Save the date: Nov. 6th 2025 on Zoom!
GenAI Day
Exploring Generative and Agentic Capabilities
Lineup of Speakers
Meet the GenAI Experts
Zaki Medina
AI CONSULTANT
Zaki Medina is a passionate technologist and AI strategist with 17+ years of experience helping businesses harness the power of AI, cloud, and data to drive real-world impact. He’s worked with Fortune 100 companies, startups, and industrial giants, shaping AI-driven strategies that have generated $1B in value. Zaki has a knack for making complex AI concepts accessible and actionable, whether he’s advising executives, training sales teams, or speaking at global events. As a former Microsoft AI Business School Instructor, he’s helped healthcare, energy, and manufacturing leaders integrate AI into their operations. Zaki is always at the forefront of Generative AI, AI-driven automation, and intelligent systems. He’s not just about theory—he’s about making AI work for people, businesses, and industries in a way that delivers results.
Brian Sykes
AI CONSULTANT | AI CATALYST
With nearly 30 years of experience in branding and marketing, Brian Sykes empowers creative professionals to leverage Generative AI for innovation and transformation. As an AI business strategist, he provides tailored AI integration solutions for creative teams ready to advance. Brian is dedicated to partnering with forward-thinking organizations to unlock new opportunities with AI.
George Churchwell
DIRECTOR GENERATIVE AI SOLUTIONS | MT. TAM INNOVATIONS LLC
As a visionary in AI LLMs, Prompt Engineering, and AI for Excellence, George has used AI to create new and innovative solutions, including purpose-built GPTs. His creation of AI applications, from sales intelligence scripts targeting a $1 billion market to AI-assisted eLearning content for Cisco, underscores a unique blend of technical prowess and strategic insight. His journey from launching startups to guiding them to successful exits is a testament to his unwavering passion for strategic innovation and steadfast commitment to team building.
Alex Townsend
AI AUTOMATION STRATEGIST | CO-FOUNDER OF PRAIRIE
Alex Townsend is a digital strategist and AI automation consultant. He helps businesses refine processes, streamline marketing, and unlock growth with practical automation. With a background in web development and SEO, Alex brings a hands-on approach to showing how tools like WordPress, n8n, and generative AI can be combined to drive real results.
Chris Knotts
PRINCIPAL CONSULTANT | TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMATION STRATEGIES
Chris is an experienced leader in enterprise technology with over two decades in training, coaching, and emergent technology enablement, particularly in project management. He excels in creating transformative technology training programs focused on software development, data environments, and agile methodologies. His expertise encompasses enterprise software engineering, advanced analytics, data engineering, and the application of AI and machine learning in business. Chris combines design thinking and lean technology management to innovate in product development and operational strategies, impacting various sectors such as government, education, and multinational corporations.
Marc Balcer
KNOWLEDGE ENGINEER
Marc is a recognized expert in information technology and software development, with notable contributions including the creation of TAME, a platform for software test specification and generation. He’s also co-authored seminal books on software design and architecture. Marc’s agile journey began in 1998, leading a groundbreaking project for a major financial services firm that emphasized adaptability and customer-centricity. Believing in the agile philosophy of experimentation and continuous learning, he remains hands-on in putting theory into practice.
09:00 AM
Welcome
09:10 AM
Chris Knotts
Principal Consultant, Technology Transformation Strategies
Private LLMs, Public Platforms, and the New Shape of Enterprise AI
The first wave of “private LLMs” was about control—locking down data and proving AI could be used safely. By late 2025, the story has matured. The frontier is no longer model ownership; it’s coordination—how organizations weave secure language models, retrieval layers, and workflow automation into a governed, value-producing system.
Chris’ opening talk at this GenAI Day reframes private LLMs in the context of enterprise evolution: what we’ve learned from early pilots, where governance still matters, and how to build AI ecosystems that are both compliant and scalable. Instead of presenting private, walled garden LLMs as the gold standard for secure enterprise AI, we’ll focus on the business needs that initially drove interest in private LLMs, and what the solution space looks like at this moment. You’ll leave with a grounded understanding of what to build, what to buy, and how to align AI capability with measurable business outcomes.
What You Will Learn
- How the private LLM narrative evolved from “containment” to “enterprise orchestration”
- What current hybrid AI architectures look like in real organizations
- Where governance, privacy, and security boundaries truly matter—and where they don’t
- How to focus AI investments on value creation instead of novelty
- The emerging “skills layer”: AI literacy, prompt governance, and enablement frameworks
- Practical next steps for piloting and scaling secure, durable AI systems
09:40 AM
Zaki Medina
AI Consultant
AI Agents 101: Building Your Foundation in Autonomous Workflows
Get a clear, hands-on introduction to AI agents and how they are reshaping the way work gets done. This opening session will give you a solid foundation in what AI agents are, how they differ from chatbots and traditional automation, and the core concepts that make them autonomous, goal-oriented, and capable of reasoning and tool use, Through interactive discussions, real-world examples, and practical exercises, you’ll learn the building blocks of AI agents, explore tools and frameworks for designing workflows, and gain the confidence to start prototyping and experimenting with intelligent agents in your own organization.
What You Will Learn:
- The key differences between AI agents, chatbots, and traditional automation (RPA)
- Core concepts of agentic workflows: autonomy, reasoning, tool use, and goal orientation
- The building blocks of AI agents: memory, planning, execution, and feedback loops
- Real-world use cases across operations, sales, research, and project management
- How to select the right tools and frameworks for building AI agents
- How to start prototyping and piloting AI agents in your organization
10:40 AM
Break
11:00 AM
Alex Townsend
AI Automation Strategist and Co-Founder, PrAIrie
11:30 AM
Jessica Katz
Founder, Liberated Elephant
AI for Business Communication: Clarity, Alignment, and Responsible Practice
AI is changing how we plan, write, and share messages at work. In this practical webinar, you will see how AI can improve clarity, speed up drafting, and tailor communication for different audiences without losing your authentic voice. We will cover simple prompt patterns, real use cases for leaders and team members, and the guardrails that keep communication accurate, ethical, and trustworthy. Expect a short live demo, a quick hands-on practice using a prompt recipe, and concrete takeaways you can apply the same day. This session is a preview of our 1-day courses for leaders and individual contributors, with clear guidance on which option fits your role and goals.
You will learn:
- Where AI helps most in daily communication and leadership messaging
- A simple prompt recipe for clarity and audience tailoring
- Practical guardrails to reduce bias, error, and over-reliance on AI
12:00 PM
Jordan Plawner
Embedded AI Executive & Founder, Pacific AI Advisory
Leadership with Trust and Purpose in the Age of Agentic AI
Guiding Teams Through Change with Confidence and Clarity
In the emerging era of agentic AI, leaders face a dual imperative: preserve purpose and human identity while achieving real, measurable outcomes from intelligent system adoption. This keynote explores how organizations can build cultures of trust, creativity, and purpose, while also learning from the failures and critical lessons of past AI adoption. Drawing on proven frameworks and cautionary tales, this session offers practical guidance on aligning projects to authentic business needs, investing in people, and orchestrating “human + agent” collaboration. Crucially, the presentation highlights how organizations can avoid the trap of sameness and ensure they do not lose their unique identity and strengths in the pursuit of efficiency. Attendees will gain actionable strategies for sustaining distinctiveness and mission-driven innovation, so AI adoption remains transformative, human-centered, and true to what makes their organizations thrive.
12:30 PM
Lunch Break
01:00 PM
George Churchwell
Director Generative AI Solutions, Mt. Tam Innovations
95% of Companies Have Seen Zero Return on In-House AI… Become the 5% Who’ve Seen Tremendous Gain!! I’ll Take You There!
Tired of hearing how AI will “change everything” while your company sees zero results? In this high-energy, no-fluff session, you’ll uncover why 95% of organizations are missing out—and how to join the 5% driving real transformation. You’ll learn how to control the 3 pillars of AI—Bias, Rules, and Content—to build purpose-driven agents that replicate your expertise and scale your impact. Together, we’ll create a working AI that generates a PowerPoint onboarding deck in minutes, proving that success isn’t about prompts—it’s about precision, process, and purpose. Leave inspired, equipped, and ready to turn your AI vision into measurable ROI.
01:30 PM
Alan Armstrong
Mt. Tam Innovations
Vibe Coding – Rapid Prototyping with Gemini & VS Code
Teach viewers a fluid workflow for turning an idea into a functional web prototype by using Gemini for brainstorming and code generation, and VS Code for testing, refinement, and final implementation.
02:00 PM
Marc Balcer
Knowledge Engineer, SoftEd
Prompt Templates: Heroes or Villains?
Prompt templates promise consistency, efficiency, and ready-made shortcuts for getting perfect results from generative AI. But spend any real time with ChatGPT, Copilot, or similar tools and you quickly discover they aren’t databases or search engines — they’re conversation partners. And conversations rarely stick to a script.
In this talk, I’ll share why templates can be handy sidekicks but lousy stand-ins for real back-and-forth dialogue. We’ll look at the “greatest hits” of template design — role prompts, few-shot examples, formatting tricks — and ask when they save the day and when they slip into villainy: rigid, brittle, and misleading.
Understanding when templates help and when they hinder is key not only to working with generative AI today, but also to designing the agentic systems that will rely on adaptability tomorrow. The takeaway? Prompt templates have their place, but the real magic happens in the follow-ups, the clarifications, and the “huh?” moments. Come ready to rethink whether your prompts should follow rigid structures— or whether you’d rather just have a good conversation.
02:30 PM
Break
02:50 PM
Steve Davis
Tyfoom
AI Won’t Transform Your Business — Your People Will
Learn more. Do more of what matters most. Become more.
Artificial intelligence is reshaping how we work, lead, and compete. The biggest multiplier of AI’s potential isn’t the technology. It’s your people. In this energizing session, Steve Davis reveals why the real advantage in the age of AI comes from human adaptability, how fast your people learn, apply, and evolve.
You’ll explore the science behind learning velocity, how curiosity, experimentation, and reflection accelerate results and turn AI from a tool into a trusted partner. You’ll leave with practical ways to help your teams focus their energy on what matters most: learning faster, adapting sooner, and executing better together.
Key Takeaways:
- Why most AI initiatives underperform without human adaptability
- How to amplify AI’s impact through people-first learning systems
- Practical actions to help your teams do more of what matters most
03:20 PM
Brian Sykes
Founder, AI Catalyst
Learning to See & Describe: The Hidden Skill Behind Effective AI Prompting
This isn’t about making people into graphic designers. It’s about a fundamental skill gap I see constantly: most business professionals can’t clearly articulate what they want from AI tools because they’ve never learned to describe things precisely.
My ’12 Essential Prompt Elements’ framework teaches structured observation and description – skills that transfer directly to:
- Writing better prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Copilot
- Creating clearer requirements documents
- Communicating more precisely with stakeholders and vendors
- Understanding how to evaluate AI outputs critically
I use Midjourney as the teaching tool because visual feedback is immediate – you see instantly whether your description worked. But the real value is the transferable skill of precise communication with AI systems.
We’ll talk about 70% of the session on the framework and practice, and 30% showing how these same principles improve their daily AI interactions for reports, analysis, and communication.