Join
AIBE is open to every student at Illinois in good standing. No prior experience with AI, programming or business is required — that sentence is in our constitution, not just on this page.
How to join
This is where the club actually lives: the week's workshop, rooms and times, project team channels, and people looking for teammates.
Join serverTwo minutes. It tells us your major, roughly what you want out of AIBE, and whether you already have an idea — which is how we match people into teams.
Open the formAttend one event and you're a General Member. Dues are $5 a semester and the Treasurer will sort you out at a meeting or on Discord.
See what we runWhat to expect
Bring a laptop if you have one. If you don't, come anyway and pair with someone.
What's coming up, which project teams are recruiting, who's speaking this month.
One skill, taught by an officer, a member or a guest. You follow along on your own idea — or on a sample one we provide if you don't have one yet.
Apply it, get unstuck, and meet the people sitting near you. This is where teams tend to start.
Officers stick around. If you want to talk through an idea, this is the easiest time to do it.
Membership
Level one
Register with AIBE and attend at least one event. That's it.
Level two
Attend ten general body meetings or workshops in a semester — or simply join a project team.
If you're an Active Member and not on a team next semester, a short continuation form from the Membership Director keeps your status. On a team, it carries over automatically.
Leadership
AIBE doesn't hold general elections. Officers are selected by the Executive Board through an open application, and the process is the same for everyone.
Meet the current boardA UIUC student in good standing, an Active Member for at least one semester, and willing to commit to a one-year term.
In the last four weeks of spring semester, every Active Member gets a public call at least seven business days before applications close. Anyone eligible may apply, and anyone may recommend someone else.
A short application: your résumé and what you'd actually do with the role.
The board interviews every applicant who meets the requirements, against the same published criteria.
The board selects by majority vote; an officer never votes on a position they're seeking. Everyone is notified in writing and the new roster goes out to the membership.
Questions
No. A good share of what we teach — customer discovery, pricing, marketing, analytics, operations — has nothing to do with writing code, and the parts that do are taught with tools that don't require you to. Teams here work best when they're mixed.
Also no. If you can build, you are extremely useful here on day one, and the business side is exactly what we'll teach you.
No. Each semester the board publishes a Project Slate of defined projects and challenge prompts. Join one of those, or get matched into a team. Bring your own idea only if you want to.
Dues are $5 per member per semester. The Treasurer can waive them for anyone with financial need, and nobody is excluded from a general body meeting for being unable to pay. Field trips are the one extra — roughly $40–50 toward transport, and entirely optional.
A general member can come to a weekly workshop and nothing else — about ninety minutes. If you join a project team, expect a few hours a week on top, and more in the run-up to demo day. The hackathons are a full Saturday each.
You become a General Member by registering with AIBE and coming to one event. You become an Active Member by attending ten general body meetings or workshops in a semester, or by joining a project team. Active Members can lead project teams and apply for officer roles.
Yes. Workshops stand alone, and teams can take new people. Later in the semester it's harder to join a team that's already deep into a build, but it still happens.
You do. Ideas, work product and any venture that grows out of a project team belong to the people who created them. AIBE takes no ownership, equity, revenue share or any other financial interest. If your team plans to keep going after the semester, we'll push you hard to write a founder agreement early.
You can say your project started in AIBE. You can't represent yourself as acting on behalf of AIBE or the University without written approval from the Executive Board.
Very. Starting something in your first year and having it not work is close to a free option.
Membership is open to all UIUC students in good standing, undergraduate and graduate.
Any time, without fear of retribution, retaliation or harassment. That's in the constitution too.
Still deciding
Not sure it's for you, want to pitch a workshop, interested in mentoring or sponsoring, or running another RSO and want to co-host something? Message us.
