1 online session

Saturday, October 3

10:00 am–4:00 pm

REGISTER ONLINE

This workshop is Part 1 of a two part series. Part 2 is called Your First Automation (and the Ones to Skip) and it's the build session that follows this session.  

Every studio, firm and team has one: the process everyone keeps saying "AI could probably fix" — the proposal pipeline, the review cycle, the client on boarding — while nobody can say what that would actually mean. In one session you'll bring that process, map it the way it really runs, and work out concretely what AI-enabling it means: which steps AI could take on, what it would need to be given, and where human judgment has to stay. You leave with the answer on one page — not a hunch, a map.

This workshop is hands-on throughout with two short demos (10 min each), then structured working exercises — you map your process, mark step by step what "enable" would mean, draft a real instruction for the most promising step, and stress-test it in Gemini with a partner from a different discipline. Group feed back in the final half hour. No lectures on how models work; this is a mapping-and-judgment workshop, not a technology course.

There are four learning goals.

Process forensics — the map. 
A visual breakdown of one real process from your team, surfacing the "hidden" steps that live only in people's heads and pinpointing where work sits, waits, or slows.

Strategic classification — the decision. 
A completed one-page Enablement Matrix: every step marked automate, draft-with-review, or stays-human, with a defensile rationale on every line.

The instruction. 
One tested, artifact-backed prompt — your most promising step converted into a functional instruction that delivers quality output without constant hand-holding.

Operational literacy — the method. 
A repeatable way to audit any future process — the vocabulary and framework to replace "AI-hypotheticals" with clear, phased, actionable plans.

Professional benefit.
Art directors, architects and engineers are all in rooms right now where someone asks "can't AI do that?" The professionals who answer well aren't the heaviest AI users; they're the ones who can map the process precisely enough to say this step yes, that step with review, this one never — and here's why. That skill travels: back at work you're the person who turns AI conversation into an actual plan.

Prerequisites & prior experience needed:
None technical — if you've tried any AI chat tool even once, you're ready. What matters is that you know a real process from the inside: how work actually moves through your team, studio or company.

Supply list

• A laptop
• a free Google account (Gemini) installed and set up before class
•  one real process in mind, plus one or two non-confidential artifacts from it
• pen and paper — first drafts happen off-screen on purpose 
• Zoom and a stable internet connection
• Nothing to buy

This class is limited to 14 students. There will be a one hour break.