Meetings Matter Chatter
Industry trends and topics pertaining to the travel and meetings industry
Meetings Matter Chatter
Generative AI for the Meeting and Events Industry – What You Need to Know
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An exciting conversation with BCD M&E’s Senior Vice President of Global Technology and Product, Ted Stone, and Senior Manager of Business Process Automation, Chris Clark, discussing Generative AI. In recent years, Generative AI has captured significant interest, bringing forth a wave of benefits including enhanced efficiency, the cultivation of innovation, and even boosts in overall happiness. However, alongside its promises, Gen AI poses certain considerations and challenges, emphasizing the importance of an informed approach. Dive into how this cutting-edge technology is impacting the Meetings and Events industry, equipping professionals with insights crucial for the near future.
Well, welcome everyone to the latest episode of Meetings Matter Chatter. I'm your host, Nikki McLean. And today I have with me two guests from our global technology and product department. I have Ted Stone, who is our SVP of Global Technology and Product. Welcome, Ted.
SPEAKER_01Morning, Nikki.
SPEAKER_02Hi. And then I have Chris Clark, who is our senior manager of Brit Business Process and Automation. Welcome, Chris.
SPEAKER_00Morning, Nikki. Thanks for having us.
SPEAKER_02Yes, of course. I'm glad to have you on the pod today. So we are here to talk about a very exciting topic, one that's, you know, getting quite a bit of buzz in the industry about AI and all of that. But I want to know and I want you to tell our listeners kind of what is your background? Like, why are you interested in this topic? Why are we talking about this today? So, Ted, let's start with you. Let's let's talk a little bit about how you got here today and kind of what your background is.
SPEAKER_01Sure. So I would say I probably took a much different route than individuals that are in a similar position that I'm in. So growing up, I was very technical, uh, enjoyed programming computers. They had kind of just come out. Um, but when I got to college, I was not really interested in majoring in computer science. So actually had a major in economics and marketing, and then went back for my MBA in international marketing and kind of started off in account management for an international company. Uh and the best part of my day was when somebody had a computer problem and I would help them with it. So kind of made the decision, it's a good time to change, uh, follow my passion. So started off uh in a new role in technology and had incremental um experiences in different companies within different uh areas of technology. And I've been with BCD M ⁇ E now for 12 years. Um, and really a lot of my work over the years has been in how we can have technology help to solve a problem or help to improve a process. And that's really kind of where um part of my focus is today uh is on how generative AI can help us as an organization uh to put on better meetings, have uh better connection with attendees, and kind of continue to grow in that space.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. That's a really interesting background. Um, economics, yeah, that's really interesting. And you're and you're international MBA. I love it. And Chris, what about you?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I too have had a bit of a non-standard background. So I actually went to school for uh audio video production and started my career out working in uh local news, and then I moved to uh creative, um, and then I moved into a uh kind of an account management role in a tech startup, which kind of got me in tune with technology and also some of the uh kind of finer points of managing clients. Um from there I actually pivoted into an event management um role uh on the back end. So I worked in the back end, and then I uh took an ops manager, kind of front-end ops manager role, and was doing that for uh about six years. Um, and then BCD actually won that business, and I uh have been with BCD now for uh almost four years. Um and in that time I saw uh number one, that meeting industry folks are the hardest working people that I've ever seen. Uh they do so much, they care so much about their their world and making their job a success for their clients. Um, but they also deal with so many manual processes uh along the way. Um so my goal uh in my office manager role and now my my pivot over to technology has been to help these folks out, streamline their processes, bring them efficiency so they can bring their wonderful talent to the customers without being bogged down in those horrible manual processes.
SPEAKER_02Oh, I'm sure they will all love to hear you say that. So that is that is a great value add that you that you're both bringing to them today. So thank you for that. So I've been reading some industry publications, and I know we've just recently put out some press on this, but you recently put out a post around harnessing the power of generative AI and kind of what the benefits and considerations are. So let's kind of just let's let's dumb it down a little bit to um maybe the average listener, and then let's kind of focus it into the lens of the meetings and events world. What do you see as kind of the primary benefits and and what are you offering to customers today?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so we could probably sit here for days and talk about uh all the benefits that Gen AI uh is bringing to the world in large and meeting and industries uh specific. I kind of see it in two different buckets. So there's kind of the operational focus where Gen AI can help, and then there is the attendee engagement where Gen AI can uh uh can can drive benefits. I think maybe for the purpose of this talk, we'll focus on the operational side of it and love to come back at a later time and maybe talk about that attendee engagement side. But really from an operational side, um, you know, in general, we're in the business of human connection. So um we're looking at where can Gen AI help uh help our employees, help our teams to be better. We're not looking to replace them. Uh it's really another tool, a very sophisticated tool in the toolbox. So we're looking at where Gen AI can uh can accomplish three things for our teams. Uh one, drive creativity, two, uh drive efficiencies, and then ultimately increase employee satisfaction.
SPEAKER_02Let's talk about the creativity a little bit, because Chris, you mentioned that a little bit in your background. So can you tell me a little bit more about that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So with generative AI, um where it can really benefit your creativity is helping out with ideation and brainstorming. It it is a tool that you can use to bounce your ideas off, to give you a starting point for agendas, for theming, um, you know, many things, many benefits. Uh, your creative, your messaging. And and using that tool, it can make people you know more creative. It can allow them to process more ideas and think through more things than they would be if they were just doing it themselves. Um, and ultimately you can use those ideas to then, you know, work with your human team, your human customers, your human clients, and augment them further. So uh it really helps you kind of boost that creativity at the front end, which allows you to move forward faster with more ideas than not using Gen AI.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And then Ted, you talked about driving efficiencies, which we know is probably everyone's goal in life is like how can I do something more efficient, quicker, faster, better? Like, talk to us a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so Nikki, as you know, there are a ton of processes uh involved in planning a meeting uh or an event. Uh, and a lot of that is manual, a lot of it is repeatable. Um and really where Gen AI can help is taking those manual pieces and doing the heavy lifting. Uh, you know, like a great example is um we've recently launched uh a new expense tool within the organization, and uh a training was conducted uh via Teams. We are able to take that transcript, run it through our Gen AI tool, and it kind of then was able to spit out uh a training guide from that. So it's something that that would have taken a human probably a couple days to do. We're able to accomplish in a matter of minutes and then fine-tune it from there and put that human touch to it.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Yeah, that's a great example. I think we're all excited about that new expense tool too. Um because we all have those manual expense reports that we have to do. So um, okay, so what are some of the key considerations that um for Gen AI that companies should be aware of in the meetings and events world? Like what are some things that they should be thinking about?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02So so there's we'll let you take that one.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's there's a lot of things to think about when when uh working with generative AI. Um and and the first and probably most important thing to think about is the concept of responsible AI. So AI is very powerful, it can be used for a lot of things. Some of those things it can be used for might not be the best things, the most ethical ethical things. So the the concept of responsible AI is basically the development and use of AI that aligns with established ethical principles. So um, you know, the concept of deep fakes and and you know, using AI to create narratives that didn't happen, uh, you know, false information, things like that are very important things to consider. So when you're looking at your tools, you need to look at what they can be used for, and you need to make sure that your teams are going to use them appropriately. Um and then also from a legal perspective, right? So governments around the world uh are either pushing forward or planning to push forward legislation or regulation around AI and how you can use it. Um the EU was one of the first ones to act, they've pushed something forward and and governments around the world are starting to follow suit. So you have to be in tune if you are going to deploy and utilize generative AI tools, you have to know the legal landscape of the market that you are using that tool in. So that's something very important to uh to keep in mind as well. Um, and then lastly, just looking at the you know, kind of the overall business and customer data, um, again, tying to that legal perspective, uh, how you use customer data, obviously AI is very data intensive, so you have to understand the flow of your data for both your business and also your customers and how AI is processing, how AI is using that. Um, so it's definitely recommended, you know, that you would work with your internal security teams and treat this just as you would for any other tech onboarding. You need to understand how the data is processed, how it's going to be used, and and keep that in mind because of all those legal uh thoughts going forward.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, all those implications. And you mentioned the EU. So has the US come out and said anything about AI yet? Or do you have any insight into that?
SPEAKER_00So there are many uh it's being broached at both the state and the federal level. Um nothing has come forward yet, uh, but there's a lot of talks, and even there's been talks of, you know, f on the on the private sector. Uh, you know, corporations have been asking the government to come in and and regulate AI to make sure that it stays uh above board.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Any other thoughts there, Ted?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think um, you know, those three key considerations that Chris mentioned are extremely important. And you know, you talk about regulations at the national uh level or the local level. It's also important to keep in mind uh the compliance policies within an organization to make sure that you know that the data uh is being managed within those guidelines and also within the guidelines of your customer. So, you know, these key considerations, while they're not the most glamorous part of Gen AI, it's really things that need to have a very tight focus because that are things that are really at the crux of trust within these systems and within clients.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, and I know my team always probably gets annoyed with me because I'm the one that reads through all our agreements with the fine-tooth comb. And I'm the one that's like, did you read this? Did you know this? Did we do this? And then I go back to our legal team and I'm like making sure that we've, you know, we've vetted it through, you know, data privacy, security, information security, all of that. Because as you can imagine, this day and age, there's just so much to consider. And so I think that's something that we just want to be mindful of. And like you said, I think just being responsible and ethical with it, and even just something as simple as, like you said, I want to come up with uh a creative, interesting agenda, but was there anything proprietary that I ran through that? No, likely not, but just to make sure that you're not violating anything that that customer might customer might think like was proprietary about that agenda that you might have run through the tool. You know what I mean? So things like that. I'm always thinking about stuff in the background. So um, yeah, but uh I could bore people with that. We won't talk about that on the podcast today. But um, okay, so let's talk a little bit about more like brand training guidelines. What can you tell me about that, Ted?
SPEAKER_01So those are three important considerations as well. Um, you know, when you put in a prompt, which is the the question that you're asking Gen AI, you'll get a response, which is the answer. And you want to make sure that the response and how you carry that forward ties with your brand. So um, you know, it shouldn't be something that would be wildly different than what you would create yourself. So it's important to make sure that what's coming out of the tool, uh, as you know, our marketing team would say, is on brand. Um, the other thing that we found in terms of training is that building a good prompt is hard. Um, it isn't as straightforward as you know, if you're using it in your personal life and you want to create an invitation to a barbecue, trying to create something in the business sense and having it come out to where it's on brand, where it's succinct, and where it is um addressing the challenge that you're trying to uh to overcome, that's hard. It's a bit of an art and it's a bit of a science. So that's where a lot of our training has been on is really helping individuals um grow that promptability because you know it's garbage in, garbage out. If the prompt isn't good, you're not gonna get a great response. And lastly, is you know, kind of tying into what Chris was saying about responsible AI and uh, you know, the legality around uh the tool and the security around the data, it's really building uh guidelines on how the tool should be used and how it shouldn't be used, or where it should be used and where it shouldn't be used. Um, all of these things in terms of the key considerations are so critical to having a successful Gen AI program within an organization that that's really where I think the focus should be and should start. Um, the outcome or the output of it is almost secondary to building a strong foundation.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, I would agree with you. And I think the question that's always on everyone's mind is how secure are these tools? Like, Chris, what are your thoughts there? Like, are are should be people should people be worried? Are they secure? Are they compliant? Like, what are your thoughts?
SPEAKER_00Well, I I think, you know, that's a that's a multi-tiered question and answer. Um, so that you know, when you look at the tools on the market, first of all, there is a tool for everything. We are we are truly in kind of the the you know, the early adoption stages of AI, and there are uh tools everywhere that can do many different things. Um so the first thing I I will tell in terms of security, uh be on the lookout for these free accounts that are offered, because the the key concept is that if it is free, you are the product. So in many cases, these free accounts, they're gonna take your data and they're gonna use it to train their models. Now, some of some of these free services have privacy policies you can opt into, you can opt out of, but it's something that you definitely need to pay attention to. Again, tying back to that data security and understanding how these programs are using your data, what they're collecting, um, and and how they process that information. So, you know, you you wouldn't want if if you're a company, you wouldn't want your team going in and using a free AI that's then taking all of the data that they're using and using it to train their models. Um, so you have to be on the lookout for those free accounts. Now, uh there are, you know, there are tools on the market that have enterprise and business accounts where you have greater data protections for the companies that are using these services. Uh, so that's what you would definitely uh, again, you want to make sure you are working with your internal security teams to do a full risk assessment of these AI platforms so you can understand what data is going to be going into the tool, how it's secured, how it's processed, how that AI company is going to be utilizing it, and then make sure that you know that all of those risks track with your business objectives and the risk that you're able to accept as an organization. So I think, you know, it's it's really enticing to go out there. Um, you know, I use Chat GPT for my personal life uh, you know, a couple times a week as I'm as I'm thinking things out. Um, but you have to understand, again, how that data is used, how it's stored, how it's processed when looking at it from a from a corporate perspective, and even more so from a meeting perspective, right? You would never want to put PII into an AI system, especially with a free account, um, because of, I mean, there's just a host of other issues that can occur with that, because ultimately these are digital systems, and digital systems can be hacked.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So you have to consider all of those things.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Um, so my next obvious question would be like, so how has BCD ME addressed all of these considerations that you just mentioned? I'm sure we've thought of it, but I'm sure the listeners would love to know more.
SPEAKER_01For sure. So we spent a fair amount of time really coming up with how we address these key considerations and how we go about introducing, building, and growing Gen AI within our organization. So the route we ended up taking to make sure that we checked the box uh and then some on each of those key considerations was to build our own. I won't bore you with the bits and bytes, and we did not build the large language models behind them. We're not an AI research company, we're a service industry in the business of human connection. But what we wanted to do is make sure that we were able to put forth the best tool that we could that's purpose-built for our organization, um, that gives us oversight and visibility into what's going into it, what's coming out of it, and also being able to really tailor it to our unique needs, our way of uh interacting with the business, interacting with our clients. So that was kind of the approach we've done, and we've had great success uh in the usage, and it's really helped to set a foundation for us to continue to evolve our usage of Gen AI uh over the years.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's exciting. And and if I if I might ask, how long was this in the works? Like how long have you guys been brainstorming and working on this?
SPEAKER_01So we've been working with uh a variety of um AI. Uh, we typically call it MARG because a lot of times everything gets lumped into just AI. We call it MARG, which stands for machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, and gen AI. So we've been in this uh sphere for over two years. Um the Gen AI piece has probably been more about uh nine months, um, but again, it's moved very rapidly. Um, and we're excited to see it take off, and we're excited to see it continue to grow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that is so awesome. So, based on the benefits and the considerations that we've been talking about, how are we at BCD M ⁇ E using Gen AI today?
SPEAKER_01So we've really taken a pragmatic approach in terms of how we use it. Um we wanted to begin using it uh as soon as it as soon as possible. Uh, again, keeping in mind the key considerations and being able to address those rather than wait for you know 18, 24 months of some huge Big Bang. We wanted to take a pragmatic approach and start to use it within our operational sphere. Um and really just trying to help the teams, as Chris mentioned, there's a lot of processes, hardworking teams, help them uh achieve more uh and be able to focus on the more strategic aspects of their job. So um, you know, we're really using it on a day-to-day basis in a very pragmatic fundamental way rather than looking at something, you know, uh two, three years down the road that is uh, you know, that takes a long time to get there, and then miss that that time leading up to it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And then Chris, you had mentioned, you know, coming from that operational background and having done events yourself. Like what are some examples of how you've actually used it or how are some of the teams using it today?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so content assistance is definitely uh, you know, a key driver in in how people are using this. So so even something as simple as just email drafting, right? So helping out, you know, writing a prompt to say, you know, give me uh an email to this client explaining these three key topics. Um and and uh that gives you again a starting point. You don't we're not at a place where we can use Gen AI to interact directly with the customer again. That's not something we want to do. We're in the business of human connection, but where this again provides that assistance is it takes you time. So I don't know about you guys, but me, I take a while to draft out a well thought out email because I stumble over my words, I iterate over it multiple times. Um, so using Gen AI to kind of uh give me a starting point allows me to get to my editing point way faster than me stumbling through it first. So it saves me a lot of time with that. And then if you apply that to the field of Events, right? You can use it to throw out a draft agenda. You can use it to create, you know, again, some themes. Give me 10 themes and five uh team building activities for for an event and use that to kind of go over and iterate and generate those ideas. You can use it to generate content for your events. So you can use it to do event descriptions, you know, marketing and things like that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's amazing. I'm a very verbose person myself, and I will need to start using this because I too take a long time to get to what I want to say, and I will draft multiple iterations, especially if it's something really important or something somewhat controversial or conflicting that I need to say. And so this is, I think, a great help. One thing that I just thought of too is we are a global company. So obviously people don't always speak English. So do we have any translation services that are part of this? Or where does that come into play, Ted?
SPEAKER_01Sure. So um we definitely have translation um services baked into our tool. Uh, and that's something that I use on a daily basis uh with my global team where I can I like to um flex my language skills, which aren't great. Uh so I use this a lot to um you know to help with different translations. Uh and I think even from like a a uh from an operations perspective, for a global meeting, you might have to take an agenda, uh, you might have to take various communications and translate them into multiple languages. And there's a lot of tools out there on the market that do this today. This isn't revolutionary within Gen AI. But the nice thing uh is that you're you can have it translate all of the different languages at once so that you're not putting it in there. And specifically, again, going back to the data security with our tool, um, we know where the data is, we know that it's not going into other large language models, we know it's not sitting somewhere randomly on the internet. So we're comfortable in putting in um you know translations or information that might be a little bit more proprietary and being able to translate that and know that it's safe and secure, not going anywhere. So the translation is a is a really great aspect. I think another aspect, um, Nikki, you had mentioned that you'd like to go through documents with a fine-tooth comb. You know, Chris, maybe uh share with Nikki some of the some of the summarization and key point extraction that Gen AI is uh capable of.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so you know, Nikki, uh this won't be lost on you, but the the fun nuance of uh hotel contracting, yeah. Uh especially with the event industry, all the T's and C's. Um so using generative AI uh you can basically dump the whole contract, contract body into the tool and say, give me the key points or summarize these terms and conditions for somebody who's doing the event planning for this program. Um and it will take you know thousands and thousands and thousands of words and sum them down into you know a couple hundred curated from the perspective of what a meeting planner would need to know. Um, so that can save teams, obviously in the event industry, a ton of time uh getting that high-level information. Um, same goes with you know, Ted called uh called it out a little bit before, but meeting notes, you're right. If you have a big uh you know meeting with your clients, your stakeholders for your event, you can take that transcription and throw it in there and say, okay, pull out action items from that transcription uh from that event, and it will give you everything that was discussed and and summarized in a way uh to call out those action items that you would need to accomplish. So um those are just a couple. Again, there are many uh usages of this that could benefit the event industry with that content generation.
SPEAKER_02Oh my God, that is amazing. I literally last Friday was looking at two identical contracts for one of our team members, and she's like, Nikki, I know there's something different with this one clause. Can you help me? I just need another set of eyes. I don't know. It probably took me 30, 40 minutes because I wanted to look at it. I could have dumped it in there and been like, yep, this percentage is off, this clause is different, and I could have probably done it in like seconds. Oh, I cannot wait for this for our team to start using this because then they won't have to bug me and then we're gonna save time. It's gonna be amazing. So this is awesome, awesome. Um, okay, one more thought on you you talked earlier about quality prompting and iteration and how important that is. Is there anything else you want to add there to tell the listeners about that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it it it truly is. It's it's hard to you know really overstate how important it is. Um, you you will get drastically better results if you spend some time iterating and working on your prompts. So, you know, you might type in, you know, drafting uh an event summary, you know, a promotional piece talking about how exciting your event is. If you just say, give me an event summary for the event that's happening in this place and it's gonna have these things, your output is gonna be drastically different than if you start if you work with the tool and say, okay, this is my audience, write it for this audience, write it in this tone of voice, write it in this many paragraphs. Um so you can really use your prompting to go in and fine-tune your messaging, and your output is going to be so much better than if you just throw basics at it. And then the other thing to to do is iteration, right? If you treat it almost as a conversation, uh, you know, if you get an output from the Gen AI and you say, you know, try rephrasing this particular part, or don't give me more themes, but don't include those three. Um, you can continue to iterate on your ideas, and and these things are happening in in seconds, and it's saving you time with each iteration. And as you are iterating, you're learning more about how the tool is operating and how it could provides its answers, and you can kind of continue to refine that talk track.
SPEAKER_02Okay, awesome. Anything else you'd add, Ted?
SPEAKER_01Um, really, just as I mentioned before, what we found from the usage and and looking at the different logs, it's really an art and a science. Uh, you know, all the things that Chris just mentioned in terms of how to structure it is kind of that science side in terms of like uh order of operations within the prompt. But then we've seen some prompts where uh someone just really simplifies it and it returns something incredible. So it's it's really getting in the flow uh and the mindset of building that prompt. Uh and again, it's something that it's a muscle you need to flex. Um but once you once you get there, it starts start to become second nature.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, I think from what I'm hearing you say is we all probably need to be playing around with this a little bit more so that we when we aren't in a time crunch and we don't need something like so urgently, we are getting better at it so that we do have the luxury of when we are ready to quickly use it, then you're you have that, you you've you've worked on your quality prompting, you know how to go through some iterations on things. And I'm not like, oh my God, I need this in 30 seconds to send this email. You know, you've you've had time to kind of work on the art and the craft of the tool, right?
SPEAKER_01So um, you know, it's almost akin to when uh when when the internet came about, you know, it's something that you have to play around with, it's something that you have to explore. And, you know, when people first started doing searches on Google, they probably didn't return that great of a result, or maybe didn't return exactly what they were looking for. But now it's second nature of how you put in a search uh request into Google and get what you want out. So, you know, Gen AI is kind of that same thing. The more you use it, the better you'll get. So yeah. If an organization hasn't launched it yet, um, you know, I say to the listeners in your personal life, get out there and and play around with it. It's not going away. Uh so the quicker you can become more adept at it, uh, the better.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. So for our listeners that may not be using Gen AI, as you kind of just said, or maybe even looking to build their own robust program, what would you suggest to them? What are some next steps for them?
SPEAKER_01So I think step one would be to figure out your why. What are you trying to solve for? Um, what are some of the needs of your teams, your organizations, your clients, and start there. From that point, it's really learning, uh, learning and exploring. There's so much information out there, sometimes it can be overwhelming. Um, but you have to start somewhere and playing around with the tools, at least for me, I'm a hands-on visual type of person, exploring and trying these different tools out in a safe way. Again, free doesn't always uh equate to uh to better, but really trying to do that, network with peers in your industry, network with friends and family uh in other industries to really understand how they might be using it to help you ideate. And then from there, really come up with a strategy uh of how you're going to bring it forward in your company, how you're going to use it, how you're going to address those key considerations, um, and what's your plan for growth. I would say the biggest thing to do is just start. You know, it it's again, it's this is the future, it's part of the future. Um, so you know, the sooner that you're able to actually start, um, the more comfortable you'll get, the more comfortable your organization will get. And having that why and ultimately that strategy are key.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. And you talked about some training courses, you know, free, maybe not always being better. But Chris, are there any courses that you know of out there that people could sign up for or that maybe you've taken or anything like that that's available?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. There's uh as Ted said, there's a ton of material um available on the market. So LinkedIn Learning is a great place to start. They have uh a lot of content on just kind of what is AI, how can you use AI to uh AI for business and also just kind of general education. Um, Google has an AI Essentials course. That's that's pretty good to go through and kind of understand again the application for business. Uh IBM also has an AI Foundations for Everyone course. Um numerous universities uh uh across the country offer free courses. Uh Stanford has one that you can sign up for and kind of go through as well. So there's there is a surplus of educational opportunities on generative AI, uh, general generative AI, and then looking at the meetings industry. Um, MPI has uh an AI enhanced event professional certificate that you can sign up for. Um interesting. Cvent has uh an ebook called uh mastering AI for events, um, and then Bisabo has a really great kind of uh starting point, jump-off point for AI tools for event planners. Um so those are just some resources. Uh again, a quick search will will net you um a lot of of content to go through. And I think you know the other thing to consider here is that we are in a stage of rapid evolution of this industry, of of generative AI. I mean, if you look at from where Chat GPT was with their uh they launched with their uh model three to the general public, uh, and now they're on Model 4 Omega, the difference of what it can do is astounding. Um and you know, I think if we look at where we're gonna be in in just a couple years with the evolution of these tools, um it's you're gonna have to approach AI from a learning perspective with just a continuous improvement mindset. Um, you know, it's very similar kind of to the dot-com boom. There's gonna be a tool for everything, and then the market's probably gonna consolidate and congeal, but then the next huge feature will come, and then you're gonna go right back into this phase. So what you learn today about generative AI will not last you for your career. You're gonna have to continue to learn and educate yourselves uh on this technology because it's going to rapidly expand and evolve.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, absolutely. Thank you for that that advice. Um, all right. So as we wrap up here, kind of final thoughts. You guys have said some great things. I mean, I've written some notes like, you know, just start using it, like, you know, operational focus, the efficiencies. What what would you each say are kind of your final thoughts on generative AI today?
SPEAKER_01I'll let you start.
SPEAKER_00Uh I I think the the my final thought is that uh it's important, the strategy is important. The strategy for deploying AI is very important. And also just the understanding that this is not an omnipotent tool. It cannot do everything. And organizations that try to have it do everything are going to run into some very big issues very quickly. And that's where, you know, again, that pragmatic approach that we've taken, understanding the tool, applying it in the right places is very important because, like I said, it can't fix everything. There could be a point in the future where it can. Um we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Uh, but right now it's it's it's a very powerful tool. It's a huge buzzword in the industry, but it can't solve all of your problems and it cannot replace all of your people.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's an excellent point. And Ted, for you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I would I would probably say that um if you haven't started, uh now's a good time to start. Again, this is um this tool, these Gen AI tools, uh, are the future, but they're part of the future. So, you know, I I think the sooner individuals are or individuals and organizations are able to start, they'll find the right way to use it uh within their organization or within their personal ice. And again, I think the key considerations can't be overlooked because those are really the backdrop of how a company uses this in the right way and uses it within their guidelines or any other regulations uh, you know, at a at a national level. Um and really, again, just start. Yeah. There's no better time than today.
SPEAKER_02Yep, get started. I love it. All right. Well, my final question for you all today is, and I mean, you guys are both so knowledgeable, and I can tell you're so passionate about this, but if you were not doing what you're doing today, what would you be doing and why?
SPEAKER_01So ironically, we've been talking about probably one of the larger advancements of technology uh for the past 30 minutes. We've been discussing that. Um, and if I was not doing what I was doing today, uh, I think I would probably want to have my own painting company. Um during my college years over the summer, a buddy and my a buddy of mine uh and I had a small painting company and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think you know, I still do all my painting today, although I I'm hesitant to get up on the higher ladders. Um, but uh it's just it's it's it's really great to take a room or an exterior and take it from you know, a fresh coat of paint makes a world of difference. So I would say if I was not doing technology, I'd probably be uh out there painting.
SPEAKER_02All right. I love it. And Chris, what about you?
SPEAKER_00No, Nikki, I gotta say this is the hardest question that you've asked. Uh really session. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Out of all of these technical questions. Wow.
SPEAKER_00I would agree. I would agree. I would agree. Well, you know, Ted and I are so we're so in this world it's hard to think about uh you know what goes on outside. But I I would I would you know follow the same course as Ted. I I uh I would look to design waterscapes, so ponds, waterfalls, fountains, things like that. Uh we have a pond at my house, um, and I find them very relaxing, and I think that they're really fun to tinker with and and play with. And uh I did, you know, I would just sit outside in the sun all day, just digging holes, moving around.
SPEAKER_02Did holes, figuring out how to automate it. No, I'm just kidding. But um the water kind of flows on its own, right? It doesn't need automation.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's true.
SPEAKER_02Wow, these were not the answers I was expecting from both of you, but this is really interesting. So that's why I love that's why I love asking that final question, because I think it's fascinating to know what people, you know, would want to do if they weren't working in this industry. So thank you for that. Well, I know we talked about hinting at a future episode, and I definitely would love to have the two of you back because while we talked a lot about operational focus today, I want to dive into the engagement piece on another episode. So thank you so much, listeners, for joining today. And um, sneak peek, I will have them back for another episode where we will dive into more of how we can get the engagement piece out of AI. So thank you for listening. This was another episode of Meetings Matter Chatter.