Program
Fall 2026 Actionable AI Conference
8:15 a.m.–3:00 p.m.
Willcox Hall, Multipurpose Room
861 Bedford Rd
Pleasantville, NY 10570
Fall 2026 Program
- 8:00 a.m.–9:00 a.m. | Refreshments and Registration
- 9:00 a.m.–9:05 a.m. | Opening Remarks
- 9:05 a.m.–9:50 a.m. | Keynote: Making Sense with AI
- 10:00 a.m.–10:50 a.m. | Breakout Sessions A
- Multipurpose Room: FEATURED SESSION: From Conversation to Completion: Watch AI Turn a Meeting Into Action, Jared Heiner
- W10: AI in Regulated Industries: What We Automate and What We Don't, Christopher Gaur
- W21: Think Like AI: A Practical Prompting Session, Lisa Ellrodt
- W30: Personal and Organizational AI Adoption Strategies, Ethan Truong
- 11:00 a.m.–11:50 a.m. | Breakout Sessions B
- Multipurpose Room: From Prompt to Process: Building AI Workflows That Learn from Human Corrections, Richard Tamaro
- W10: Before You Automate: The AI Revenue Leak Audit, Ferdinand West
- W21: Twin Yourself with AI, James Brusseau
- W30: Stop Re-Explaining Yourself to AI: Build a Claude Skill Instead, Becky Livingston
- 12:00 p.m.–12:50 p.m. | Breakout Sessions C
- Multipurpose Room: Architecting the Data-Forward Organization: Building an Actionable AI Roadmap. Paul Franetovich
- W10: AI for Research, Julia Eisenberg
- W21: Ethical AI, Compliance, and Data Privacy, Ama Gordon
- W30: Agentic Computing: Claude Cowork Made Easy, David Sachs
- 12:50 p.m.–1:50 p.m. | Lunch and Learn: Workforce Development: Preparing Your Team for Success with AI, Gary Albaugh and Ed Teague
- 1:50 p.m.–2:00 p.m. | Closing Remarks
- 2:00 p.m.–3:00 p.m. | Networking and Tabling
Thank You to Our Sponsors
- Carahsoft
- CASO Document Management
- MicroTheory Engineering
- Zoom
Featured Sessions
Keynote: Making Sense with AI
Michael Toney, Google
As AI generates content and answers at extraordinary speed, its most interesting potential may not be producing more, but helping us make sense of the growing complexity around us. This talk explores what that shift means for how we work, learn, and navigate an increasingly AI-enabled world. We’ll look at emerging capabilities, practical ways AI can improve effectiveness and productivity, and how to separate meaningful change from hype.
Lunch and Learn: Workforce Development: Preparing Your Team for Success with AI
Gary Albaugh, MicroTheory Engineering
Ed Teague, COL Edward Teague, USA (Ret.), West Point Association of Graduates
This session focuses on upskilling employees and preparing organizations for AI integration, as well as how AI can be used to improve the effectiveness of employee training. Gary and Ed will share experiences from public- and private-sector leaders, corporate strategies for workforce transformation, the development of employee education programs, and efforts to close skills gaps.
Featured Breakout: From Conversation to Completion: Watch AI Turn a Meeting Into Action
Jared Heiner, Zoom
What if the last meeting you sat through actually worked for you afterward? Not just a transcript gathering dust—but an AI that listened, understood, and turned your conversation into real deliverables, follow-up emails, project plans, and decisions you can act on immediately.
In this live, interactive session, Jared Heiner from Zoom will demonstrate how Zoom's built-in AI transforms everyday meetings from time sinks into engines of productivity—no plugins, no setup, no technical background required. Attendees won't just watch; they'll participate in a live meeting scenario, ask the AI questions in real time, and leave with a simple, repeatable recipe they can use in their very next meeting. This isn't a product pitch. It's a proof point. Less hype. More how.
Breakout Sessions
AI for Research: Exploring the Opportunities
Julia Eisenberg, Ģtv
Explore how AI tools can enhance and accelerate key stages of research. Drawing on hands-on experience with Claude, NotebookLM, Gemini, and ChatGPT, this session examines practical applications for literature reviews, target journal selection, identification of supporting references, citation formatting, and more.
Attendees will see how AI tools can be matched to specific research tasks, from synthesizing more than 100 research papers to generating and refining search strategies and streamlining reference management. The session will also address critical considerations for responsible use, including verifying accuracy, avoiding overreliance, and maintaining scholarly rigor.
Rather than positioning AI as a replacement for research expertise, the session will explore how these tools can free researchers to focus on higher-level analysis and interpretation.
AI in Regulated Industries: What We Automate and What We Don't
Christopher Gaur, Vital Care Service
Most healthcare AI conversations stay at the level of what the technology could do without addressing practical implementation in today’s environment. This session covers what one telehealth company put into production, what it deliberately left alone, and why. Christopher will walk through the automation decisions behind a multistate remote patient monitoring operation, including those made to protect the essential human part of care. He’ll also explore how these lessons can apply to other regulated industries, including law and finance, where organizations must balance AI innovation with trust, compliance, and human judgment.
Architecting the Data-Forward Organization: Building an Actionable AI Roadmap
Paul Franetovich, Salesforce
While AI promises transformative value, many organizations struggle to move past small-scale pilots and shiny demos. Moving from AI hype to measurable business ROI requires a solid foundation: a data-forward strategy, clear governance, and an actionable execution framework.
In alignment with the conference theme, “Less Hype. More How,” this session provides business and technology leaders with a practical, step-by-step blueprint to architect an AI-ready organization. Attendees will learn how to modernize their data foundations, prioritize high-impact use cases, embed responsible governance into workflows, and align business units for sustainable adoption.
Before You Automate: The AI Revenue Leak
Ferdinand West, West AI
Many organizations rush to buy AI tools before they understand where money, time, and customer trust are leaking from their operations. In this hands-on workshop, New York City AI consultant Ferdinand West introduces the AI Revenue Leak Audit, a practical framework for finding the right problem before choosing the technology. Designed for business owners, entrepreneurs, marketers, professionals, and community leaders at any level of AI experience, the session guides participants through mapping a customer or operational workflow, identifying costly friction, and distinguishing an automation opportunity from a process problem. Using real-world examples such as missed inquiries, inconsistent follow-up, administrative overload, and disconnected handoffs, attendees will prioritize one high-value use case and match it to a responsible AI solution. Participants leave with a reusable audit worksheet, a clearer implementation decision, and a 30-day action plan they can apply immediately—without unnecessary complexity, hype, or technology spending.
Agentic Computing with Claude CoWork for Beginners
David Sachs, Ģtv
This workshop provides a gentle introduction to powerful AI software. Claude CoWork can be used by academics and business professionals to quickly and easily automate entire workflows, create reports, and generate analyses. The focus will be on file organization, document creation, research and data workflows, and more.
Ethical AI, Compliance, and Data Privacy
Ama Gordon, Global Fertility Connections Corp.
This is hands-on workshop helps attendees use AI models safely, and address data security confidently and effectively in their daily work. Through practical use cases, attendees will learn to identify appropriate AI-supported tasks, protect sensitive data, evaluate AI opportunities, and maintain clear human accountability. The workshop also prepares attendees for responsible AI adoption across their teams, strengthen decision-making, and identify opportunities for future operational and strategic value.
From Prompt to Process: Building AI Workflows That Learn from Human Corrections
Richard Tamaro, CASO
Most professionals have used AI to answer questions. Far fewer have turned it into a process their organization can rely on. This session shows how to cross that gap—taking a task like invoice processing, contract review, or form intake from a one-off prompt to a governed workflow with validation rules, confidence scoring, human review, and an audit trail.
You’ll watch real documents move through a live AI workflow: classified, extracted, checked against business rules, flagged when uncertain, corrected by a person, and routed onward. Using a guided worksheet, you’ll map the same framework onto a repetitive process from your own organization as the session progresses.
Designed for business owners, operations leaders, administrators, and professionals responsible for documents, forms, or repetitive information work—no technical background required. You’ll leave with a step-by-step framework and implementation checklist drawn from real production deployments, ready to put to work Monday morning.
Personal and Organizational AI Adoption Strategies
Ethan Truong
As a developer and user of AI tools, AI infrastructure, and AI-embedded features, I will offer strategies for adopting AI when the technology moves so fast that the industry basically becomes unrecognizable every few months. This talk will break down different approaches to AI adoption at both the organizational and personal levels, as well as the outcomes we have seen from various strategies.
Stop Re-Explaining Yourself to AI: Build a Claude Skill Instead
Becky Livingston, Penheel Marketing
If you’ve ever found yourself re-explaining the same task to an AI tool, this session is for you. A Claude Skill is a simple, reusable set of instructions that teaches Claude how you like things done—your brand voice, report format, review checklist, and email style. Once built, Claude uses it automatically.
In this hands-on demo, you’ll learn what a Skill is, see one built live from scratch, and walk away with a plan for your own. No coding required. Whether you run a small business, lead a marketing team, manage community programs, or just want AI to finally “get” how you work, you’ll leave with a tool you can use the next morning.
Twin Yourself with AI
James Brusseau, Ģtv
A team of professors and students from Ģtv have digitally twinned Professor James Brusseau so the AI can answer student questions and lead online discussions in a way that mimics Brusseau’s unique approach. The agent is currently live on the European Union’s platform for online education and also supports Pace classes in computer science and philosophy.
This presentation shows how the tool may be extended for use by private enterprises. What kinds of businesses could benefit from this specific kind of generative AI? How could the AI be built for different kinds of business environments? What personal data do you need to contribute to bring your digital twin to life?