I ended up on a bit of an East Coast tour this year. It’s not officially a tour. It’s just that the AI Community Conference (AICO) came to New York, DC, and New Jersey, and I got to be part of all three. And they were a blast: packed rooms, great speakers, good food, and a lot of people I’m always happy to see.
What you don’t see from the audience is that a small group of us stick together to run these events. Manpreet Singh leads the organizing across AICO, and he’s also on my team for my own event, M365 NYC. When it’s his event, I’m there supporting him. When it’s mine, he’s there for me. You’ll see a lot of the same names on every team below. Organizers help each other out, and it’s a really tight community.
Three events in three months, and one of them was led by someone who was volunteering at my event a couple of years ago. That left me with a question: who’s going to be running these events five years from now?
Stop 1: New York, June 26#
AICO New York was at Microsoft’s office in Times Square, and it sold out, with more than 370 people registered. Microsoft gives us the space, but we still have to cover everything else, so sponsors make the day possible. Withum helped cover the food. Here’s how we described the day on LinkedIn.
For New York, I was very hands-on. I was checking people in at the front desk most of the day, and I didn’t really get upstairs until around 2:30. That’s one of my main jobs at a lot of these events in New York and New Jersey. We have a system that works really well, and it’s usually me and a couple of volunteers. Somebody’s got to sit there, and I don’t mind, because I just crack my laptop open and do some work. Then once it’s time, I go upstairs, have some fun, get some lunch, and chit-chat with people.
That means I missed Peter Ward’s keynote, “The hidden value of asking better questions with AI projects”. I can’t say much about it, because I was downstairs. But I did catch Peter on the last session of the day, the Ask Microsoft & Speakers Anything panel.
The New York team: Manpreet Singh, Diego Domingos da Silva, Haniel Croitoru, Pradeep Raja, Jason Rivera, Pooja Rajpal, Sucheta Gawade, Claire Hynes, Rajaniesh Kaushikk, Uvika Sharma, and me.
Sponsors: Queue Associates, SoHo Dragon, Withum, AI Maitri, and The Tech Platform.
Stop 2: DC, September 11#
AICO DC was at the Microsoft Innovation Hub in Arlington, Virginia. It was a big crowd, mostly from government, and a really engaged one. The Innovation Hub has an amazing theater with a ginormous screen, and Withum, our sponsor in DC too, had Andrea Mondello up there presenting “Why AI Pilots Fail, and What Mid-Market Companies Can Do Instead”.
The event took place on 9/11, so we started the day with a minute of silence in remembrance of all who were lost and the families affected.
My part in DC looked different from New York. I felt a little bad that I couldn’t help more with the planning. The team’s meeting times clashed with personal commitments I can’t move, so I missed a lot of the calls. When I could join, I gave them my opinions and guidance. Every venue comes with its own surprises, and after so many events, knowing what to watch for is what I can bring.
DC is also where I got back on stage. It was my first presentation in at least a year. My session was “Your First AI Automation Pipeline: Documents In, Decisions Out, Built Live on Microsoft AI Foundry”. It was great to get back out there. Then came the final demo, the one that tied it all together, and it failed to send the data to Microsoft AI Foundry. The demo gods got me, but that’s fine. I’m a professional.
Then there was the AI panel, “Beyond the AI Hype: What’s Actually Working in the Enterprise?”, with Craig Harris, Prashant G Bhoyar, Manpreet Singh, Jamie Willis-Rose, and Jay Leask. I didn’t know they’d picked me for it until I got there, and I was thrilled. I felt deeply humbled to sit among Microsoft experts and people in the field, and to have my experience and point of view valued enough to be part of it. I talked about my own experience with AI tools. They give me superpowers, but they give that same power to people without the background, and their work needs checking. I’m hoping that connected with a few people in the audience.
The DC team: Prashant G Bhoyar, Manpreet Singh, Haniel Croitoru, Meron G, and Himanshu Goil.
From Microsoft: Jay Leask and Jamie Willis-Rose. They’re definitely part of the team.
Sponsors: Withum, with AI Maitri as a community sponsor.
Stop 3: New Jersey, September 25#
The last stop was AICO New Jersey, my home-base event and the closest to where I live. It was at Withum in East Brunswick.
I’m super proud of Pradeep Raja. A couple of years ago, he offered to volunteer at my event, and now I’m seeing him run his own. It’s like a passing of the torch. He’s been organizing volunteers and really getting involved with the community in a big way, and this was his first time leading the charge for an event.
I watched him take center stage to kick off the day. That takes a lot. You get up there in front of 50-plus people and tell them why they’re here, what they’re going to learn, and what to expect from the day. This time I wasn’t at the check-in desk. I was there to support him, so I sat in on sessions, which made for a very different day from New York.
Most of the credit for this one goes to Pradeep and Viviana Abadia. They did an amazing job picking the speakers, putting the lineup together, and really creating the experience for us. The rooms were engaged, and people brought a lot of energy and questions.
Part of that lineup was the panel discussion, From AI Hype to AI ROI: What Actually Works in the Enterprise?.
Peter Ward also presented How to Make AI Agents Your New Intern in one of the rooms.
Withum, our sponsor, provided the venue, and Andrea Mondello and her team made sure everybody had plenty of food, drinks, and snacks. The food was delicious, as usual, because Withum always does a fantastic job of catering. This is a big lesson if you run events: when one sponsor takes care of the day, providing the space and paying for the food, you don’t have to go looking for other sponsors. That takes so much pressure off the team.
The New Jersey team: Pradeep Raja, Manpreet Singh, Haniel Croitoru, Viviana Abadia, Uvika Sharma, Jason Rivera, Pooja Rajpal, Rajaniesh Kaushikk, Claire Hynes, and me.
We usually do a little networking afterward, so we met up at Harvest Moon Brewery in New Brunswick.
Why I Do It#
That’s the tour. So why do I keep doing this?
Being on this team makes me feel really good. It makes me feel like I matter. I do a lot for my own event, M365 NYC, where I lead the charge. For these events, I don’t have to be in control. I don’t have to lose sleep at night or worry about delivery times. I can just show up and do one job, and it gives the organizers peace of mind that someone who’s run 50-plus events is there.
I like being included, taking part, and being useful. I’ve sat through plenty of paid conferences and free ones, and I always feel like I have more to contribute. I don’t want to just be there.
Even when I’m sitting in a session, like I was in New Jersey, I like to ask questions. I like to challenge the speaker’s thinking a little and poke at their brain to see how they respond. It’s never in a negative way. It’s about pushing the conversation forward. Sometimes it’s just to get their thoughts on things I’m working on or technologies I enjoy, and a lot of those turn into hallway conversations.
I also know what it’s like to be up front when things go wrong. DC reminded me. So if a session goes quiet, I’ll throw out a question to keep things moving or suggest something, but not so much that it becomes about me. I have to take part. It’s just in my blood.
A lot of the people running these events have been at it for 10 or 15 years. Someday somebody else will have to take over, and Pradeep shows how that happens. He raised his hand a couple of years ago, and this September he was the one standing in front of the room.
If you want in, raise your hand. Every event on Community Days lists its organizers, and you can reach out to any of them and ask to be part of their team.
