Microsoft Build 2026 was a useful week for Digital Meld, OpenClaw, GitHub, and Microsoft to spend time in the same rooms with builders, maintainers, and product teams.
Robert Groux and Brad Groux were in San Francisco for the week around Build. Brad spoke at GitHub during Backstage at Build, spent time with the OpenClaw team in the Open Source Zone at Microsoft Build, joined a GitHub recording session with OpenClaw maintainers, and helped close the week at the OpenClaw after-hours event hosted at GitHub.
The schedule started at Backstage at Build at GitHub San Francisco, followed by GitHub Build on Tap. The OpenClaw booth ran across two days in the Microsoft Build Open Source Zone at Fort Mason, where maintainers spent hours walking people through the project and taking questions from attendees.
OpenClaw in the Open Source Zone
The booth time mattered because OpenClaw is easier to understand when people can see it, ask what it replaces, and pressure-test where it fits in their own workflows. The conversations were practical: local agents, developer tools, project governance, contribution paths, and what it takes to make open source software useful outside a demo.
Nearly 20 OpenClaw maintainers were in San Francisco during the week. That made the booth and related conversations less like a single product pitch and more like a working maintainer session in public.
GitHub sessions and recording
Brad presented at GitHub during Backstage at Build and later joined a GitHub recording session with members of the OpenClaw team. The recording session was kept intentionally light in public materials during the event, but it was part of the same collaboration thread: explaining OpenClaw clearly, showing the maintainers behind it, and giving the project room to be understood by a broader developer audience.
GitHub also hosted the OpenClaw after-hours event that Digital Meld had planned with the GitHub team. That event brought maintainers, GitHub team members, Microsoft Build attendees, and interested builders together after the conference floor closed.
Photos from the week
Why it mattered
For Digital Meld, the week was not just conference attendance. It was a chance to support OpenClaw in person, help connect the project with GitHub and Microsoft communities, and spend focused time with the maintainers shaping where the project goes next.
The useful signal from the week was direct feedback: people asking hard questions at the booth, maintainers comparing notes in person, and platform teams making space for an open source project to be seen by the right audience.
Thanks to the OpenClaw maintainers, GitHub, Microsoft, and everyone who stopped by, joined a session, or helped make the week work.