Adventures in Conference Presenting

One of the highlights of my career resulted in me being invited by the Association of Proposal Management Professionals to give a webinar (September 18th, 2019) entitled So How Does This AI Thing Work Anyway? It's a tremendous honor and I'm excited to present next week.

A year and a half ago I started working on an AI-powered enterprise SaaS application at PARC. As part of my product management duties, I attended the Association of Proposal Management Professionals' 2018 Bid and Proposal Conference. I only found out about this critically-important conference a couple weeks prior and it was sold out, so I owe Jamie Ninneman, who was Chairman of the Association at the time, a huge debt of gratitude for squeezing me in.

The conference was amazing and fantastically informative, especially for someone new to the industry. Everyone was friendly and helpful, with one attendee even graciously explaining color teams to me. There was, naturally, a bit of talk about Artificial Intelligence and its potential impact. So on a lark, perhaps motivated by a sense to give back, and seeing how this was a non-technical crowd, I asked Jamie if he thought anyone would be interested in a talk explaining how AI works.

A year later, to my astonishment, he offered me a 1-hour speaking slot at the 2019 Bid an Proposal Conference to, believe it or not, explain how AI works. With the guidance and assistance of Jody Alves, an active member of APMP, and Jamie, I assembled a set of slides that both explained the technology, with as few equations as possible (one cannot explain how AI works without some equations), while tying it into the proposal management profession. There was consternation over the math, given the audience, but I'm a firm believer that everyone can learn the basics, and Jody and Jamie had confidence (I think) that I could bring it home.

Last minute Jamie offered to introduce my talk, perhaps in an attempt to mitigate the mathematical jolt everyone was on the verge on enduring. In the end, with a little humor, some dramatic hand gestures (above), a few colorful slides with kittens and puppies, and a wonderfully receptive audience, I'm pleased to say I think it was a success.

Participants rated the sessions they attended, and I was flattered to learn that mine was in the top 10. As such, I was offered an opportunity to present the material as a webinar for the benefit of those who were unable to attend the conference. Webinars are, for me at any rate, a much more challenging format; I enjoy real-time feedback and have a very difficult time presenting in front of 'nobody'. So I'm anxious. That being said, I'm working with the coordinator, Peter Frank, and Jamie and Jody again, who continue to be amazingly supportive, to try to implement some 'audience participation.' We'll see how that goes. I'm also updating my slides to include some new stuff for the folks who already saw the talk.

If you're a non-technical person interested in a 1-hour low-math (not quite zero math) primer on how all this AI stuff actually works, even if you're not in the proposal management profession, consider checking it out.