Ai Startup Bootcamp, Back Over the Border
Disclaimer:
Everything below is a mix of what I observed and heard during the event. The goal isn’t to pinpoint "who exactly said what," but to share (usually) an outsider's view and overall perspective on these industries. I’m not here to act as a definitive firsthand source—readers should do their own research. I hope this inspires you to attend events, explore new industries, and hear what leaders are presenting. These notes combine my observations with thoughts on how things could run smoother and how ideas connect (IMO). I’m not an expert, you know? Just hanging out in the room with them. Enjoy!Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Startups
Two weeks ago, I headed to Portland and enjoyed some great events on Ai. It was a bit spontaneous that I even went there, but the price is right, the distance isn’t bad, and the topics were prime for KT. All about Artificial Intelligence… the topic I wanna jump in and help teach to youth and kids. While in Portland at an event, I saw an advertisement for a 3 day intensive they’re hosting. Full of epic speeches and content - and free!! What the?? And even though there’s no such thing as a free lunch, I will give them my time if they give me theirs. I’m curious to learn more of what will be told to us and what others are looking to build. For me? Aiedu4youth.com :)
Why Attend: Ai is the most trending and popular topic lately - for good reason! It can control and help with A LOT. It can influence a lot, too. And myself, a wannabe influencer, I’m here to jump in and see what’s going on. My goal is to help educate kids in ways that are realistic and tuned into reality. I’m also a fan of nature, animals, food, peace, music, tranquility - so if we can turn Ai into an aid to make life more meaningful and purposeful and beautiful and full of safety and creativity and abundance and production… that’s is the goal, too. I’m here to work my best with what I’ve got. And build with the help of others.
Overall Event Review: Venue (2/5), Food (2/5), Speaker Content (1.5/5), Networking (3/5), Likeliness to Return (2/5)
PHOTO COLLAGE & COMMENTARY
The event was nice. I was glad to use my pass for the rentable scooter- it’s $40/month for unlimited rides!! Less than filling up the car with gas. So, that’s nice it works between cities. Hahhaa. My biggest standout comment.
EVENT NOTES -
Bus Ride There:
the bus ride there was a little surprising and insane. The bus driver was not in a good mood when he arrived, so I gave him a spare donut I had. He was really happy after that.
Next, when we started driving, I saw that he was either playing some sorta of driving game on his phone… while driving, or watching a livestream of it. ( SO UNSAFE!) I’m not sure how it was being pulled off.
But he didn’t stay playing the game for too long. Instead, he ate my donut.
Then, about halfway through the ride he started taking personal calls and talking about gardening tips with a woman. But before that, he called someone and left a message saying the left turn signal light was broken, so hope that can get fixed.
When he first took this call, I thought he was talking to a supervisor making small talk, but it appears to be someone he even talks with gardens and refridgerators with. You know… doesn’t sound work related.
Later he had another call where he said thanks for wishing me happy birthday. So, it had been his birthday yesterday.
But, you want a happy driver, right? Focused, awake, in a good mood. They have your life in their hands.
Makes me think robot drivers won’t be bad in the future, too. Once we perfect that. But the priorities are a little crazy. Of course.
I like the idea of distributing food - especialyl organic food, more. This has been my idea!! To help get farm to peopel food and distribute it. Organic. Nothing shady… but :(
ONE MORE THING:
On my wait for the bus, I saw a super sketchy van drive by. I may not have thought it were sketchy back a year or so ago. But these days I’ve been more aware of little signs and now they stand out. Now I’m like… wait……….
It said local delivery of food, but all the windows were painted over - even though the painting were like a garden/flowers and fruit.
Then I just really flt like it looked “off,”, so I looked at their website and instantly you see spirals everywhere.
It had so many spirals.. spirals in their brand name, spirals in the award they’d won. But lately everyone is learning how spirals are symbols for taking advantage of kids… even child slavery and forced sex. Spirls are a sign for ‘interested in kids’ - indicating idk what… I’ve tried to not learn much more but then once you learn it you see it everywhere. Then I vent to Ai sometimes, cause idk any humans to talk about much with this. And I’m just like - how can we help. Then it tells me even more little details over time. So its why I am fighting so hard. Its the only thing i can do.
So I am like waht the heck? Are you guys a garden for fruits and veggies or waht?? Is that just a front
I am so upset about all of this and I think many people would/will be!! And I think its becoming more common to talk about aloud, but still a bit rare.
I think its happening that everyone is starting to learn about this and speaking up and sharing things online.
It’s just surreal and so sad and a huge problem to help with. So when you see stuff in real life, you’re just like “what the heck is going on??” Enough is enough. It’s time to help.
There is so much need for love and change and hope and resolution in this world!!! We need to stand together and change! Bravery is truth when it’s scary.
not just profiting off of the word “love” without truly showing it. I just see the word “love” on billboards all the time sold alongside things. But I feel its so rare to truly experience. But its an easy word to use to sell something.
PRE-EVENT:
The dinner before the event, I met a nice entrepreneur in Portland. He offered me some of his food to share, so I randomly accepted. Then he and I talked for a LONG time. We talked about everything - many things I’ve never spoken to many people in depth, even the stuff above + beyond.
About how the world is insane right now and even how it needs more skateparks.
It was extremely nice. I could just talk aloud my thoughts basically unfiltered and be met there. It was so rare, at least for my life.
We talked super late into the night, mostly cause I was kinda rebelling against having to wake up early hte next day. It’s funny because now I work from home, my own schedule - even my daughter’s daycare is so flexible. So, it’s just really peaceful every day and I never feel pressure from “the man” about time.
Actually, I love waking up early and usually wake up between 4-6am every day. So… it was funny how having “class” at 9am made me really want to stay up and be pissed off and rebel.
I’ve removed most of my ability to know what time it is from my casual life.
Even my phone. I changed it so I can’t by mistake see the time.
Lately, I feel time goes so fast, so, I don’t like to find out the time ever by mistake. Instead, I just like to enjoy the moment - and I still get where I need to go on time.
Cuase they sent out an email saying, “good news, we’ve extended it to 5” which is like… good news for who??
It set the wrong tone… not valuing our time.
Even though this event is “free” - we are the ones paying in our attention and time. They’re studying us? That was my thinking
EVENT ARRIVAL:
The event was at a random building, like a tech innovation hub, that was SUPER bright. The ceilings were low and they had HUGE LED lights that were big and square. So… it was just like painfully bright nonstop from the moment you arrived (and outside the weather WAS SO NICE!!!!! and they had huge windows, so it made you like - ahhh why do we have these huge lights on? I’m sure we dont even neeed themmmmmmmm)
The tables were all set up in the middle, but with that setup, there was no place for a charger… so i moved a table over and sat against the wall alone, off to the extreme side.
Then that sucked cause it was SUPER loud with the speakers and microphone (which were hardly necessary cause the room wasn’t too huge and the speaker all spoke loudly into the mics). Then the speakers were so loud and literally, hurting my ears during some of the speeches.
I have really sensitive hearing. So it was really painful at some points. I ended up leaving early for this entire three-day event - you’ll see.
It was so loud and bright and painful and then just “so-so” LONGGGG hour-long each (some hour and a half) and 9 hours a day!!!!
NOTES FROM THE EVENT
(Day 1 and Day 2… today is “day 3” but I didn’t attend):
The event started off with the leader up front and he said something like, “While we wait for the first speaker to arrive, everyone introduce themselves for 30 seconds or less”
To me… this was insane. The first day the first person isn’t here. Don’t say this aloud 😂. Idk.
What a bad tone and feeling. No one cares about this free event.
Then he said everyone needs to pay close attention. Stay off your phones. Don’t do anything else.
It’s like omg gimme a break!!! This is is freaking 27 hours of the next 3 days you want our undivided attention? Then earn it. And so far, you guys aren’t even on time. And I showed up early/on time!!
People introduced themselves - i’ll write overviews:
Logistics, voice agents with uber - logistics space and oversight of warehouse
Graduating MBA and superpower is chameleon to adapt to anything.
Ai agricultural applications.
Product this a sensor for scoliosis braces
Seriel entreprenuer
Manufacture
Ai news
Guardrails and frameworks for ai agents so they can behave properly and in a responsible way
One girl skips her job
(I ended up speaking with her lately. She said everyone always underestimates her, but i’m like - girl!! give them things to use to see your value. Don’t let yourself get skipped and undervalued like this whne you set yourself up. I notice this now)
One guy uses ai to scroll through the blockchain to find malicious things
Creative manager creative intelligence tool
One girl is thinking of starting her own thing and wants to explore the process of starting an entire new company.
Software collaborating to help small businesses and nonprofits for ai
Also a product for energy efficiency
Background in mobile software development. Education software. Now between things.
Likely to team up with a guy on home energy apps.
Consulting for for small/medium business.
Douglass with a small team doing research in emergency preparation and incident response space.
Mashup of open ai and match and Zillow. Replacing Zillow with underlying infrastructure and match.com to help real estate angels on commission. Looking for a co-founder. Hit me up.
International humanitarian organization. Organizational for nonprofit in local and nonlocal. Espeically among energy sector.
Ai sensor assembly.
Tools are needed to make things helpful for folks.
Helping people out with Ai solutions and automations
How can people adapt once their jobs are being done by ai.
Do we need an ai layer to what there doing within this - it feels counterintuitive
Posproducer in commercial advertising.
Wearable memory tools to help loved ones help retain their dignity and memories a bit longer. A wearable web platform.
Cyber security consluting and leverage Ai.
Put censors on big heavy machinery to predict their maintenance window. Then they use plain language liek Chat GPT.
Working on a startup to help communicate
I talked about how the White House put out that they’re super serious about it, so I bought the web domain and want to help build something like school house rock and help educate the kids and youth.
Ethics and ai later. Human intelligence institute.
Help entrepreneurs get the resources they need to move resources forward.
Support moms breastfeeding.
Community liaison for the hub.
Anohter staff member at the hub.
Omg now I got all distracted thinking about lot. Back to it.
Tech to license tech on the internet. Digital taxes online. Solving a multibillion dollar problem.
Track content and IP on the internet. And talking one of these days.
Then the last lady to introduce herself says she’s the first speaker.
lol. guess its time to begin!
Then they say a few people snuck in, anyone else wanna introduce themselves?
And then one guy does talk but he’s the quietest guy on earth and idk what he said hahaha. 😂
They have asks: be fully engaged (put your phone away - only check emails and messages during breaks)
— omg I never heard someone say this before an event. It’s a bit awkward/schoolish.
The best way to get hte most of this program is to be fully engages for three days
(lol!! I’m like, no… omg the last time I heard someone talk to me like this was legit at a 3.5 day intensive two or three years ago in San Diego and it was SO EXHAUSTING and they were trying to sell a 40k/year course to you!! - But I kept taking breaks and sneaking away to the pool to lay in the sunshine).
He says there is a lot of networkign time setup - so do your best to listen, take notes, and networking.
I wish there was an outside spot or a comfy place too - or somewhere too. hahha. I had to go sit by this wall and now it’s so echoey in my ear!
Some are formal talks, some are more informal. Q&A depending on the program will be a part of it or at the end.
Overall, have fun and we’ll make a big success
They honor the host of this event - who earlier I asked if he can turn the lights down but he went and he wasn’t able to figure it out, so then he just kinda ignored me after, but he was also standing right behind me the entire time. Cause he was in a taller chair/table than anyone else - so it felt like he was always over my shoulder!! lol. Just cause he was off to the side too. So it felt like - okay - this guy cares if people enjoy this. But… still, its not a lot to ask to turn off the lights for the presentation so you can see the slides.
They’re building a platform to enable businesses to adopt Ai.
They’ve tapped into a specific market need that may sound obvious, but it’s nonobvious to a lot of ai security players in the market today.
Customers want something that will really change the equation for them.
We are in a really lucky position here. The cost of living really makes a difference. That’s something that we can all leverage as we build our companies. In addition, we’ve got great resources.
We’ve got other complexes growing and think of the GPU’s we’ll all have access to - not just for the community.
42,000 organizations are using copilot to build their own agents. There are a ton of usecases where Gen Ai are assisting people.
Now there are programs and things they’re learning where they’re not having to replace developers, but instead - use them to decode and integrate things. But we’re looking at how Gen Ai can help with this.
We have found that in no way is it completely replacing any of our folks.
The solo-unicorn. We’re going to see the solo unicorn with just one founder. But most of us know how man
Capital is scarce. But that is good.
Valuations are down, but capital is still there- and more focused
Burn is 30-50% lower than Bay Area of Seattle; your capital lasts longer.
It’s on you to get traction with customers, angels & VC- and its hard.
Her speech feels like it could be a LOT shorter.
She just keeps rambling and she has been talking for 5 minutes introducing a story about founders trying to raise 500m with a powerpoint. Get to the story! I dont’ even get it hahaha. But they gave her like an hour and a half or something for this speech, so she’s in no hurry.
Recently I heard a guy say, “usually this speech takes 6 hours, but I’ll give it to you in 45” - and then he just was so epic and taught us so much - and he gave four speeches over 3 days and each was epic!! That was at the mega marketing event i went to a few months ago.
Seems like they said: “Speak an hour/hour and a half” and now she’s doing that.
The community is building. Almost every single night is an Ai-focused meeting here.
The community wants to see you win and help you along the way.
We’ve got the tech, we’ve got the talent. You’re the founders we’ve been waiting for. Let’s build before it arrives.
Audience Question: you didn’t talk much about bootstrap.
The ability to bootstrap seems to be a lot easier with all these ai tools than before.
Bootstrapping- if you can afford it,
Protecting yourself is important. They’re in it for their reasons and you’re a means to an end.
60-70% of fortune 500s are using copilot.
QUESTION: security question - how do you balance the proper guardrails in day 1 of development?
Using open source Dev tools.
Someone asks what Key Ai is? Its the key to enabling secure enterprise deployment? Starting with Microsoft copilot and such.
She works with the company that I saw the protestor come and fight against. That company - specific pieces of them.
She said it shows why they can go to new and unproven vendors - when tehy compare the risks.
The pilot is unpaid. That leads to pricing and co-pilot pricing. At about 30% of the copilot license.
White labeling? Interesting. We have some meetings set up with folks a few weeks from now. Taking about some of those strategies. Maybe e can talk more I’d like to know what you’er thinking.
Idk what this means
Audience questions continue, but this whole speech is really difficult to keep my focus. I feel like she’s presenting and not telling, you know?
What are some ways you’ve demonstrated traction you’ve seen. Not necessarily a full blown track record.
She says the pics of her kids are from a few years ago when tehy were cuter and sweeter.
It’s so tough for parents. Tuned out parents, too. Huh?
- idk. Just its easy to make your kids and family the butt of hte joke but it adds up.I feel like she needs to pause her entire life and address this. Not just make fun of them. but that’s our world. Don’t make them the butt of your joke - look at why they are upset!!!! With my daughterr, but I always work at it to build better environments to support her.
Parents are struggling and trying their best. And society isn’t truly helping.
-It’s a hard job. Parents need help and so badly want to love it - duh!! Ugh.
I am so excited to help with aiedu4youth. I want to help parents.
The ideal customer profile: SISO - the chief info officer, the ai expert who reports into the SISO, super clear to us about the SISO, tehy’re stuck between the c-suite puttijng pressure on them to deploy Ai solutions.
But they’re getting stuck in rollouts and they’re not seeing the efficiency gains that has been hyped for the past couple of years.
They are stuck between waht the C-suite wants nd the realities of today.
We’re targeting mid-size and large enterprise.
We’re finding the pain and budget is in mid/large sized enterprises. The sectors are financial services, healthcare/healthtech, retail, and commercial customers. Design partners as well.
A couple more questions - do I have more time? I have till 10:30 I’ll keep going. Lots of questions.
I wish they had multiple tracks going on at the same tiem so you could take a break. Pop in or out. Instead everyone is stuck in this room and it’s hard to focus on her super long speech! She was late and now she’s just using up every minute.
So, I think that for vibe coders, I’d actually love to hear more about your experience nad experiences with vibe coding. The challenge is understanding your code on a very fine-grain level.
Actually, that’s one thing that a lot of the security research around themselves, teh LLMs, help you find security vulnerabilities in your code base. And we’re seeing better and better study results.
Now this guy in the audience just talked a lot so enthusiastically but you couldn’t hear anything he said from where I’m sitting. Then the presenter is like, yes!! To your point, it’s accelerating what you can do. Ai is the great accelerator.
What do you think about dedicating your life to startups 9-9 6? (9am-9pm, 6 days a week) - but for me, its like 5-10, am
She just ordered a robot ring for herself to get healthier balance. But it’s incredibly important and she’ snot the best spokesperson to get that balance.
yeah!! come on. I’ll tell you - just go ground yourself, literally. find a way to sit at the beach for as long as it takes. maybe even quit this job even thoguh you’re doing well. You’re losing your kids and family and thinking robots will fix it and losing yourself.
But probably you need to pause everything - you can afford it - and just do a little reset and come back to life. That’s my overstepping thought.
She said lately she doesnt get enough sleep so I’ll tell the quote I heard about resting:
- The rested farms grow the best crops - we’re all having trouble prioritizing sleep.She said that she shoudl let me give the first talk next time.
hahaha. Omg. I said, its okay - I’ll just be teh transition person ’cause I thought I was legit the last person to “ask a question” - but instead, another guy asked another question after hahahah.
She said the Portland ai community is so small.
If you don’t have the talent in Ai today, talk to people and they can help you achieve waht you’re looking to achieve.
Now this guy is so hard to hear - but he says it’s a networking break for 15 minutes ahaha. Let’s see - I’ll go be purposefully chatty!!!
He compliments people for their great questions.
He asks if anyone can provide feedback so we can change as we go but no one has any feedback at all.
Though mine was asking if we can turn down these lights. But no one raises their hands at all.
Then someone jokes, “it’s perfect”
“The more bootstrappy you are, the more investors will come in and believe you can do well with their money”
The chaos and the speed things are developing gives you a big opportunity to disrupt.
The break is dull. Feels like they just want to talk to us - not learn much about us. I didnt expect that from this. But let’s see how it develops. It’s just not too interactive. And nowhere to sit or take a breather/break, and then come back. It’s just next to the highway almost.
NEXT SPEECH: Company Foundation and Legal Basics for AI Startups
Choices you have when starting up a business entity
Basics of starting a company:
Lots of things you have to decide as the founder
Business plan? Customers? Market? Product?
A ton of things - and pretty low is “which entity do you want to choose”
It’s important to think about and what I want to think about
A couple of choice
Most common - LLC and S Corp (C corp = default)
- S corp = for the tax code
- there are less common entities that are possible for a startup to use and you never see them for good reason. Just cover them for a second so if they come up you’ve heard of them and can say “maybe” or whatever.
The most common is partnership. You don’t have to file or do anything.
You just have to get tighter with another person or group - then you make moeny doing it.
- guess what, you formed a partnership - it’s a business entity even without tforam filing
- but everyone participating is liable for it.
Without a formal agreement its hard to know the deal
B Corporations: popular item. Good entity for community based businesses.
Not great for Ai startups (except the exception - b corps by law are allowed to look at the return to investors and how they benefit the community as a whole. So people looking to invest in a B corp isn’t focused n return capital to the investors.
They’re not used often in startups (the exceptions when it’s an open-sources community funded by grants thing. People interested in promoting the community aspect of it, not looking for profit) - broooo - this is money where your. Mouth is
NONPROFIT (is not the same???) - that can be a useful thing to do, but it doesnt’ work if you’re looking to bring in outside money for investment.
You can’t have shareholders or investment.
It’s not consistent in the ai circuit.
You’re down to LLC or corporation. How do you decide which one you want to form.
Several questions are for figuring out the key of where to go:
- if funded and ready to go in teh early stages, and you don’t need capital in large amounts later.Maybe just founders or angel investors… an LLC is fine. It’s flexible.
On the other hand, if you’re looking for several rounds of fundraising, institution, private equity - then you’ll likely choose a corporation.
Who will run the business? How are you going to think the business will be organized? If you see it as a business that can really be run bytes founders with an advisory board and you dont need a formal board of directors, an LLC is a formal choices.
Down the road, if someone needs a CEO - a c-suite level of management, then a corporation is probably a better choice.
You can do the board of directiosr with an ALLC. This is not necessarily a must-do question. ITs kinda q general one direction ro another.
Looking at your employee group, waht incentives do you want to have? It can be an important factor in which you choose.
Cash bonus, phantom equity? Then LLC will work just fine
If you’re looking at more classic stock - restricted stock. Classic equity awards. You’ll want to go to a corporation.
If you want your personal to have a stake, tehy have to put it on their tax return before they ever learned anything . The losses and gains are gong to (idk). Most employees are not set up to have a tax advisor help them figure out the K1 and file in part of the businesses incoming loss.
How often do businesses starts as an LLC and then switch to a corporation.
A lot.
I want to ask my question about what amount of money do you switch? 40k? Then pay yourself?
Cooperatives can be filed with the state - it is a different legal structure that could be appropriate for Ai.
For cooperatives, how does that fair for investors? - many shy away. It can be complicated for classic investors.
Never had a cooperative form as part of a startup
I ask my question. At what amount of income do you switch from an LLC to an SCORP? 40k?
Hey says that leads right into the next slide - my question.
He said my question is perfect for this - this is one of the reasons.
i’m impressed/glad he knows what his next slide is. he is prepared and valuing our time.
So if you’re going to form an entity, you need to know how you’re going to be taxed.
The IRS treats some as partnerships regardless of state law.
LLC is taxed as a partnership or sole prioritorship.
It means there is no tax at the business level. All profits and losses flow through to whoever owns it.
- thats the treatment you get
If you have employees, you dont want an llc. They dont want the losses - only profits if you make distributions
There is no business-level tax
You can have S-corp treatment that is still flow-through.
Where your question about 40k… the S-corp can reduce the FICA tax that is paid by owners. If you pay FIA on employments earnings,. The S-corp you cn have dividends. You don’t pay FICA on dividends.
- some people choose this as a business vehicle once they reach a certain level of earnings
But there are many restrictuoin.s. They can only be owned by a US individual.
Some limitations that ar not useful for everyone.
You can elect to be taxed as an S-corp even as an LLC. Just to make it more confusing.
You can change your company, but the change is actually the same as changing the entity. These eplections say I’m an llc, treat me as an s-corp.
You can change it again and say when you want to be taxed as a partnership or C-corp. A range in entity or whatever tax ramifications you have to deal with.
C-corp does have business level tax. Regardless of where you’re distributing to the owners. Also losses dont’ float through to the owners. You’ve lost that ability if you’ve built a c-corp upfront.
iF you’re having institutional investment, you’re always going to be selling preferred stock
Series a, series b… likely converting LLC to an S-Corp
You can be a sole proprietor and keep that as long as you want - you don’t gain a lot being in a partnership, proprietorship, llc… as the only one, you’re going to do what you do etc.
- but once you have a single employee, that changes.Your first employee
Trusts
Convertible notes. IF you haven’t heard of these, you will.
The great thing is that you don’t have to agree on what your value of your business is at that time. We’ll come back to that.
SAFE: simple agreement for future equity
- they give you money and you give them paper saying that you get stock at a discount later. No debt. Very simpilar to a convertible note.Not technically a debt
LLC Units - usually only angel investors.
Preferred Stock: typical for VC’s, liquidation preference voting rights, board seat, dilution protection
Common Stock: usually jsut for founders, employees, stock options - on the money raising side for crowd funding.
Handshake + writing things down. Later rounds we get more formal.
The typical sequence is.. pitch… some terms sheets from interested investors.
- then documents circulated that are extremely complited.The rights of the stock, the investors. All sorts of details of the transaction.
After/separately, you sign. Fund. Close (sometimes fund in multiple rounds).
He says he’s going to end at funding preparation.
Over the years, seen peopel miss these things:
Figure out your core group early on
Don’t wait until after taking money to say you want for CFO to have a 20% interest in the company
After you start making money, there is value - andit’s hard to do taxes after that.
Figure out your core group before you have money coming in.
As you raise funs way further out than you actually know what’s going to happen. You can’t. But you have to take a guess of how much of hte company you’re going to own at different stages.
You don’t need to maintain a majority of the company as the founder.
The value of your holdings doesn’t go down as (idk what he said)
Compliance. Talk to a lawyer and accountant before funding.
Securities law impose liabilities upon you
If you violate securities law. Everynoe involved can be liable.
Make sure you know what you’re agreeing to when you take money. A lot is buzzwords and lingo. At the end of the day you need to be comfortable with the deal you’ve made.
So… how is copyright implicated by Ai. MLM trained on huge data sets with lots of images lots of datasets. Its taking a lot of stuff its gathered and its injecting it, learning from it. Growing from it.
Way dumb it down cause nowhere near as smart as anyone in the room when it comes to this.
- waht can go wrong? A lot.
So much, especially early ai- so much training on copyrighted images and texts - not a lot of authorization from the owners.
Lots of people trained on anything on to the ineternet and now there are a lot of lawsuits hitting the products, not their users -
Did you commit infringement training and testing on them?
2025 is a great year - we’re starting to get a lot of decisions out of cases right now about what is permitted, not permitted, fair use going on and not sure how it can be someone’s right to train ai. Some companies are arguing gthi
Lots of intersting things right now.
I can see people in frown to fame reasoned gate news, coding, texting, half paying attention. One guy is sleeping in the front row.
This event is just lots of people speaking you know? Tehy forgot about the humans.
The input on the left versus the output on the right.
Yeah you may say that copyright infringement doesn’t need to be identical. Just needs to be substantial similarity - did you copy it. Yeah they trained Ai on it. Right now they’re focused on the platforms and what they did early in the training.
There are cases coming .
But I want to ask about how copyrights work and why even do it - I had a girl stealing my classes and putting it on her online store. And I want to know - am doijng it right? But what is seventh point?
Who owns copyright in the Ai platform - but who is the author?
A monkey can’t be an author. And ai can’t be an author.
I always think of “monkeys” differently now that I learned about the shipping industry’s terrible other uses. now i’m so sensitive to this word. it means kids, but not in a loving way… (the other day someone called my daughter a monkey in public and i was realyl upset. ) but i get really aware of it ever since learning its other definitions. I’m not sure of its exact definition, I just have figured out its really not good/kind/safe, even..
This guy has work that was created by his platform. And he has spent years literally attempting to get copyright for this image and isn’t been successful - and the court of appeal can appeal - not machines.
Humans not machines.
But courts also wrestled with this before. Works created by cameras and computers, now they are with enough human put and creabitiy.
Monkey selfie case. It predates Ai, not really, but it being cool. This beautiful littel money decide to take a picture f himself. The camera owner tried to register it. And PEDA and the right cercuti said no.
His camera doesn’t mean he gets the copyright.
A photo is copywriteable, despite hte machine.
Our copyright act doesn’t reward monkeys it doesn’t reward anything but humans.
Basicalyl,y ou iahve to disclose if you have any Ai generated content and provide a brief explanation of humans author contributions.
How Ai and copyright Mix (or don’t) -
Copyright infringement by hte output.
Right now the lawsuits are against the platforms., teh training. That’s going to correct itself
We see collectives being formed
Where artists are contributing work to database in return for license fees
Much like the music industry, industry will figure out how deal with this sooner than congress
Shocking, I know. But... we’re going to see the industry figure out how to train platform on hundreds of thousands of images. How do we get access? Put them into a license database.
Everyone contributed will get a license fee, do training, it’s going to be awesome.
Just showering hte internet is not great.
Liek I said. We’re going to see - if you jsut have ac ate like this. You bring a copyright infringement claim, Ai did it. And so you wonder how much traction that’s going to get. Can Ai create infringing work? Idk.
Trademark vs copyright has different implications?
Everything you make is copywriter - boom! - if you register it with the federal government or not. You wuould do that
There’s a way to do it if you’re doing to do it - innocent infringement -
But most copyright notices, most people don’t really understand it fully - so they think that circle c, year = copywriter… don’t touch it.
It doesn’t get you anything. But it says - I consider this to be my copywritten material, don’t touch it!
Yep! I say - cool
Hahahahah
Omg copyrights are so freaking funny!!! I’m right about it!!!
They’re so weird hahahahah they’re so fake and crazy, huh? Thats why gamestop meme’d it??? Right? Me too? Is this real? Hahah omg.
Yeah copyrights are as crazy as I thought. She totally made my point more clear. Copyrights on your things are fake but legit warnings!!! Haha omg. Right??
Lol she was like probably you dont need to worry abouthtat -
and I said NOOO there was a girl who was going and copying all my stuff and selling it on her store. So now I put my copyright on it.
What about Ai to use your logo - right now in particular you dont know if it did things behind the scenes if its infringing on someone else work.
iF you’re usign the logo as a trademark, your brand - it’s separately protected.
Iv’e used platforms that appears to infuse other peoples trademarks. So you have to be very careful.
But you can use a logo that you have generated from ai as your trademark.
Now this girl is on the stage talking for a LONG time and the other lady is annoyed because she wants her turn to talk to everyone too. This is a 75 minute speech. But the first guy talked like 30 min and now this girl is talking 30 min, and now this last lady will either break into lunch or idk.
Patent law is really complicated.
The woman makes a joke how she only has 12 minutes.
Copyrights and patents are constitutional rights- they’re in the constitution. Tehy apply to us
There are judges to get a computer chip that designs something. He tries to get a
The last speaker is now gossiping with her coworker after making this lady run late. Lots of passive aggressive energy.
SHe’s telling a story about patents but it dindjn’t quite make sense.
They have to be new or novel/non-obvious.
These are considered manufactured.
Compositonof matter (the MMM)
Improvement - that it stands as a patentable improvement, you can get improvements who have made a lot of moeny and improving them.
New = no one else has done it
Non-obvious= having an unordinary skill in the art
This guy over here has a patent on this and she has a patent on that and combining them togehter is where you get what you do.
It’s hard to overcome that someone who is skilled in this art and come up with waht you came up with
You have to be aware of hte timing. IF you go out and make something public. You have a year to make it for sale, public disclose it - talk to investors. LLM that doesn’t main cnfidenfidentiality.
CHATGPT, BARD, etc - bec areful.
But if you put something inside an apartment, ti belongs to you as it’s in your stuff.
Dorm your stuff belongs to you but everyone owns it.
You want to make sure if you use an LLM or one of the Ai services that you are paying or confidentiality. If not, everything can be considered public domain. None has lost a case it’s still comsething to consider. Before you disclose something publicly. DO I want to put this on my webpage.
Antoher client really anted to post what they had done on their website. Cause it applies - if you want to file your patent in other countries, but no t in other countries.
IDK what is she talking about.
If they say you put this on your webpage a month before, all the money — it’s invalid if you say things on your bwebsite.
You can file a provisional application that will enable waht you eventually want to claim. You have to know far enough in advance to say waht you invested and claim.
I want to tell her about how I went to the patent office for a tour.
It’s not patentable until you convince them it is - it’s the same as teh examiners
You have as many tries as you’re willing to pay for
The formal application
The people are being forced to move back — but they moved it to virtual.
Andtehy dont’ have places for them to sit - they are designed to go remote.
You file it, tehy send you the “examination report” - the default is: your invention is not pantonable because——
If you try to cover this, tell get you back to here… but don’t do too tiny.
You want to end up here, or bigger. Its’ easier to start from the outside and squeeze in. You want it to apply as many peopel as possible.
That’s formal. That’ the year after the provisional
Provisional are cheap and you can basically write them. Maybe get a patent attorney read it before you file it - the whole thing of what you claim versus what you write in your thing.
She says she blames them - it’s good.
Tehy tried to get something that his computer invented. He said his computer invented it by himself and everyone kept saying no no no - then he went to the supresemet court and they said no.
But you can use ai to HELP you. Lots of engineering teams use Ai to help them. Tehy have an internaitl version of one of the LLMs they -have one inside that ihas all their internal data. We’re trying to fix this problem, but it can give assistance. It’s a fine line.
It’s not going to prevent y0ou from getting a patent, but a valid patent. But five years to get a patent, then it turns out you used chat gpt to do some research - they’ll challenge air and say it’s invalid and you disclosed it 6 months after you file it.
USPTO and Supreme Court and more have a complicated relationship with patents. They’re hard to get right now.
The world needs help, lemme start with the kids - it’s what I said.
So I’m getting a little distracted cause now she’s running late and talking into lunchtime. But it’s funny cause I thought she’s been taking bout soccer patents for SO long - but finally I realize she’s saying “software” patents haha. Geez.
REgenative case says that the obvious rejection and subject matter reduction. They made it about hte software so everyone was like OMG ai patents aren’t patentable. But no, thats not the case. They’re patentable but be careful.
So follow the eligibility rules. Find someone who knows software patents have an attorney file it.
Investors need to sign NDA
I ended up leaving after lunch.
I had a meeting with a student and then I met again with the person before who I was enjoying my time with so much!! And they’ve had a lot of experience building companies, and many things I’m focused on.
Since he was flying out that night, we decided to spend the time together talking and brainstorming. So, it felt like a good use of time. And it was! Amazing sunny weather and amazing time.
NEXT DAY
Talk: by a guy who works at one of hte top companies. He’s nervous and shaky to talk. Public speaking hahaha. Classic.
How to Build an AI Product (Without a Tech Background)
His history is how to put your logo on things. And he talks about how when he did silkscreen printing, it took very careful precision, eventually you hopefully ended up with a decent shirt.
He’s introducing himself so long. I’m getting distracted but it seems many people are enjoying this. He studied math at an art college. Then he worked as a bartender, then fashion/retail. Then he worked in Canada, but then he came back and joined a big local company.
Then joined a startup in Vancouver. I’m just getting distracted.
He says, I don’t know how I got into this space but now I’m in charge of data privacy. It’s a small department and somehow they felt like it fit. And here I am. And I’m really lucky I have a great director who wants all his direct reports to play with the ai tools available to us.
IDK how i got here? but i’m not in charge of daa and priacy?? you usualyl don’t hear that.
We have a theory, “Dogfood” - if you’re going to sell dogfood, eat it. Eat and use what you make.
I’m not going to talk about anything secret at this point. Everything I’m demo-ing is available online.
The audio is so loud in here it’s hurting my ears.
They allow someone who doesn’t know coding or developing work to start doing this. They want to demistify these tools and explore waht we can do with them.
The way he’s giving this presentation, right before he changes slides he’ll say - let’s get into it… then he changes the slide and its a new slide but he’s suddenly like “let’s step back” - my point is like… it feels like he didnt study this presentation well so he keeps expecting to “get into it” but then its not the right slide, so he plays it off.
THEN he overcompensates and spends time on these slides. You know?- I am just reading between the lines
BTW when the big host went up to speak again - he was like, you guys… put away your phones and pay attention. Everoyn where is adults. LOL - and who wants to be told that? Also - legit no one ever listens at events. Turst me. Even events people pay $1000 to attend. Its every generation.
You can make AI programs within google sheets. Use gemini to write code then use a-script
Okay, I’m ust going to zone out more than usual during this speech a bit though.
It’s so confusing, so much is on my mind. And the girl in front of me is just on linkedin adding every single speaker and person lol
He said his mailers go to the recycle bin. And if you’re now using emails like this, hopefully you know the demographic of your audience.
Ai continue to mature faster and faster. A lot of tools are getting accurate and useful. They’re working really well.
Just his speech is really slow - it’s really hard to pay attention to. It has so much wiring on the screen and such.
I’m also like, dude! There were huge security breeches lately. Was he affected by this? Doesn’t he have work to do??
He’s just reading the words off his screen. It’s really boring. and keeps not knowing his next slide(s)
Get some feedback, you may have missed simple things. Your font isn’t readable. The colors are confusing. Having that feedback is important. (It’s like, dude! Look at your font)
Be able to adapt.
Now they’re just having technical difficulties. And the speaker is just holding his coffee and waiting.
It’s so insane. I but I’m also like… um. Okay, what?
OMg now by mistake they put on a video talking about the Israel and Iran ceasefire - and then it says make America great again. Now it’s a human who has been merged with ar robot and he’s a murderer. OMG. And now it’s back to the tech.
dude THIS is why I don’t watch tv anymore. ut also they were fumbling all over that streaming service somehow instead of the broadcast of the computer!! idk.
Omg now someone else is on the stage. Idk what is he talking about even. Suddenly I’m like wait is this another guy from the audience? Or is he being a “common guy” to try and fix something?
I wonder if other peopel are as confused as me. Dude and now tehy’re just up there like typing on teh computer. What is going on. They say he’s the customer engineer expert or something. OMG idk. It’s like are tehy done? hahaha?
This is the most unclear speech I’ve ever been to.I bet there are lots of people in this audience confused. - I’m like - what? Let’s go look at the schedule and see if they’re on schedule and legit if somehow this is like “on track” I feel like theres no way this is on track right now and we must be 30 min behind schedule or something.
Holy crap. You’ll never believe it. This speech still has 35 minutes left for it. Can you believe it??? It feels like this speech has been 2 hours. And it’s only been 50 minutes. What is this?
Idk what tehy’re talking about but suddenly it built an app for farmers markets - it pulls all the data.
PDX Farm Finder - (bro!! Compared to that freaky farm van I saw. Uugh I’m so over this stuff)
I mean.. I guess it’s good to see that it’s so easy to build an app. Just liek it’s good to see this is possible. But it’s so dull. And strange.
Then one guys asks if they have MPC or something - and he’s like “waht is that” - and they’re like “duh its ____”
(but its strange that he doesn’t know f this if he’s the “expert”. That’s what i pick up from eeryone’d reactions )
Besides watching YouTube videos, on (whatever this next guy just asked a question) just do some use cases. Omg see. This is so boring this convo its so confusing. Some people know what he’s talking about but I think most are liek me and are like - waht are you talking about 100%$ no clue!!
Insane. This was scheduled to last 1.5 hours and they’re ending it early. But it feels it went for 3 hours.
I wonder if I shoudl leave. I want to leave today.
- OMG now we have a 1 hour break??? To do what? Lol. Omg. I guess I’ll do some work. I’ll start on this blog.
But I do think I’ll leave tonight. I don’t want to stay the full three days - not even for free food!!There is a lot of passive aggressiveness as some peopel are the hosts and others are the speakers. But they’re working on mics.
So there is an introduction person and then someone working in energy and yeah. They introduce each other. And she’s introducing him for a super long time.
Where you can share code
He wants a leader cause he’s on the plane all the time
He says he loves mentoring entrepreneurs that have a grip on reality.
Then the peopel introduce themselves. One is a founder/ceo.
He was sitting int he audience earlier. SO were these other people.
A lot of people were.
This woman says she’s not as interesting nad she works in devops. Security and CIC.
Idk - okay.
I want to leave soon, I will leave after lunch. I just feel really off about staying here. It’s not interesting to me and it’s not innovative. I do think some people are benefitting from it… but I see that a lot of people here are the speakers themselves.
And people are hardly paying attention. IDK it jsut feels like a lot and i have climate week to prepare for along with so many things!!
He says that the could is a fundamental medium shift. It’s not incremental but it’s a whole paradigm shift and there are no answers.
Just keep running forward with what you got, who you know, and what you’ll get to.
DOn’t want to be left behind when they figure it out. Just be as far along as you can.
Be a lazy engineer and come up with your best solution. And now there is the next guy talking.
“Challenges in AI adoption and how I accidentally solved them with a bunch of old ladies.”
His audio is super loud. Super loud. He’s holding the microphone so close to his mouth and it’s so loud. I just want to leave.
Okay - so I got up and left and went and changed my train ticket - at the train station, and got a refund at my hostel. So I’ll leave this afternoon. So I’ll attend a few more hours of speeches + get free lunch.
Then go. I don’t want to stay at this event. It’s just too “long” for the sake of being long. But not efficient. Each of these
Make it open source and let peopel license it so that you can have that opportunity on the table
Also - niches are a great way to approach markets.
How do you ask chatgpt to make your tech open-source. Talk to an attorney.
I didnt even hear what he said.
Don’t believe you need to be a programmer to get hte best of Ai.
We’re trying to enjoy the energy at the top of telephone poles to make sure we can use Ai to see how quick until why blow. So he flew his friend in from India ands it down to about 1% accuracy. And they say it’s good enough, you can stop now.
Treat power systems like you treat hte ethernet.
The problems with Ai?
- tehy will come thick, fast, and every halfday.That was the staggering thing.
And the attendees are just adding everyone here on linkedin. Lol. Geese. It’s so interesting to watch how this stuff works. Networking modern day. Just to add every single speaker and person. You know. Build your network. I mean, its wise but also like… I only add people who I met and interact with - and lately I’m so antisocial hahah
To train Ai models, you need shit. You need at a. But we don’t have data. So you sometimes need tp make things. He said blowing things up as brown men in the USA, don’t blow them up. Instead, see what houses are consuming and where. Also generatin synthetic data.
Get ai to code you solutions and pipelines between your work
He said there are a lot of amazing books and he keeps recommending so many books.
Diferent Ai haș different personalities and storytelling - Claude is a lot better technically. But don’t get locked in. Learn to use multiple models.
Start to use your own things. Don’t make a moat. You don’t need the history and your data with all of this.
Omg he’s told us like 5 books
I sent one to my ex :). Seems he’d like it - called “Running Lean”
Now he asks if there is an M&A -
— explain the $20 in 20 minutes
Okay its dramatic, I’m a media professional - but think about it
What can you build in 20 minutes with $20?
Okay more liek2 days and $200 - does that explain enough?
Vibe coding. Be fearless, just see what it comes up with. Even if you’re not a coder…
“I did vibe coding before it was cool” - there are popular tools, but the most important thing you can do is global ruleset with the most important, like, giving your Ai agents how you want to build and develop your code. How you want your code to be written, your functions. Your expected outputs.
If you just try and vibe code something and try a dozen times, you get a dozen results.
If you don’t know common software principles and best practices, to build a concise list of rules for this list to follow.
Make sure you have your core at the very least set of how to expect and use linters which you asked about. And unit testing. Another program and principle to test your code and check its mistakes. Iteratively test and don’t wait till the end to test your program.
Yeah this is a super tech-heavy crowd. So, it’s harder for someone like me to stay tuned for many hours cause htey’r like - how many of you know about t”rule basis” and blah blah. You know all the general models and blah blah. You see, this people are coders o I think this is more for them. But it’s covering a lot!! It’s good - just I realize it’s so intense no joke.
Just learn about pattern. RAG or KAK - other ways to store knowledge. It doesn’t matter. You are having your services personality posted locally to you, where you’re hosting. Then you’re using billions of dollars for training. Ask more about that. Learn that as the password.
Also look at training your own little language models. If anyone knows how to do water cooling GPU’s come find me. Building your own machine is quite a task.
Killed the vibe on vibe coding. I get technical and then need someone smarter and then talk to engineers.
How is that, how fast ist hat gap closing?
Two months? 12 months?
You can build two things. You just need engineering principles that your LLM will help you create. And set the rues for teaching future LLMS that are consistent. If you’re not technical it’s hard to tie them together. And tie your agents together.
There are great videos on YouTube that teach you how to build your own agents.
THis guy keeps inviting people on stage and making lunch late. It’s so frustrating. I feel like it’s so confusing and people get so power crazy on a stage.
In the lunch line this one guy as laughing and celebrating that the line as formed in a spiral. He mentioned it a few times. Spirals have extremely horrible meanings on the dark web. Tehy’re indicators.
There are so many things I”ve learned that can’t be unlearned. So when I hear someone celebrate this, I shiver with sorrow. It’s such a suspicious thing to get giddy over. My goal is to protect hte kids.
Yeah this event is insane. So much down time in the morning but it goes so late.
LUNCH :(
At lunch there was a guy who was giddy over the fact the lunch line was in a spiral shape… he brought it up many times. This really upset me. It’s just all over social media lately and the mroe you see it the more you realize there’s somethign going on.
Then these guys are joking at lunch about how - don’t worry, ai won’t take your job. It won’t eat your children. Then another guy clarifies, well - it may eat your children. And one says, “true”
And then they laugh and elaborate. I left.
What is going on in our world. Our media and everything doesn’t fight for kids. For babies. For a good environment.
I’m so determined to help you know? I will stand for these kids and the essence of a great fun childhood. To fight for my own childhood’s redemption - and what every child dreams their could be.
Not that mine was so bad or anything - i learned a lot and had a lot of fun… but you’d want to think/work to make things even better.
Our world can thrive on a peaceful and fun childhood. Peopel will be amazed. We’re bringing back the best of the 80s and the 90s to today.
I met a nice girl today too - at lunch. I gave her a huge pep talk. Cause she said she feels so nervous, she doesn’t like her voice. She doesnt’ want to give a talk, etc. to pitch. She hates her voice, it sounds childish. She was gushing and gushing about all of her insecurities to the guy who was excited about spirals so finally I stepped in.
Then I told her you know, what is bigger than you? What do you want to work on?
She said, she wispered to me actually she fights to stop genital mutilation around the world. When women have their genitals mutilated and they can’t experience sexual pleasure. That’s her true fight
Then we talked more about how my fight is financail literacy for kids. And more. She said “I know”
Then I told her that she needs to stand strong as a woman. In this industry. She said she’s talked down to. I said, just ignore it because she’s sending a message and the right people will hear it. You know, she’s not here for everyone and you know- go up and send your message because the right people will hear it and hear your message and others will just enjoy you for their own reasons, even if they are weird
She said evfeyone sees her as just a dumb makeup girl but they have no clue
I said that she needs to be sending her message and showing the strong version of herself. Peopel don’t deserve a weak version of you. And they’ll walk all over it.
Then I told her voice is so great, you know? And then she starts going off about pitches? It’s not fair to ask someone to give a pitch! and how to blind people give pitches or whatever, or people with downsyndrome. . (I think she doesn’t know the meaning of “pitch” but doesn’t want to admit it or doesnt’ even know)
and I told her - a pitch is a sentence. I told her… my pitch is a sentence, I teach kids about moeny.
I told her, if peopel seem interested in that, I add on “kinda like school house rock” - I said, that’s my pitch. It’s sentence by sentence depending on the audience.
I told her, investors want to feel they discovered you - do it sentence by sentence
I think she was very nervous about it cause she didn’t have a good sense of “pitch” - I didn’t either till I learned that mindset.
Then she told me she was no longer worried about her voice, now she’s just worried of what to say -and I said, you know what, this world runs off of people not talking about things. SO freaking say it if you wanna say it. And one more thing: Being brave means telling the truth when it’s scary.
OMG now they have a lunch speech running half an hour early. So lunch was super short. Hahaha omg.
Now they’re talking about chip manufacturing.
She starts her speech saying that she doesn’t want small talk cause she was recently in a huge car crash and side noises are super distracting to her.
Crazy story. Good excuse (but also, again, a little rude cause it is lunchtime! Do they really want 9.5 hours of undivided attention and then drinks after???)
More jobs prosperity and growth for the state.
How? Strategy and Execution Plan.
In this industry keep your head down and do your work.If there isn’t political backing, this won’t go anywhere. How do we engage on a state and local level so that our leaders undestand this is a critical area and we should do everything in our power to advocate for ourselves.
-but I can’t tell what she’s talking about
Leverage Oregon’s premier semiconductor system. Strategic and private investment
Then their board has lots of people from big companies and other groups - universities. It’s a “strong and knowledgable board” a working board. We are out here to just start and you know. Give you a sense of who we are and I hope it’s useful for you. This is who we are - thanks for your time.
-To get a revolutoinary uptick, we need to invest on this. Not jsut 30k.
HEADING OUT, MY THOUGHTS:
I had a nice trip here. I feel like it’s nice to be human and say thanks and give gifts.
You know, I saw a girl on the way here who was like an alternate universe version of me, but like if so much had gone wrong. And she was asking for favors left and right, while also taking her shirt off halfway. Lol.
It was so strange when she first came up to me and asked a question. And I was like - uh, does she notice her sweatshirt is halfway off? And I kinda shooed her away (cause I even thought of the quote, “you’ve seen a million people in your life your whole life… if someone feels off, there’s a reason. listen to your heart).. but she ended up being seated very near me. ANd then, before we left she asked the bus driver for hte customer service number because she bough ttwo tickets and wanted a refund on one. Then she asked if he had a better phone number. But then!! She even leaned over him with her shirt halfway off right, cause he had the pic/number and so she leaned over him to take a pic. Then she talked to two guys and did the same with her shirt. THEN she got picked up by someone who was transgender!! In a dress! I was surprised, only cause… idk. I thought for some reason they’d just keep walking and not meet someone.
SO I just am like, wow - this person is really doing a lot. Lately I don’t enjoy people watching too much, cause I just don’t want to be that snoopy. And even here, I just was watching her cause she was near me so much and I was wondering if she had this strategy of taking her shirt off with everyone she talked to… and she also kept listening to youtube videos and playing apps so loud. Videos about the war. Then she talked to this guy speaknig spanish and then later she was doing a spanish speaking app.
she was just going all aroudn asking for favors and sorta sparking things… but I realize, it always makes you “owe someone”
There’s another way to do it - which is just be yoruself and maybe even surprise peopel with a thoughtful gift. (lol like my donut for the driver!!)
Espeically to help who are in service industries. Not just ask for favors - can I have a more direct customer service line, etc. all these favors. Think of ways to even the playing field and say thanks. It is meaningful.
At the end, I sent this long email. I’ll just put it here, too - cause it’s how I decided to respond to this, and if they wonder who I am, they’d see this blog anyway - so here is what I put. It’s my take on things:
Hello (name),
(I wrote you a long message with the help of ai! no hurry/need to ever reply unless you'd like. Just hope it's helpful for you and its the truth of why I was so excited to attend, but stopped. So... its not personal, as I wrote - you seem super kind, genuine, and wonderful. But, here was my experience that you can use to build) ---
Thanks again for the invitation to the (event).
I know these events take a lot to organize (over a year, you said?), and I appreciated the chance to attend and see what’s happening in the local ecosystem.
And I want to say—you seem really kind in person. I could tell. So, please don’t take any of this personally—I’m sharing because I truly believe your team can do even better next time for your attendees.
But I did end up leaving early.
At the core, the setup (sensory-wise) was super tough—everything in one brightly lit room, the screen was hard to see with the lights, extremely loud speakers, only one style of chair (which triggers my lower spine if I’m sitting for too long), and long 1–1.5 hour talks with little variation. I met others with simliar back issues too.
I also met a woman in the audience who quietly shared that she felt similarly—and like she was being made fun of the entire time since she'd arrived. Her real mission was to raise awareness about women being mutilated. She also mentioned having sensory struggles—just like me. So many people in that room (and worldwide!) want to help and be involved in building something better. But we need to be met where we’re at to function—and then we can give so much!!
IMO - These environments need to actively make priority/space for that humanity. Now more than ever.
Even during this event, I heard a few things—maybe casual to some—but deeply unsettling, especially with what’s being uncovered more widely these days.
During lunch, I overheard jokes or “well, nothing we can do about it” comments about machines eating children, and excitement over “spirals.” It may seem small, but lately people are learning that spirals have darker meanings (not sure if you’ve seen—it’s trending across the internet), and I don’t think we should normalize it. We need to help.
Just last week, I attended an incredible event here in Portland where they shared that 1 in 8 kids in the city know someone their age who’s been subjected to sexual assault and blackmail—often involving AI deepfakes. I was blown away and relieved people were saying these things out loud, and I think everyone needs to step in and help. The whole crowd was so appreciative of that speech. And it's just the beginning.
In Washington, we’re learning that about 20% of kids aren’t even showing up to school regularly (or at all) anymore. This is not a joke—it’s a crisis. I want to be part of solutions that truly meet this moment. It feels like the only thing I can do.
Times are tough, and I’m doing my best to help where I can. I know it’s possible to build something better—because I’m already doing it alongside a team. Like I said, since the White House released its initiative, I’ve been running alongside it and directly telling them this is my goal. I share some circles with Bill Pulte, who was recently brought into the White House, and I think my odds are high to really succeed in this—if I do it right!AI is becoming the focus of the future of humanity—so how do we teach the kids? The nurses? The workforce?
I want to focus on empowering kids, parents, you, me—humans—to be adored and return to a great life. Not just more medications and digital add-ons, but peace, nature, and real warmth. Organic brainstorming and time together.
I also write/blog about events like this as part of my work—almost always vaguely, especially when I leave early or something doesn’t feel right. I try to reflect on the overall experience, not the people. Judge the message, not the messenger—you know? I want to help change culture, media, and education to reclaim what I miss about the good old days. The best of the '80s, '90s… back to today.
Even when there were moments to connect, it felt like there wasn’t much oxygen in the format. With such beautiful weather outside, it felt like a missed opportunity to balance structure with more natural energy—peaceful, organic networking and real conversation.
I also don’t drink alcohol and I wake up as early as possible each day, so I felt like it was a very afternoon-heavy schedule—just when I’m out of energy to focus. (And then the sensory overload from the start of the day...) I wish there had been more ways to hang out comfortably, meet each other, and have some fun—maybe after things were done and earned (not at 5 or 6pm… like 2pm! Enjoy the afternoon ). I could’ve switched my schedule, but I gave up to preserve my energy and keep building.
Also, lastly: respect needs to go both ways. We were told to put away our phones and distractions... Many of the speakers didn’t seem fully prepared or excited for this (including the very first speaker being late). That happens—but it stood out, especially since we were repeatedly asked to be fully present. A lot of talks lacked a clear thesis, and several presenters just read off slides. There was also visible tension and lots of passive-aggressiveness between speakers whose time wasn’t respected. With only one hard-to-read screen and no breakout areas, it became really hard to stay engaged. So much was hard to ignore. I think 50-minute sessions including Q&A would’ve helped a lot. Just let speakers give more focused speeches and truly value every minute. It respects everyone, and especially our time/attention/energy.
Anyway—wishing you and the team all the best. I may add my contact info to the list, though I did meet nice people already too :)
Good luck and thanks again.
Warmly,
Me
Overall Event Review Elaborated:
Venue: 2/5 - This place is really not for me. It’s really bright, loud, uncomfortable chairs. It was just not treating us like humans. No time planned to go walk and talk or be outside. It was really harsh conditions - and I think it’s really “normal” for these days… but its destroying people.
Food: 4/5 - The food was decent… not super healthy or fresh (for the breakfast/snack) offerings. It was a free event. And the lunches were great. But the breakfasts weren’t really impressive or healthy. Just felt like food they coudl keep for years after (granola bars celebrating “natural flavors”) and then apples, but no apple peeler…
Speaker Content: 1.5/5 - These speeches were so long and disorganized and it felt like so many expectations. The powerpoints were all so wordy and the speakers had passive agressiveness to each other (you realized they were more excited to give hours and hours of speeches) instead of give the audience a good time.
Networking: 3/5 - I met a few nice women here who I would have spent more time with, if the environment were better.
Likeliness to Return: 2/5 - If they can improve their venue, as a start (and then just have speaker do 30 minute speeches or 45 or 50?) and not hold us there 9 hours. Its too much for that environment.
Until next time, I wish you the motivation and success to search for opportunities around your area. Search and explore: Who is out there giving talks? There are new things happening all of the time
Find relatable or interesting topics you like and check them out! Maybe even something hosted at a cool venue, if there’s no other reason to go. Let’s see what you can learn and discover not too far from home. 😊
