In November last year I could see a tidal-wave of major AI conferences already planned for Auckland in 2024.

Having previously produced AI-Day in Auckland in 2018 and 2018 we have a ton of AI for business event experience. Plus hosting the monthly AI Show events, and countless others.

But when we looked outside Auckland, especially into the region we felt AI for business know-how was not being evenly distributed. Giving people in the main centres an unfair advantage.

So I set out to rectify this. After all, I run AI NewZealand, not Auckland.AI.

The vision was to share practical, non-technical advice with business leaders around Aotearoa that might not otherwise come to a conference or in Auckland, or who haven’t started on their AI journey and a local event might spark their curiosity.

Running 10 full day conferences around NZ (in just 6 weeks) was certainly an ambitious project. But with the right partners on board I knew it was doable.

I’m incredibly grateful to Nicole Buisson and Lucy Stanford at AWS for seeing the potential and taking the lead partner role.

Asa Cox from Arcanum jumped on board to show SMBs now to automate their back office operations with AI Assistants.

Julie Ryan from CustomD didn’t need much arm-twisting after she showcased their new Enterprise GenAI platform called Caitlyn, transforming knowledge accessibility and engagment.

Anchali Anandanayagam and the team form Hudson Gavin Martin have been amazing partners over the 7 years I’ve been running AI New Zealand. So it was only fitting they joined the roadshow to provide pratical, principals based legal advice.

Taking the roadshow out to the regions connected us with the amazing team at Webfox in Napier. James Simmonds shared their local experience and case stories. TSB CEO Kerry Boielle who partnered with us for the New Plymouth event and Roxanne Salton who0 opened the event. And Joel from Ultra It in Whangarei who shared a ton of practical security advice at the event in Auckland.

We just could not have run such a successful program without all your support.

So what sort of an impact did we make?

More than 700 people attended 9 events over 6 weeks from 345 companies and organisations. More than 10 organisations sent people to 4 or more events.

At the start of every event we asked attendees to self-assess where they felt they were at on their AI journey.

With 1 being ‘I’m just starting, 3 - I’m experimenting with different tools to 5 - I have a plan.

And we asked the same question at the end of the day.

I think we proved the format worked well. Impact scores like this it shows degrees of confidence and skills significantly shifting with just one day focused on AI enablement.

So what next?

We’’re heading to Invercargill on October 9th for a 1/2 day mini-roadshow event in Southland.

Grab your tickets here

The AI for Business Toolkit

All the resources, tools and speaker videos are now published on our AI for business toolkit page.