Event People, Like Everyone Else, Discuss AI, But Do It Live & In-Person

The buzziest topic at a couple event-industry events that also validated meaningful on-site engagement 

A.I. dominates the talk in every professional setting these days, and it seems like everyone brings distinctive takes. Are new levels of efficiency or even creativity being reached with electronic assistance, or are too many results delusional slop assembled through uneconomical consumption of compute resources? For whom is A.I. threat, and to whom does it bestow superpowers? Is a bubble inflating, and if it pops, could there be a quick and even bigger rebound like has happened in other tech-business cycles?

Last week for us was largely consumed by two impressive live events: EDPA Access in Florida, and right after the trip back home, Friday’s annual telethon to promote membership in Club Ichi, broadcast by teams from professional studio spaces in Toronto and in Atlanta where the next day there was an Ichi Spontaneous Think Tank gathering.

These dynamic, live events were full of AI ponderings from all sorts of voices, a few examples:

• An opening panel at EDPA Access led by HighMark’s Brian Baker had agency design leaders who bring strategic creativity to event and experience production. They spoke of AI as a double edged sword that can accelerate concept ideation, but that underscores importance of professional oversight to assure cohesive, thematically on-point results. They pointed out how today’s emerging technologies can empower their clients to do some of their own rich-content experimentation that can be literally dangerous like structurally impossible imaginings, but can also spark new vitality in conversations and distinctive, new directions for execution.
  
  
• The Ichi telethon also opened with AI ruminations. Co-founder Liz Lathan spoke with Fiona Wilson of Event Tech Live (another live event, about events!) and they put the pressure on AI, declaring our being at point when its presence any tech product or service can practically be assumed, and the onus is to progress from that being a marketing claim to demonstrable realization of value. Liz’ next conversation was with futurist Henry Coutinho-Mason who re-directed the pressure back to us us people instead of the technology, pointing out the democratizing effect of AI extending easy access to scalable automation so broadly.
  
  
• Each event featured people who embrace that challenge to powerfully leverage AI capabilities. At Access, Jordan Walker of Backtrack showed a riveted room how he uses Clay for extensive resource access, Custom GPT to strategically dial in, and Zapier to integrate systems to better engage prospects about his solution value. In the telethon Anca Platon Trifan further upped the ante showing how accessible custom programming can be, presenting about her Claude Code based system to monitor and act on speaking opportunities. The technological content of these sessions was impressive, although really it was Jordan’s and Anca’s energy, charm and direct audience engagement that stood out.
  
  
• And such opportunities for people’s humanity to shine may be what resonated most among the many perspectives on AI impact that came up at last week’s events. As broad a spectrum of people as corporate financial advisor Howard Givner who presented about acquisitions at Access, to Toronto mentalist and magician Yan Markson who did some entertaining and inspiring during the telethon – both pointed out that this era of people spending more time engaging with software to automate processes actually levels up the vitality of situations when we’re together with others on-location and engaged in live activities. Such dynamics are the essence of why last week’s time with EDPA and Ichi were valuable and memorable.

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