My notes from conference sessions I have attended.
May 11, 2026
Grand Rapids, MI
by Josh Penzell
Language shapes how you think
Models answer culturally differently, depending on the language in which you ask.
Would everyone on your team have the same metaphor for the team?
Theater is the metaphor for Teams + AI. We already fill job “roles” and go through “performance reviews”. Let’s add:
Successful art balances/blends novel elements with familiar ones.
Beyond having business objectives, people have a “super-objective”, which is their personal motivation for doing a job well (e.g., financial independence, bragging rights, medical coverage).
Good Directing involves:
by Coe Lacy
\------/ Organizing and leading work (focus your energy here now)
\----/
\--/
\/ Tactical work <— (delegate this to AI)
Organizing and leading work is where we need to focus our individual efforts now.
Lean into exercising your editorial judgement.
We’re sad. But being sad about technology obsoleting the craft of artisans is not a new human experience.
If you don’t participate, someone else (with less integrity) will. If you opt out of embracing AI, it just means the discourse has one less person with real skills and scruples.
Say goodbye to
Encode what you do into something someone else can see.
Don’t write the prompt, ask the agent for the prompt.
Rethink the norms: we don’t raise the individual plants, we tend the garden.
Splashing in the shallow end doesn’t get us anywhere. Learning happens when you jump into the deep end.
AI-built vs. AI-powered (don’t make the AI do the thing, make the AI make the thing that does the thing (script, code, etc.))
Design it so a tired engineer can debug it at 2AM.
AI is an amplifier, not a simplifier.
Build half of what you think you need, treat the rest as a hypothesis.
The pricing model of $20/month for all-you-can-eat tokens will be gone by Christmas.