Finding the right room: lessons from AI // Forward

For years, as a cybersecurity and managed services leader, I have been comfortable in rooms where IT and security professionals gather — talking about Azure deployments, security stacks and compliance frameworks. Attending the AI // Forward conference in Charlotte made me realize something: in this new AI era, I needed to be in different rooms.

The rooms I needed were filled with business leaders and innovators, people who see AI not as a security challenge to be managed but as a transformational tool to be embraced. Because here is the truth I have come to understand. AI does not primarily serve IT and security. It serves people and businesses. If we are going to build something meaningful in this space, we need to be where those conversations are happening.

Beyond infrastructure

In security circles there is a lot of hesitation around AI, and rightly so. There is governance to consider, data loss prevention to implement, and new attack vectors such as prompt injection to defend against. These are real concerns that cannot be dismissed.

But we are entering a world where IT has to evolve beyond backend infrastructure, and beyond the security stack of EDR, firewalls and DLP. The future of IT is understanding how technology serves the business itself — driving innovation, growth and creativity, and bringing employees along rather than leaving them behind in fear.

Validation, feedback and real conversations

I arrived eager to share ideas and learn from other innovators. What I got back was beyond expectations: validating feedback from leaders in the space, and constructive insight that will shape how I think about AI strategy going forward.

Joseph Hanna on what actually differentiates

A highlight was time with Joseph Hanna, Founder in Residence at AI Fund. His sessions — "From Add-On to All-In: +AI is Dead. Long Live AI+" and the AI talent panel — were genuinely transformative. His five commandments resonated deeply:

• Data: it is not about having proprietary data, it is about making connections others do not see.
• UX: human-machine collaboration is greenfield, and your UX will differentiate as much as your intelligence.
• Democratization: build for the eighty per cent who need it, not the twenty per cent who can DIY with ChatGPT.
• Niche focus: go deep in specialization, for repeatability and defensibility.
• Foresight: move from insights to prescriptive strategy.

Bigger, smarter is not the future of AI. The future of AI is better loop.

That crystallized something. The future of AI systems is not only orchestrating workflows or automating tasks. It is creating feedback loops that make those systems smarter over time. Hanna made the point that repeatability is customers' second-biggest concern after security, and that is a guiding principle for building tools people can rely on.

Greg Boone on the human edge

Greg Boone's presentation for Walk West on "AI With a Soul" delivered perhaps the most important framework of the conference:

The Human Edge = AI + Adoption + Acceleration

Technology capability alone means nothing. Adoption is where most AI initiatives fail, and Greg's point cut through the noise:

You can't keep focusing just on your business outcomes. You have to tell people where they fit into the story arc. In the absence of information, we as humans go to the negative. When they hear nothing but your business outcomes, what they really hear is: AI's gonna replace me.

It is why Walk West ran a structured ninety-day AI learning challenge with their team, with certifications, gamification and the celebration of wins. They did not simply deploy AI, they brought people with them. The result was trust: that the team could adapt, that they would not be replaced, and that leadership cared about their growth.

The governance gap

Something I noticed throughout: security and governance are usually an afterthought. It is not glamorous, it goes over most people's heads, and frankly most would rather not discuss it.

There was a moment when Mark Hinkle ran out of time mid-presentation and asked the audience what they wanted to cover, AI governance or AI pilots. The audience overwhelmingly chose pilots. Everyone laughed, but it revealed exactly where the industry's attention sits.

And I understand it. Governance is not exciting. But it is essential, especially when Gartner research shared by Celestine Pressley, former White House CIO, shows that forty-five to forty-seven per cent of AI initiatives fail to deliver the expected returns, and that projects can run to cost overruns of up to seven hundred per cent when organizations commit too early without proper governance and proof of value.

The right rooms, the right conversations

AI // Forward was not just a conference for me, it was a pivot. It confirmed that addressing governance and adoption is foundational rather than optional. It validated putting security and human trust at the center of any AI initiative. And it pushed me to think harder about adoption, UX and the human element.

The conversations there showed me I am finally in the right rooms: where AI is viewed as a tool for human empowerment rather than replacement, where security and governance are enablers rather than barriers, and where the focus is on sustainable value rather than hype.

Those lessons will keep guiding how we build Flowchestra, with security, repeatability and human-in-the-loop design at the core. Because the future of AI is not about replacing people. It is about empowering them.