AI Fluency
Lab

The landscape has shifted fast. This opening talk grounds the room: what AI can actually do today (not the hype), which industries are moving fastest, and why the people who learn to work with AI now will have a serious edge over those who wait. No fear-mongering, just the honest picture.

A live, demo-driven walkthrough of how tools like ChatGPT and Claude actually generate responses, what happens between you typing a question and getting an answer. You'll see the same prompt produce wildly different results depending on how you frame it, and start to understand why. No slides. No jargon. Just a browser and a conversation.

Open your laptop. Pick a real task from your actual work, writing a proposal, drafting an email, researching competitors, whatever. We'll start with the kind of lazy prompt most people type, then rebuild it step by step: adding context, giving the AI a role, chaining your requests, feeding it examples. By the end, you'll have a personal prompt library you can take home.

A guided build-along across five tools: write a blog intro in ChatGPT, turn it into a social carousel with Canva Magic Studio, generate a header image in Midjourney, research a competitor angle in Perplexity, and sketch a 15-second video concept in Runway. You leave with one real branded asset you can post this week.

Track A: 'The $0 Marketing Team', build an AI-powered content calendar, write SEO-ready blog posts, and schedule a week of social content in 60 minutes. Track B: 'Future-Proof Your Career', rewrite your resume with AI, prep for interviews with mock Q&A, and build a skills portfolio. Track C: 'No Code, No Problem', use v0 or Lovable to build a working web app prototype from a text description.

A frank conversation with an AI researcher, an industry practitioner, and a community advocate. They'll tackle the questions most AI events skip: Who's liable when AI gets it wrong? What does bias in training data actually look like, and who does it hurt? Can you copyright AI-generated work? The audience votes on real ethical scenarios.

Quick recap of the day's biggest moments, then the 'AI After Dark' challenge: tonight, use what you learned to create something real for your business, project, or career. Doesn't have to be polished, just has to exist. Bring it back tomorrow for the lightning showcase.

Six to eight brave volunteers take the stage to show what they made after hours. Could be a product landing page, a personalized email sequence, a pitch deck, a weird art project, doesn't matter. The room votes. Winner gets a prize. This is about momentum, not perfection.

Day 1 was about single prompts. Now we chain them. You'll build a Custom GPT or Claude Project scoped to your actual work, then connect it to a real workflow, using Zapier to trigger actions, auto-generate weekly reports, or run a multi-step email sequence. Everyone leaves with one working automation they can use Monday morning.

This is the main event. Pick your track: founders build an investor-ready pitch deck or landing page. Creatives build a content pipeline (editorial calendar + first three posts). Career builders assemble a portfolio site or interview prep system. Operators draft an SOP that actually gets followed. Facilitators float the room as mentors. You're building something real, not a hypothetical exercise.

Track A: 'The Agentic Founder', identify which parts of your business AI can handle, build a business case, and map out implementation without needing an engineering team. Track B: 'From Experiment to Income', package AI skills into freelance services, productize your workflows, and position yourself as the AI-fluent hire. Track C: 'Build an AI Agent', go from a system prompt to a working agent with a knowledge base and tool access. Deploy it before you leave.

A candid conversation about what's actually coming: AI agents that book meetings and write code, models that see and hear and reason, new regulations that will reshape what's legal and what's not. The speakers share what they're personally betting on, what they think is overhyped, and what everyone in this room should be paying attention to.

Eight to ten participants present the projects they built during Ship It. The room votes in three categories: Best Build, Most Creative, Most Practical. This is the moment where the room sees what 150 people can build in a single afternoon when they actually know how to use these tools.

Guided worksheet: pick 3 AI tools you'll use this week, 3 workflows you'll automate this month, and 1 bigger project for the next 90 days. Pair up with an accountability partner. Get onboarded to the alumni community. Certificate ceremony. Photo.