Agentic AI Lessons from an AI Ops Manager (w/ The AI Collective)
Practical Lessons on Agentic AI
A fireside chat with a practitioner who builds AI agents for a living.
Karteek (Mack) Mackena is Manager of AI Ops at AMA, leading agentic AI transformation. He holds an MBA from the Alberta School of Business alongside a background in product management, applied AI and design thinking.
We're sitting down with him for a moderated conversation about what he's learned. The mistakes. The misconceptions. The moments that changed how his team thinks about this work.
🧠 This talk is for product managers, designers, and executives figuring out where AI agents fit and how to make them work.
WHAT WE'LL COVER
Where smart teams go wrong on agent design: Instincts built on decades of deterministic systems quietly sabotage well-resourced projects.
What AI Native means in practice: Designing for AI from the ground up versus bolting agents onto existing workflows changes the kind of transformation you can pull off.
The one design rule that matters most: If you can't draw what your agent does, you're not ready to build it. Mack walks through why, with examples.
Why pilots beat prototypes: A validation approach that fits how agents behave, different from the software validation approach.
FORMAT
Fireside chat with Mack (~40 minutes), then open audience Q&A. Bring your toughest questions. Submit them live via Slido, voted up by the room.
🤝 Networking from 5:30 PM
🎤 Chat from 6:00 to 7:00 PM
🍽 Food and drinks from 7:00 to 8:00 PM
🎟 Free. Seats are limited.
🗓 14th of May 2026
📍 Edmonton Unlimited, 10107 Jasper Avenue NW, Edmonton, Alberta, T5J 1W8
ABOUT MACK
Karteek (Mack) Mackena leads a team deploying AI agents and the infrastructure needed to make them work. He is the Manager of AI Ops at AMA, with nearly a decade of digital product work behind him. He's now leading agentic AI transformation across employee-facing and customer-facing use cases.
🔥 See you there. 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!
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