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2026 AI Business Summit Sessions

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Signal vs. Noise: The AI Insights Your Competitors Aren't Talking About

Morning Keynote

Speakers
  • Rebecca Ryan
    As a futurist and economist who's tracked hundreds of AI-related signals and projects across dozens of organizations, Rebecca Ryan has a birds-eye view of what works and what wastes money. Plus, her team has been running AI pilots since 2023. In this workshop, she'll share the patterns she's observed, the questions mid-sized businesses should ask before spending a dime, and the framework for deciding what to automate and what to keep human. There will be lots of time for Q&A and you’ll leave with a practical roadmap from a Wisconsin-based futurist and business owner.
Summary
She's back. Economist and top-50 professional futurist Rebecca Ryan returns to the AI Summit to kick us off. The truth? Everyone's tired of AI hype. Rebecca is, too. She cuts through the AI noise and brings fresh insight with that practical, Wisconsin-wise business sense. This year, she'll share her take on: · What headlines are missing that Fox Cities business leaders need to know · The things she's watching — early warning signs, surprising patterns, and data that signal what's to come · The hidden costs — from energy grids that can't keep up to sales tax revenue vanishing into chat windows · How to tell what to automate versus what to keep human

TBD: Information Coming Soon!

Breakout Session 1

AI Strategy for Real Businesses: What I Learned from Three Years in the Trenche

Breakout Session 1

Speakers
  • Rebecca Ryan
    As a futurist and economist who's tracked hundreds of AI-related signals and projects across dozens of organizations, Rebecca Ryan has a birds-eye view of what works and what wastes money. Plus, her team has been running AI pilots since 2023. In this workshop, she'll share the patterns she's observed, the questions mid-sized businesses should ask before spending a dime, and the framework for deciding what to automate and what to keep human. There will be lots of time for Q&A and you’ll leave with a practical roadmap from a Wisconsin-based futurist and business owner.

The AI Tool Shed: Know your tools, trust your people

Breakout Session 1

Speakers
  • Emmett Gordon
  • Adam Clifford
Summary
This co-presentation pairs a data scientist’s perspective with a CIO’s perspective to give business leaders a complete picture of AI: what it actually is, and what it takes to put it to work responsibly. Part 1 (Emmett) demystifies the technology itself. Using a “tool shed” metaphor, he explains the difference between traditional machine learning and large language models, where each one shines, where each one fails, and why every failure is predictable once you understand how the tools work. He closes with the hottest topic in AI — autonomous agents — and gives the audience a practical framework for deciding when automation is appropriate and when it isn’t. Part 2 (Adam) picks up where the technology leaves off: now that you understand the tools, how does a leadership team prepare an organization to use them? Drawing on Miron Construction’s real-world rollout, Adam covers data governance, real use cases, adoption, and the three risks most organizations discover too late — skill erosion, AI-generated low-quality work (“slop”), and the paradox of time savings that create work surges. He closes with the people-first philosophy that has guided Miron’s approach: AI is an accelerator of knowledge and experience, not a replacement for it. The audience leaves with both the technical literacy to evaluate AI tools and the leadership playbook to deploy them responsibly.

AI Together: A collaborative approach to AI adoption

Breakout Session 2

Speakers
  • Heidi Strand
  • Andy Wojtowski
Summary
Blue Door has taken a collaborative approach to AI adoption shaped by its own internal experience. They implemented AI across its own team—testing tools, redesigning workflows, and navigating adoption challenges firsthand. Those lessons became the catalyst for a cohort-based model designed specifically for small businesses. Rather than tackling AI one business at a time, AI Together brings similarly sized businesses—or those within the same industry—into a facilitated cohort. Working from a proven playbook, participants identify practical AI tools they can implement in parallel, reducing cost, lowering adoption risk, and learning from one another along the way. The cohort also reviews AI governance, data security, and privacy considerations to ensure adoption is responsible, transparent, and aligned with business and customer trust. Designed for small businesses with intermediate AI knowledge, this session shares the research, framework, and lessons learned that will guide a pilot cohort—offering a realistic, people-first path from AI experimentation to everyday business value.

AI’s role in daily operations—do you have the right guardrails in place?

Breakout Session 2

Speakers
  • Michael Bendel
  • Craig Kubiak
  • Tiffany Woelfel
Summary
AI is embedded in processes throughout your organization, from marketing to human resources to operations and part of everyday business workflows. The question is no longer whether your organization is using AI, it’s whether you’ve implemented the right guardrails to mitigate the risks that come with it. During this presentation, our presenters will walk through common, day-to-day uses of AI within organizations and explain the potential legal and operational risks you may already be exposed to — often without realizing it: • Marketing and External Communications: AI tools increasingly shape advertising claims, branded content, images, and other public-facing materials. Without structured review processes and appropriate disclosure standards, organizations risk misinformation, intellectual property concerns, and regulatory scrutiny. • Human Resources: AI is widely used in recruiting, screening, performance evaluations, and internal decision-making. These applications raise issues of bias, discrimination, transparency, and record keeping, yet employers remain responsible for outcomes. • Enterprise Operations: AI intersects with vendor management, contract terms, data ownership, cybersecurity, and the creation and retention of company information. Without clear contractual protections, governance protocols, and a formal AI policy, organizations may face unintended data exposure, compliance gaps, and increased litigation risk. This session focuses on practical, proactive guardrails, including structured review processes, clear disclosure standards, vendor and contractual protections, data governance and cybersecurity controls, and a documented, enterprise-wide AI policy. AI can drive efficiency and innovation but only when supported by intentional governance. The right guardrails don’t slow innovation; they protect it.

From Chaos to Control: How humans and AI together delivered enterprise automation

Breakout Session 2

Speakers
  • Melissa Wege
  • Josh Rapavi
Summary
Credit and Rebill (CR/RB) requests are a common but costly operational challenge in large enterprises—often submitted through fragmented channels, researched manually, and processed reactively with little visibility or data capture. In this session, the speakers will share a real-world case study of how multiple teams came together to solve this problem end-to-end. No single function could have delivered this solution alone. While AI and automation played a critical role, human expertise, judgment, and collaboration were equally essential to designing guardrails, validating logic, and ensuring the solution worked in practice—not just in theory. Attendees will see how they combined front-end validation, Python-based eligibility logic, and centralized intake and tracking with strong human-in-the-loop design to eliminate unnecessary research, reduce follow-ups, and create a true single source of truth. Rather than focusing on theory, this session emphasizes practical application: how to identify high-friction processes, where AI and automation create immediate value, and why the human element is critical for adoption, trust, and long-term sustainability. The result is measurable time savings, improved data quality, and the ability to shift from reactive processing to proactive, preventative insights.

AI for Small Business: From Personal Use to Business Value

Breakout Session 3

Speakers
  • John Muraski
Summary
The most meaningful AI gains in small business usually do not start with a large-scale strategy or formal company initiative. They start with one owner, manager, or employee who begins using AI in practical ways to save time, improve work quality, and solve everyday business problems. When one person builds real AI fluency in their daily work, that capability can quickly extend into customer service, marketing, operations, communication, and decision-making across the business. This session provides a practical, personal roadmap for building useful AI skills without hype or technical complexity. Using a prompting framework and a structured 10-week adoption plan, participants will see how small, consistent habits with AI tools can lead to meaningful gains for both the individual and the small business. Whether you are new to AI or still in the occasional experiment stage, you will leave with a clear path forward.

Making it stick: A case study in driving tech adoption beyond IT

Breakout Session 3

Speakers
  • Amanda Van Den Elzen
Summary
The greatest risk to any AI initiative, whether you are rolling out an enterprise tool like Copilot or Gemini, or launching a tailor-made AI solution, is not a technical failure; it is a human one. Organizations are investing significantly in AI, but many struggle to see a tangible return because the technical go-live is often met with user resistance or inconsistent engagement. Drawing on a real-world case study of a Microsoft Copilot rollout for 5,000 employees, this session provides a practitioner’s blueprint for moving beyond the deployment phase to achieve actual ROI realization. Amanda will break down a three-step framework: · Defining the value by identifying high-impact departmental use cases, · Communicating the value by translating technical capabilities into business outcomes, and · Showing the value by demonstrating immediate wins to build momentum. Participants will learn how to identify the adoption triggers that drive long-term retention and avoid the common training mistakes that lead to underutilized technology. Whether you are building custom AI tools or purchasing enterprise solutions, you will leave with a scalable strategy to ensure your organization does not just launch AI, but actually profits from it.

Beyond ChatGPT: What Agentic AI actually looks like in business today

Breakout Session 3

Speakers
  • Caleb Waack
Summary
Everyone's talking about AI chatbots and copilots — but the next wave is already here. Agentic AI systems can research, decide, and act on behalf of your business with minimal human oversight. This session cuts through the hype to show what agentic systems actually look like in practice today, drawing from real implementations in manufacturing, telecommunications, and professional services. Attendees will see live examples of AI agents handling multi-step business workflows, learn the practical difference between a chatbot and an autonomous agent, and walk away with a clear-eyed view of what's ready for deployment now, what's coming in 12-18 months, and where the hype still outpaces reality.

Wrap up and looking to the future

Closing Speaker

Speakers
  • Pete Dulcamara
Summary
We’ll close the day by bringing everyone back together to reflect, connect the dots, and look ahead. This interactive session will focus on key takeaways from the summit, practical ways to apply what you’ve learned within your organization, and a forward-looking conversation on where AI is headed next. Walk away with clarity, inspiration, and a renewed sense of how to turn today’s ideas into tomorrow’s impact.
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