AI 201: Why the Prompt Was Never the Problem (w/ The AI Collective)
You took the 101 course. Tool tours, prompt basics, three use cases that looked great in the demo.
Then what Microsoft saw across 300,000 of its own Copilot users happened to you: excitement peaked around week three, and then 80% quietly went back to doing the work the old way.
The problem was never the tool, and it was never the prompt. AI training skips the middle course: applied judgment about where AI fits in your actual job, and how to tell a great answer from a confident hallucination. This session is that missing course, and its core claim is that AI is not a tool skill. It's a management skill.
The six skills of AI 201: task decomposition, context assembly, quality judgment, iterative refinement, frontier recognition, and workflow integration. These are the same skills you already use when you break a big project into pieces, brief a new hire, and check their work. None of them is a prompting technique. As Ethan Mollick puts it: "The best users of AI are good managers. They're good teachers."
You'll learn to treat AI as a capable but inexperienced collaborator: hand it right-sized pieces, brief it like a first-day hire, iterate its 70% draft to 95%, and know where its capability edge runs in your work.
No code. No jargon. You'll leave with a self-diagnostic of which skills you already have and a checklist for Monday morning.
About Tim Rayburn
Tim Rayburn is VP of Technology and Head of AI Transformation at Improving, a full-service IT consulting company headquartered in Plano, TX with offices throughout North America.
His focus is developing business capability to measurably adopt AI through culture, processes, and training. He is a passionate advocate of apprenticeship and mentorship in corporate environments.
He has been awarded the Microsoft MVP in recognition of his expertise and community leadership 11 times, with award areas spanning from BizTalk Server to Azure.
He is an author, and can be found speaking across the nation on leadership, technology, trust, mentoring, and career management. He lives in the North Dallas area with his amazing wife Kate and their loyal dogs Radagast and Dresden.
Schedule
5:00 PM - Set-up, food and beverage, reception
5:30 PM - Doors open, pizza and networking
6:00 PM - Intro to AI Collective and Improving
6:15 PM - Workshop starts (interactive)
8:00 PM - Workshop ends, clean-up begins
8:30 PM - Doors closed
As always, food and drink, engaging conversation, and incredible company will all be provided!
Please be advised: Unfortunately, space is very limited at these community events and we can not always accept everyone we would like to. If you are not accepted to this event, please keep applying! We appreciate your application tremendously and we are looking forward to seeing you at a future event very soon!
The AI Collective is a global non-profit building the human layer for the AI era. We unite 500,000+ leaders, builders, and stakeholders across 300+ forums worldwide to democratize the frontier, build trust, and coordinate how society navigates the rapid acceleration of technological progress.
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