AI has moved beyond experimentation. In 2026, the question isn’t whether to adopt it—it’s how to scale it effectively.
Join industry practitioners for a full day of practical, real-world sessions focused on agentic workflows, AI governance, prompt engineering, and the leadership mindset required to move from pilots to production—delivering measurable business value along the way.
What You'll Walk Away With
Practical skills and strategies you can apply the moment you're back at your desk.
Leadership Clarity for the Agentic Era
Get a clear-eyed view of what is actually working in enterprise AI adoption, where organizations are stalling, and the leadership capabilities that separate companies scaling AI successfully from those stuck in pilot purgatory.
A Human Framework for AI Adoption
Understand how to use AI in ways that protect your identity, purpose, and creativity. Build the mindset and self-leadership skills to turn uncertainty into agency and free time for more meaningful work.
A Blueprint for Building Custom AI Agents
Learn how to design purpose-built GPTs tailored to your team's specific workflows, with practical prompt engineering patterns and the architectural decisions that determine whether a custom agent becomes essential infrastructure or gathers digital dust.
Practical AI Tools You Can Use Immediately
Leave with a curated toolkit of hands-on AI tools and techniques demonstrated live, accessible regardless of your technical background, covering marketing, content creation, research, and daily workflow automation.
A Roadmap for Scaling AI Past the Pilot Stage
Get the practical frameworks for moving AI from disconnected pilots to organization-wide adoption, including how to stand up a forward-deployed team, run time-boxed engagements, and hand off sustainably without creating dependency.
Governance and Autonomy Frameworks for AI Agents
Understand why scaling agents without governance multiplies risk, how to implement governed autonomy where AI proposes and systems decide, and how to match the right level of AI autonomy to each task using the Five Levels of AI Autonomy framework.
Conference Agenda
Expert-led sessions designed for professionals ready to move from AI experimentation to enterprise impact. Additional speakers to be announced soon.
Opening Keynote: Leading in the Age of AI Agents
David Mantica • Managing Director, SoftEd
The leadership playbook is being rewritten. With Gartner predicting that 80% of project management tasks will be AI-driven by 2030 and KPMG reporting that 44% of leaders expect agents to take lead roles in managing projects, the question for every leader has shifted from "should we adopt AI?" to "how fast can we transform?" David sets the stage with a clear-eyed look at what's actually working in enterprise AI adoption, where organizations are stalling, and the leadership capabilities that separate companies scaling AI successfully from those stuck in pilot purgatory.
Meaning and Purpose in the Age of AI: Making AI Human
Jordan Plawner • Founder, Pacific AI Advisory & Former Intel AI Strategy Executive
AI is arriving fast, and most people are caught between hype, fear, and fatigue. This keynote helps professionals of all backgrounds understand what today's AI actually is, what it can and cannot do, and how to use it in ways that protect identity, purpose, and creativity.
Jordan Plawner guides audiences through an inner loop of change—mindset, skills, and everyday AI use—that turns uncertainty into agency and frees time for more meaningful work. Then he opens the outer loop: how teams and organizations are beginning to redesign workflows and roles around AI, and what that means for your career, contribution, and sense of meaning at work.
Participants will gain:
- Practical ways to nurture personal growth, meaning, and contribution as automation grows.
Building Custom AI Agents: A Hands-On Guide to Purpose-Built GPTs
George Churchwell • Director of Generative AI Solutions, Mt. Tam Innovations LLC
Generic AI tools produce generic results. George has built over a hundred custom AI applications - from sales intelligence scripts targeting billion-dollar markets to AI-assisted eLearning content for Cisco - and he'll show you exactly how to build purpose-built GPTs tailored to your team's specific workflows. This session covers practical prompt engineering patterns, how to design AI tools that your team will actually use, and the architectural decisions that determine whether a custom agent becomes essential infrastructure or just another tool gathering digital dust. You'll leave with a blueprint for building your first (or next) enterprise-grade custom AI application.
AI for Everyone: Practical Tools That Transform How You Work Today
Tony Rockliff • Founder, AI Connection Club
You don't need to be a developer to put AI to work. Tony has been building AI applications since 1998 and has delivered hundreds of AI seminars showing professionals how to integrate AI into their daily workflows. In this session, he'll demonstrate the most practical AI tools and techniques available right now - from multi-model platforms that consolidate your AI subscriptions to custom assistants that automate marketing, content creation, and research. Tony's approach is hands-on and tool-specific: you'll see live demonstrations of real workflows and leave with a curated toolkit you can start using immediately, regardless of your technical background.
Beyond the Pilot: Bringing AI to Life Across the Organization
Toby Rao • Founder, Loudon AiGile Network
Most organizations are not failing at AI because of bad technology. They are failing because the transformation required around it never happens. Toby has spent more than 25 years helping organizations close that gap, most recently leading an AI transformation at a global SaaS company that went from disconnected pilots to 58% adoption, a 69% productivity gain, and 93% engagement in nine months. In this session, he walks through the six moves that separate organizations that scale AI from those that stall, covering team alignment, barrier removal, capability building, and metrics that show real impact. He has led organizational transformation across defense, federal, and financial environments and now applies those lessons directly to AI adoption. You will leave with a practical roadmap you can put to work immediately, no matter where your organization is today.
Scaling AI Agents Without Losing Control: AI Proposes, Systems Decide
Alan Knox • VP Product Development, QuantaViable
AI agents are multipliers. They multiply efficiency, speed, and output. But they also multiply failures: bad decisions, context errors, and accountability gaps scaling at machine speed. Without governance, every agent you deploy amplifies risk as fast as it amplifies value. Alan builds governed agentic systems for a $1B+ company in regulated industries where that tradeoff isn't acceptable. He'll introduce governed autonomy, where AI handles reasoning while deterministic systems control progression, escalation, and oversight, and walk through a real-world scenario showing what this looks like in practice. You'll leave understanding why governance-first architecture is the missing piece in scaling AI agents, and how to apply it before your agents start multiplying risk.
The 90-Day Pod: A Framework for Embedding AI Without Losing the Organization
Stacy Gonyou • Director of AI Strategy and Solutions, IntePros
A practical, structured session on how to stand up a forward deployed pod, run a time-boxed engagement, and hand off sustainably — rather than creating dependency.
Stop Using a Sledgehammer: Matching AI Autonomy to the Task at Hand
Jess Wolfe • Customer Success Manager, Swarmia
Your organization is probably using AI. You've seen ChatGPT, maybe you've heard engineers talking about Claude, Copilot, or other agents in their command line. It's a confusing landscape of LLMs, IDEs, and chatbots. The real question isn't if you should use AI, but when to use what. This session cuts through the noise. We'll introduce a simple framework: the Five Levels of AI Autonomy. Think of it as a toolbox for your organization. You'll learn why a conversational AI (Level 2) is perfect for exploring a vague spec, but the wrong choice for building an automated test suite, a repeatable, well-scoped task that a Task Agent (Level 3) could handle autonomously. We'll walk through five common, real-world problems and map each one to the correct level of AI. As AI handles more execution, the bottleneck shifts to the quality of your intent and your role becomes the constraint that matters most. You'll leave with a clear mental model for choosing the right tool for the right job, every time.
Stop Automating the Mess: A Lean Case for AI That Actually Works
Corey King • Principal, Black Flak LLC
Teams are drowning in AI tools nobody scoped, doing work nobody questioned, measured by metrics that don't mean anything. Meanwhile, 95% of AI initiatives deliver zero return. The problem isn't the technology. It's a leadership failure to diagnose before prescribing. This session makes the case for applying Lean Six Sigma principles, including value stream mapping, waste identification, and disciplined prioritization, before deploying AI. Teams don't come out ahead by getting more tools, they win when leaders know where to aim.
More Speakers To Be Announced
Additional sessions and speakers will be announced soon. Stay tuned.
Meet the Speakers
Industry practitioners who are building, deploying, and scaling AI in the real world.
David Mantica
Managing Director, SoftEd
30+ years experience, 700+ speaking engagements. Built a B2B training firm to $13M in seven years.
LinkedIn →
Jordan Plawner
Founder, Pacific AI Advisory
Former Intel AI Strategy Executive. 30 years in tech leadership. Featured in CNN and Time Magazine. Built a $4B AI business.
LinkedIn →
George Churchwell
Director GenAI Solutions
Visionary in AI LLMs and prompt engineering. Built custom AI applications from sales intelligence to eLearning for Cisco.
LinkedIn →
Tony Rockliff
Founder, AI Connection Club
25+ years in AI. Built an AI chatbot for a 1.3M-member community in 1998. Delivers 10+ AI seminars monthly.
LinkedIn →
Zaki Medina
CTO, REVIVE healthcare Group
17+ years of experience driving $1B in value through AI, cloud, and data, known for making complex concepts actionable while helping global organizations successfully implement AI in real-world scenarios.
LinkedIn →
Corey King
Principal, Black Flak LLC
20 years in strategic program management, operational excellence, and strategy and operations at companies like Atlassian, Deloitte, Capital One, and Boeing and across industries including aerospace, defense, fintech, healthcare, legal, and the public sector.
LinkedIn →
Stacy Gonyou
Director of AI Strategy and Solutions, IntePros
25 years at the forefront of digital evolution, guiding businesses through the complexities of emerging tech to secure a lasting competitive advantage. From the high-stakes environment of early internet startups to defining leadership roles at eBay and Google, Stacy specializes in the intersection of new tools and the business strategies they ignite. A veteran of strategic integration, she is known for her ability to translate technical potential into tangible value, helping organizations evolve their offerings and scale with purpose in a rapidly changing landscape.
LinkedIn →
Jess Wolfe
Customer Success Manager, Swarmia
Jess partners with engineering teams to boost developer productivity and align engineering with business outcomes, using AI and data to remove bottlenecks, improve collaboration, and drive continuous improvement.
LinkedIn →
Dev Panajkar
CIO, XClaymation
Dev is CIO at Xclaymation and a former leader at Nike, Dollar General, and Marathon—an engineer and MBA with deep expertise in technology, AI, and enterprise innovation, and a Harvard Business School alumnus with NACD certification.
LinkedIn →
Alan Knox
VP Product Development, QuantaViable
40+ years in technology, working with AI since the 1990s. A practitioner and strategist building enterprise-grade governed agentic systems for a $1B+ company in regulated industries.
LinkedIn →
Toby Rao
Founder, Loudon AiGile Network
an AI transformation leader and published author based in the Washington, DC Metro area, with 19+ years of enterprise modernization experience across Fortune 500 companies, federal agencies, and defense contractors, including Deloitte, Nike, Freddie Mac, Exostar, and agencies such as the IRS, CMS, VA, DoD, GSA, and HHS. Currently serving as Global Director of Transformation and AI Center of Excellence Lead at Exostar, Toby drives AI adoption, DevOps transformation, and organizational change at scale within one of the aerospace and defense industry's most compliance-critical SaaS environments. Toby is the founder of the Loudoun AiGile Network, a 2,300+ member community at the intersection of AI and Agile practice, and a speaker at 30+ global events. He is the author of The AI Leap: The Climb from Pilot to Production, a business novel and field guide for leaders navigating real-world AI transformation.
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Session Recordings
Access recordings of all sessions (6+ hours of content)
Presentation Slides
Download all speaker slides in PDF format
Full Transcripts
Searchable transcripts of every session
Chat Logs
Complete chat logs with shared resources and links
Who Should Attend
Don't Miss GenAI Day
A full day of practical, expert-led sessions on generative and agentic AI - plus recordings, slides, and transcripts you can revisit anytime.
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