้สมัครที่ผ่านการคัดเลือก
หากโควตาทุนเต็มแล้ว ผู้สมัครที่ผ่านเกณฑ์ยังสามารถรับ ทุนสนับสนุน 50% คือคุณจ่ายเพียงครึ่งหนึ่งของราคา Local Pass และ ShakeSphere สนับสนุนอีก 50%
นอกจากนี้ Builders Camp วันที่ 23 ถึง 25 กันยายน ยังเปิดรับคนไทย ฟรี 20 คน เช่นกัน
Problem-to-Prototype
Thursday 24 September · Builders Camp Day 2
The vibe coding session that sits in the middle of the build day. Bring a real problem into the room and leave with something you can put in front of someone.
Most ideas fail long before the prototype, because the problem was never clear enough to begin with. ShakeSphere will take you through sharpening a problem, deciding what actually needs testing, and using AI-assisted tools to turn an idea into something tangible.
No coding background required. Bring a problem you care about, or join someone else's.
What you'll do
- Frame a problem clearly enough to act on
- Turn assumptions into questions worth testing
- Generate and narrow solution ideas
- Build a rapid prototype using AI, vibe-coding and no-code tools where useful
- Identify what to test next with real users
Who it's for
Founders, designers, developers, marketers, operators, students, creators, and anyone who wants a faster way to turn a problem into something tangible.
Host: ShakeSphere. The session runs inside Builders Camp Day 2 at Mövenpick Suriwongse Chiang Mai, Navarat 1-2, 3rd Floor.
Get a Main Week pass →Why this track exists
CosmoLocal already brings local and global communities into the same city. This track goes one step further: the same teams, the same problems, real work done together.
ShakeSphere is a Bangkok-based innovation company founded by Dave Malhotra and Pete Chemsripong, building programmes that open new opportunities for local talent. What we both want out of these three afternoons is stronger connections, more confidence, new projects, and more routes between Thai talent and global opportunity.
