April 15, 2025 • 57 mins
In this episode of Printing's Alive, Steve Metcalf unveils Imagine AI Live, inspired by a ChatGPT moment. Explore the need for business-driven AI conferences and how AI turns everyone into a startup, as Warren Werbitt suggests. Reflect on last year's event and discover this year's collaboration with Printing United, emphasizing AI's impact on marketing. Notable speakers tackle AI fears and job security. Delve into AI's role in automating workflows, historical tech comparisons, and its effect on the printing industry. Learn about AI's daily benefits and cognitive shifts, with insights from Warren's lead generation experience. Conclude with final thoughts.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:09):
Hey, and welcome everybody to another edition,another podcast of Printing's Alive.
Today we have another special guest.
We are blessed with a guest.
I said I would only use that when John Baileywas on, but I like it so much I'm gonna keep
using it.
Today we have Steve Metcalf.
Welcome, Steve.
Hey Warren, welcome yourself and thanks forhaving me again.
(00:32):
Always a pleasure.
So we have Steve Metcalf, is the co founder ofImagine AI Live.
For full transparency, will say it that I am afounding member, so I was there at the
beginning with him and going along for theride.
And wow, what a ride.
So first, I just want to touch on Imagine AILive.
(00:54):
For those of you that are tuning in for thefirst time and haven't heard of it or seen it,
last year was our first conference.
It was at the Fontainebleau.
I speak a little bit of a French accent beingin Quebec.
Fontainebleau, if you're, you know, true redblooded American.
And it was a year ago at All About AI and blewme away completely out of the water and
(01:19):
actually blew everybody out of the waterbecause I've never been to a conference where
500 people came and nobody left at the end.
Right?
So Steve, just give us a little bit of how didyou come up with the idea for Imagine.aiLive?
I'll also add in that Steve was the founderalong with, you know, late Hans Zulin, the
Print UV, which we just had the Print UVconference, which was off the charts.
(01:42):
But in no time at all, we were talking and thenext thing I know you're putting together this
conference Imagine AI Live.
So tell us a little bit about it.
Yeah, you know, I remember the first time youand I spoke about it was January of last year,
maybe 2024.
And we kind of did our, you know, you know,semi annual check-in with each other.
(02:03):
And you're like, what's new?
Thinking the print review is really the newthing.
But actually, think that was when I firstmentioned this idea for this conference about
AI, Imagine AI.
And if people kind of remember what was goingon, I can't tell you sort of how we came upon
this myself and a number of sort of co foundersand founding members that have come together to
help make this happen.
But we all remember our ChatGPT moments, Ithink, when, you know, at some point we heard
(02:28):
about this thing or got access to this thingcalled ChatGPT.
A lot of us were on wait lists.
It was all over the headlines.
And I remember my chat GPT moment was inNovember of twenty twenty two.
It was after Thanksgiving here in The US and Iread about it, heard about it took me like a
week to get into it when they finally let my mymy me log in and start using it.
(02:52):
And I was completely blown away.
I remember staying up all night with my collegeage daughter and, you know, coming up with all
kinds of funny things.
And I I literally woke up the next daythinking, what can a business do with this?
This is game changing because AI before thatwas not very good, at least the stuff we had
been exposed to.
(03:12):
It was starting to creep into writing andmarketing and things like that.
But know, you either had the realm of machinelearning, which was kind of deep tech, you
know, stuff, or you had this sort of veryimmature, you know, these large language models
that were starting to emerge.
But the GPT, the ChatGPT moment with GPT, Ithink was 3.5 at that time, really just hit me
(03:33):
like a lightning bolt.
Like there's got to be a way to do somethingwith business related to these things.
So I started looking around for conferences andevents.
And there were a lot of great events out therethat were deep tech or there were there was
NeurIPS for all the those were where themachine learning guys go to figure out how to
do more machine learning and weights and biasesand all that stuff.
(03:55):
But there weren't really any conferences thatlooked like they were serving up the kind of
thing where a business leader could go into.
And within two to three days, just go in, getimmersed, kind of like we do with Print UV is
literally, let's bring people that are reallyinterested in this and going deeper in it, get
them out of their daily flow.
Because I think one of the challenges that weall face is that we're all busy.
(04:16):
I mean, we all have day jobs and other thingsgoing on in our lives to really sort of figure
out with this wave coming with AI, probably themost monumental thing that'll happen in our
lifetime.
How do we take advantage of harness it?
How do we find our way with AI for ourcompanies and our businesses?
And we couldn't find the conference.
So we thought, well, we'll take a page out ofthe playbook with print UV and see if we can
(04:39):
apply it to a broader audience.
And that was how it was born.
And then when I mentioned it to you in Januaryof twenty four of last year, it was well under
its way.
So somewhere in that 2023 timeframe that thethe idea started hatching, I remember writing,
some ideas down, reached out to the FountainBlue.
They were they weren't even open yet.
So I got ahold of a salesperson there and overthe summer, and then that led to the first
(05:04):
event, which was a sellout.
And then we did another one day event in NewYork City last year, which was awesome.
But what we found, I think, is that the thegreater impact we can have is to really bring
people into a multi day event where there'stime to network, there's time to discover
companies, ideas, use cases, attend workshops.
(05:24):
We're going to be running those this year.
So that's really what this has kind of emergedinto now is kind of a year round thing.
And we're serving up content.
So we record all of our content and we makethat accessible to people that wanna if they
can't make the event, they could just become amember and access our content, or they can come
to the events and they get the membershipthrown in as well.
(05:45):
Yeah, know.
So what I remember last year was just, well,the whole AI thing when it came out and chat
came out, I mean, AI has been around for a longtime, I think the average person doesn't know
it because they never knew what it was untilchat came out.
And then since chat came out, I've been kind ofblown away because it actually makes my life
easier every day and I've only scraped thesurface of it.
(06:06):
Just making sure what I write and even comingup with ideas that are hard to get out of my
head, you sit down and I mean, listen, youstill got to check everything, you still got to
read everything, you can't cut and paste.
I will tell you, I remember a few peoplecutting and pasting, what they didn't realize
was they never put their name in the bracketswhere it said, put your name in the brackets,
right?
(06:27):
So like the little things that you learn likethat.
But at the conference, I mean, it's likeeverybody in AI is a startup, right?
As far as I'm concerned right now, because it'salso new and everyone's vying for position.
But the amount of people that were therepresenting, the conversations going on.
I mean, was sitting next to somebody, and Idon't want to say any names just in case, but I
(06:50):
was sitting next to two people that actuallymade a deal.
There was like a finance capital company andthen another software guy, AI, and they made a
deal and it was almost like a love fest.
And the other thing was nobody left.
I think if we didn't tell them we had to leave,they'd still be standing there.
So it was really cool.
(07:11):
For the weekend too.
Yeah, I like what you just said.
It's a good way of thinking about it.
Everybody is a startup now.
Again, it doesn't matter if you're the oldest,most established business in the world or
you're an AI startup company that's building,you know, in, you know, AI native.
Everybody has this startup opportunity.
(07:32):
It's kind of like when the Internet first cameout and businesses are trying to decide if it
was a good idea to have a website or not, youknow, and I think that we're all kind learning,
hey, would it be a good idea to bring some AIinto our companies?
And and if so, how and where and who's doing itand what platforms and tools do you use?
And that's kind of what we're trying to to getout there is to is to educate people to to let
(07:54):
them find this, discover this faster.
Then really, I've always said the bestconferences that I've ever attended are
actually networking events, they're justdisguised as conferences.
They have content, so you have something that'ssort of programmed and structured, but you also
have this sort of hive mind of activity that isgoing into it.
That's really
it's nonstop.
(08:14):
I mean, what I liked about the event is goingto sound kind of funny, but you had the light
breakfast and you had the lunch and you hadsomething after.
So A, you're not trying to scramble to gosomewhere and think what to eat in the hotel,
you're getting all the resources you need inyour belly to make it through the day, and it
keeps you there because you're almost afraid togo somewhere to miss something.
(08:35):
Mean, I was walking by trying to talk to everysingle person just to find out who, what, how,
And even in the sponsor room, call it thesponsor room with all of our exhibitors, I
mean, people were lining up to talk toeverybody.
So it was really, really Anyways, it was offthe charts.
And I think it's good for anybody listening toeither come or sign up and be a member and get
(09:01):
the video, because it's the only way you'regoing to find what's going on in AI, where
you're going to hear, unless you spend time on,you know, YouTube looking.
And there was a couple of guys at theconference last year that have regular stuff on
YouTube, Alex Northstar, and I forget, Igor isanother one.
Igor's got 400,000 subscribers almost onYouTube now, he's pumping out content on how to
(09:26):
use everything every day.
Right?
There's Alex Northstar.
He'll help you save one to two hours out ofyour regular day without getting fancy.
Right?
Yeah.
It was just like, I mean, now I have chat andPerplexity on my phone and I use the audio
voice for recording.
And I'll just tell everyone real quickly, I dida LinkedIn post.
(09:49):
I spoke into chat, told it what I wanted to do,prompted it properly, it wrote it, then I
attached an image.
Then in less than four minutes, I had it up andposted where before it would take me twenty
four minutes cause I'm looking and I'm checkingand I'm thinking and I'm doing, right?
So it was really just all amazing.
(10:11):
What turned you on the most?
And then at last year's conference and we'll goto this year's conference just after, but I'm
still reeling from it.
And I still speak to people by the way, who arelike, Oh my God, oh my God, I can't either I
missed it or I can't, I'm so happy I went orchanged my life.
Yeah, I think we really somehow kind of, westruck the right chord with everybody.
(10:34):
The best conferences to me, as I mentioned,there's a vibe, there's a sharing vibe, a
networking vibe, there's an energy to them.
And maybe in part because during the pandemic,lot of us were kind of locked up and we didn't
really get out to these conferences and events.
But it really kind of came back and I thinkpeople crave this in person experience,
(10:55):
especially with AI where it's getting harderand harder to tell what's real and what isn't.
These are these are real people.
These are AI first.
These are some of the best AI first people thatI've come across and I hunt them for a living
now.
This is my job as an AI people hunter.
And like I said-
An AI enthusiast.
Enthusiasts, AI people that some of thebuilding, some of the greatest tools and
(11:19):
companies that a lot of folks have never heardof.
And so that was really, I think, part of themagic of the original Imagine AI Live.
We actually have some of the video footage ofit running last year here, but it just was just
such a great experience.
You know, I usually when you especially whenyou run conference for the first time, usually
(11:40):
there's going to be all kinds of glitches andpeople are upset about something.
There wasn't.
It was like I literally kept checking the frontdesk with our registration team.
I said, Is anybody like unhappy?
Is there?
And they said, no, they were stunned too.
So really, really, I think it was hats off toreally the team behind this.
There are a lot of people that have cometogether that have really made this this work
(12:03):
for us.
Of course, Warren, you're you're one of thoseguys.
But we've got quite a few people that haveliterally stepped in and volunteered to help
us.
More recently, the Printing United team, peoplemight recognize Mark Subers has kind of stepped
in.
They're actually helping us run this printingindustry track this year on May 28 on our
arrival day in the afternoon, is filling uppretty quick.
(12:24):
But yeah, we've we've just got an incredibleteam behind this.
Of course, the hotel makes it easy.
And yeah, but the content you
show up, you don't have to go anywhere.
It's perfect.
It's the content and people.
And, you know, this was the unlock that I waslooking for how do how do businesses get into
AI faster?
How do they do it the right way?
(12:45):
How do they share their concerns, their usecases, their ambitions?
And how do we serve it all up so you can reallylearn?
The tagline I've kind of worked with is learnmore in in in a few days, and most people are
gonna learn about AI in in a in a year or two.
And I really believe true.
It's
true for me.
I'm the perfect example, right?
(13:05):
Because I knew a little bit and talking to you,obviously I know a little bit more because you
talk about it all the time.
And then at the conference, I had whiplashbecause I just wanted to hear everything and
turning everywhere.
And I'm going to give a plug right now topodcastai.com.
The Printing's Alive podcast is done usingPodcast.ai's software, and basically I upload
(13:32):
my recording and they do about 80% of the postproduction and the distribution.
So for a monthly fee, which is crazy, becausewhen I tried to do it on my own, AI couldn't do
it as good or as well.
And AI helps with your English grammar, by theway, and your pronunciation.
But I couldn't do it as well.
(13:53):
And the final product was just, oh my God, it'slike AI is everything's minute, so to speak.
Maybe a little more because you still got tolearn it.
But wow.
So if you're going to do a podcast, check outPodcast.ai.
So let's move right now into our second annualevent, which is taking place very shortly in
May.
(14:14):
Very nice.
The good thing about May is if you stay a day,you can do the little pool party to rest after.
But tell me what's special about this year orwhat's the added bonus that we have coming?
Think,
Yeah, I mean, great question.
And, you know, I think one of the things welearned, so we're doing two full main tracks or
main tracks of content with our main stage,with everything, the networking, the exhibit,
(14:38):
what we call the AI arena.
We have a lot of companies that are going to bedemos and just having discussions with people
about what they're building, and that's allintegrated together in kind of a networking
hall.
But we're also adding this sort of arrival day,which I mentioned, we're running these I call
them AI acceleration workshops.
So if you want a deep dive, we mentioned we'vegot one for the printing industry in
(15:00):
conjunction with Printing United.
We've got sponsors coming in for that as well,which is great.
We also have some we're gonna we're working onone for AI in marketing and advertising, which
is really related to growth.
So a lot of companies are going to hear moreabout, you know, one of the best use cases.
And there's so many great use cases with AI,but it's around growth.
(15:20):
It's around how do you go into to how do youscale marketing?
How do you scale advertising?
How do you do advertising?
How do you get into sort of outreach and someof these things?
And there's a whole series of tools that we'regonna get into.
So look for a track that we're gonna be addingthat's also on our arrival day to kinda deep
dive and workshop that a bit.
And we're bringing in some great people to tohold court on that topic as well.
(15:45):
But that's really what's different.
We're adding these workshops in
kind
of a on the in the main two days of the event,there will also be a side stage as well.
So we'll have stuff for people that, hey, if ifyou wanna go in and kind of immerse yourself
more in maybe the legal aspects of AI, we'llhave some different topical tracks.
Not so much that it's an overwhelming choice,but just enough so there's a little bit of
(16:06):
variety and we can kind of keep people moving,especially we'll do those in the afternoons.
So that's that's really what's coming up.
And, of course, you know, for those that havenever been to the Fountain Blue, the Fountain
Blue, it is a treat among itself.
So it is one of the nicest places and we've gotobviously an incredible rate to stay at this
(16:27):
place.
So we did sell our room rate or booking blocksold out last year early.
So we encourage everybody to get that now.
But yeah, that's but I think beyond that,Warren, it's like the mix of speakers.
We're bringing back some people that just havebeen phenomenal for us.
And we're introducing some new folks.
This guy, Nathan LaBenz, that I'm looking athere really is used to be a red teamer for
(16:52):
OpenAI before most people had access to ChatGPTand built a marketing company on AI called
Waymark, which he'll be talking about just- He
knows his shit.
He knows his stuff.
Dan Soroker is another guy that we've beenhunting Dan.
I've been hunting him personally for about twoyears now.
He's the CEO of a company called Limitless,which used to be called Rewind.
(17:13):
And they're the ones that are recordingeverything and they have these pendants now.
Actually have one over here that you can usequite literally.
I use this at the Print UV conference to recordmy talk.
And so you can transcribe your entire day.
The use cases of this are endless, but these AIwearables that are coming out, and they're one
of the lead horses in this right now,especially in the printing industry.
(17:37):
Some of the use cases to record stuff thathappens, you know, on the factory floor, the
shop floor, that just gets lost, is reallyimportant.
This guy who is right, Peter Serrano, Pietro isworks for Anthropic, which is one of the
leading large language model providers as adeveloper.
And he's also built some amazing things, andhe's building design tools for graphic
(17:59):
designers now, which is incredible.
So he'll we're gonna have this guy on stage andkind of the list goes on.
There's there's business people.
By the way, Andy Sack and his partner wereawesome as keynotes last time.
Like I
think they got everybody on their toes the waythey were talking.
I mean, I remember one thing they said, they'retwo great guys and you could look them up and
(18:20):
see what their backgrounds are, but they said,you know, we're partners and we never have
issues and the odd time that we're together andwe have an issue, and to resolve it, we go to
our third partner.
We go to the third co founder, and everyone'slike, Well, who's that?
And he goes, ChatGPT.
Can't argue with the facts.
I thought that was pretty Yeah,
and it's a mindset change in how to lead now inbusiness in the AI era.
(18:45):
We've got Alicia Bhatti.
She's incredible.
She speaks more from kind of a leadership inthe era of AI, sort of the whole people and
human element.
We've got Michael Moe coming back.
He's a he's one of the one of the mostsuccessful Silicon Valley venture capital
firms.
You might buy your company there if it's good.
We never know.
(19:06):
You have a good company.
Michael's got cash.
And then you've got, as you mentioned, AlexNorthstar.
We bring a lot of these AI educators andinfluencers in.
Kyle Corbett over here is a company called OpenPipe.
He used to work for Sam Altman.
And his company is building a platform whereyou could fine tune a language model.
Let's say you have a large language model, butyou're just you got sensitive data or you don't
(19:30):
want to have it out there.
You don't want be putting your stuff into intoOpenAI all the time or one of these other
platforms or and or you want to train it to bemore specific on your business.
They're building a platform called Open Pipe,which allows you to to fine tune models.
And then of course, Rossman, who is fantastic.
John's an ex Amazon guy who wrote a book calledBig Bet Leadership.
(19:52):
He's going to be coming back to tease us withsome new stuff that he's working on that we're
also involved in.
Yep, there's the book.
Got the book.
Yeah, some familiar faces here.
My my co founder, Chris Madden, Marco.
Marco's one of the foremost, I guess,influencers and educators on how to use the
image generation platforms like Midjourney andall the other things that are out there,
(20:15):
including the video generation platforms.
And we've got a few more people like Jared Lou.
Jared is great.
Exactly.
Dustin Hollywood is a works for a Hollywoodfilm studio.
It's going to be talking about how they'reusing AI.
You know, the list goes on.
So we've got some incredible folks, and we'reabout we we have another six people at least
(20:39):
that need to be added on here that are aregonna be added this week.
Aaron Lanuti is the chief innovation officer ofOmnicom, which is one of the largest agencies
in the world, advertising PR agencies.
And this guy, Lewis Rosenberg, I don't know ifyou've heard about this.
Chris when Chris Madden interviews people, heusually gives me a little ping when he's done
(21:00):
with a with a guest.
He was floored when he interviewed Lewis on ourpod.
I don't even know if the episode is out yet,but they're building this thing called Swarm
AI, which allows you to AI and human teams tocollaborate together or human teams to work in
sort of an enterprise or company setting andallows AI to sort of augment the hive knowledge
(21:23):
of everybody in a company.
And then Nico Klemke, he's coming back.
This is Neural Frames.
They're doing some really cool stuff with AI,music and video generation.
Daniel Cohen Dumani is a guy that's building aplatform to retrieve knowledge.
And I'll have to stop there because that's asfar as we have the roster right now, but it's
(21:44):
filling up like every week.
And every day we're interviewing more speakersand workshop leaders and panelists to join us.
So yeah, that's what's really exciting aboutthis year is now the conference, the word is
out about the event.
It's easier for us to get speakers and we'regetting some incredible people lined up.
Yeah, so the other thing that I liked about itis, you know, with everybody coming and going,
(22:04):
everybody was speaking for like twenty fiveminutes or forty five minutes, maybe an hour,
depending.
So you weren't getting too into it where you'renot going to remember anything.
It was just enough to get you excited to wannahave conversation and keep it going after.
But I away from it because, you know, again, AIa year ago was a lot newer than it is now.
(22:26):
And I mean, even today I find that there arepeople that are fearful of it.
And I'd like to remind everyone that you're notgonna lose your job to AI, you're gonna lose
your job to someone who knows AI more than youor better than you.
It's really important to not be afraid of it,kind of like Windows when it originally came
out and, you know, most of us probably only use6% of what Windows does anyways.
(22:50):
But if you familiarize yourself with the AI andimagine AI, great place to come learn about it,
Then you start to make use of it.
You start to benefit from it because you'reworking with it.
You're not afraid of it, right?
And then, I mean, even me playing with it,forget work wise, just the stuff you do on your
own.
I'll just give you one example for people thatare listening.
(23:13):
So I had to orchestrate a podcast with threepeople from around the world, all different
time zones, send out the email, they all sendit back to me with their local times and when
their availability is.
My first thought was, oh shit, gotta take outan Excel sheet, put everything down there, then
I gotta figure out daylight savings time, thenI gotta figure out where they are.
And then I just said, oh my God, stop.
(23:34):
And I cut and pasted the whole thing intoChatGPT and I prompted it to find me the dates
that were common amongst the three, to give itback to me in my local time.
And it did, and it gave me back like twochoices.
I then narrowed it down to one.
I didn't wanna give these guys two choices togo longer.
And then I asked it to write the email to theseexecutives.
And then I said, could you make the emailshorter please?
(23:56):
Because these guys don't read them, you know,they don't read, they're busy.
And then it made it smaller.
I sent out the email within like thirty sixhours, I had all my replies, everything was
done and boom.
And chances are if I didn't have the AI thirtysix hours later, I'd still be trying to figure
out the time zones.
Oh yeah.
I mean, you're describing it and I keepreminding everybody, this is the worst it's
(24:19):
ever gonna be.
The experience you just had blew your andthat's the worst that experience will ever be
because the stuff gets better literally by theweek in many cases.
And what what you just described was what Iwould call a classic AI jam session where you
just go up and you take a hold of Claude or youtake a hold of ChatGPT or you know, pick your
(24:40):
language model complexity and you just go totown and you just start, you get the work done,
the derivative work.
I love starting with a transcript from a call,so I usually will start with a meeting
transcript, throw it in there and then let's goto town now on the stuff we got to do, you
know, that we talked about.
Exactly.
But the cool thing is that's just the tip ofthe iceberg.
(25:01):
What I talk a lot about these days when I goout there and talk about AI, which I do a lot
to other groups, I've recently been at some ofthe Cranean United events talking about it.
I remind people that, hey, if you find an AIprompt that works, you can turn that into an
agent.
You can literally take a good prompt, turn itinto what I call an agentic prompt, and then
(25:25):
put inputs and outputs.
Every time I give you x, you go do yourcognitive thing, AI, and then you come out with
with y on the other end.
And then we put it together in a flow.
So we could put it together using an automationlayer and there's so many of them available
now.
Don't have to understand programming oranything to use.
These are all no code.
We're going to be showing these at the event.
There's a couple that I really like.
(25:47):
They're similar to Zapier.
Zapier is a great platform for those using it,but some of the newer ones are just AI native
top to bottom.
And you'll hear about platforms like Gumloop,which is a really cool one.
N8N, which is one out of Germany that's opensource, very robust platform.
And then you don't have to stop there.
If you really like that thing, why not build anapp around it?
(26:10):
And AI can help you build apps.
And so I always say that everybody has an appin them somewhere.
If you have enough lived experience, youprobably have more than one.
And you can literally now go out and use toolslike Replit or Bolt or Lovable is another one,
Cursor, if you're a little more hardcore on thesoftware side.
(26:30):
And you can literally create apps.
In fact, the entire Imagine AI Live websitethat I showed you was designed by AI, was
designed by one called vZero, which is great atfront end, and it was built by Cursor using
CloudSana 3.5, which is the language modelbehind Cursor is sort of a coding platform.
(26:50):
And these things, again, this is the worst it'sever going be.
This is getting better and better.
Every time I go make updates to the site, itgets easier now and easier.
And people ask me, Steve, who does yourwebsite?
I'm like, well, I refer to them as we.
When I say we, it's like me and the AI agent.
The team, team AI.
Me and Cursor.
(27:11):
So yeah, it's just incredible.
It's an incredible time to be doing andthinking about this stuff.
If you're running a company or in a business,this is like one of the most incredible times
we've ever gone through.
We thought the internet was pretty important.
The internet was just a staging ground for, youknow, what's happening now with cognitive
intelligence.
(27:31):
Yeah, no, it's, oh my God, when the computercame out and then the internet came out, it was
great.
This is, I don't even know how to explain this.
It's just so, it's almost like, you know, Ialways used to joke and other people too, I
guess, that, you know, we're the future wherethe movie, relating to the movies we watched
back then.
You know, Star Trek, we had the Motorola flipphone.
(27:53):
And the only thing that we've just, and then,you know, now we're in space and we're talking
and even this, the chatting and the Riverside,like, where does it all go?
The only thing we're missing from Star Trek is,you know, you just, where you can transport
yourself from one place to the other.
But it's really, I mean, I keep using it justfor my personal stuff, but in business, I was
(28:15):
doing it to track some things that I was doingcontinuously putting in new updates, and then
it just organizes it for you.
Took the Print UV, I took the whole list of allthe attendees, and before Katie sent us the
Excel one, I took the other one, paper one andI scanned it, I put it in and I drafted an
(28:38):
email to send to everybody, just thanking themfor coming to the show.
And I was like, Oh my God, that was like, youknow, I had like six hours left in the day, I
didn't know what to do.
There's always something to do, but it reallyis incredible.
And when I think about work now, and I thinkabout the printing industry, the first thing
that comes to my mind, only because I think ofthe press, but for all the problems that people
(29:04):
have on printing presses or the digital pressesor whatever equipment, you set up a little
model to have there, the computer there, or youhave it on people's phones, they could talk in
all their problems, all their solutions,reference the date, reference the docket, the
job, the customer, etcetera.
Anyone who ever has a problem similar to thatis gonna go in and put it in pocket or type it
(29:32):
and up will come a few resources that arethere.
I mean, when were in the UV and going aroundand you were on our press, you could be there
for hours and hours and hours just trying tofigure out something so small that somebody
forgot.
Absolutely.
I mean, it's like the knowledge was so preciousand scarce before AI, right?
(29:55):
So you had to have the person with you.
Always had one or two technicians like like myPierre Jelinas comes to mind.
He was probably in your plant quite a bit.
Hundred times.
Montreal.
And Pierre was this walking encyclopedia.
He knew everything to check.
He knew all how to troubleshoot everything on,not just the UV system connected to your press.
(30:16):
He knew a lot about the press itself and the UVprocess.
And so we would we would get calls fromcustomers like, yeah, we want Pierre.
Not that our other techs weren't great, butthey want Pierre because he would start to
learn their environment, their equipment.
Now you don't have to We love Pierre, but youcan clone that kind of knowledge.
(30:37):
You can ingest that kind of information fromyour experts, not just your in house experts,
from your supplier experts.
And you can put that into a private chatbotknowledge base and you would be amazed at how
resourceful that is and how helpful that is.
And I'm working with quite a few companies nowthat are doing just that.
(30:57):
And the results are just getting better andbetter and better.
Listen, I was sitting around just the other dayon the couch, just to be funny, but I was
thinking like, okay, maybe I'm get anothertattoo.
And then it's always, what are you gonna get,what are you gonna get?
And then I thought of, you know, I was thinkingof the Nova Music Festival, October seventh,
(31:19):
and I came up and I just, through prompts, Ihad it design the tattoo, like the turntables,
because it was the music festival, date, that,you know, We'll Never Stop Dancing.
And I did that in minutes and I just kept reprompting to make some changes and adjustments,
and I'm like, Oh my God, how amazing.
(31:40):
And then I go and I use it for work and towrite something or even, so the one thing that,
I was with some people the other day and thenthey were talking about, oh, it's not good
because it's, you know, it's bad for theirindustry.
And, you know, they were lawyers and whatever.
And I'm kind of chuckling because the lawyersdidn't complain when Uber came out and changed
(32:04):
the taxi industry.
Right, right.
Now technology is hitting their industry,they're getting a little like, I don't know,
the hair on the back of their neck is rising,but I took a contract that I was given, I
uploaded it into chat and asked it to act as mylawyer and advisor, and if it could just give
(32:24):
me the good, the bad, the ugly of the contract,and I kid you not, I probably saved $2,500 on
the first read just to pull out the stuff thatwas really relevant, but I was able to go back
with and converse with them on.
And then, you know, maybe before you go tosign, then you need your lawyer to do a final
read to give you You'll
(32:44):
need the lawyers to grease the skids and callthe judge and set things You you still need
lawyers to help you with deal making.
But a lot of that cognitive process, you canall the front end stuff, you're going to see
this in every knowledge intensive industry, allthat front end work or repetitive work is just
(33:05):
going to go to large language models like likeand you're going to see it in advertising.
You're going to see it in big consulting.
You're going to see it in law, you know.
What makes you think about is that thoseindustries have been profiting on an
information scarcity arbitrage for for decades,you know, since inception.
(33:25):
So the experts have all the knowledge and thenthey can build themselves out at high prices to
people that need that knowledge when they needit.
Because it's very hard for everybody to be anexpert all the time in anything.
Well, now AI is an expert in everything.
And it's at PhD level reasoning capability,research capabilities.
It is literally completely disruptive for thoseindustries, but they'll adapt.
(33:48):
They'll figure out the stuff that inadvertising, you still need people to go
produce if you want to actually hire a liveactor, which maybe you still need somebody to
go produce the commercial, you know, and youknow, you've got but with so much of this stuff
can be automated now.
I'll give you an example.
Like I just, you know, I'll just I'll plug itagain, because I always gotta plug it in case
(34:12):
you didn't know, but I wrote a book.
Okay, I didn't really write a book, I had anauthor help me out, a ghost writer, Call It
What You Want.
But even through that exercise, at one point Isaid to him, I said, Are you using chat?
And he said, A little bit.
And I asked him, I said, Are you afraid thatyou're gonna lose your job, right, to chat?
And he said, basically said, Yeah.
(34:35):
And I said to I said, I think you've got it allwrong.
I said, Chat's only gonna make your lifeeasier.
I said, Because now maybe people will come toyou with more of an idea, maybe a partial
transcript of what they're thinking to build iton.
And then you can go from there and expand onit, and then there's still the proofreading,
(34:56):
that's human because you can't trust a machine.
I still find some things when I reread it.
I said, so your job will change.
But a friend of mine said to me, why didn't youuse chat when you do your book?
And then you could have saved some money andnot used, you know, the writer.
And to people listening, you need to know this.
I don't know writing.
(35:16):
So I don't even know if chat's giving mesomething good or not because it's not my field
that I'm in, right?
Maybe down the road, if I write a few books,I'll get the hang of it.
So you still need the experts out there, butthe AI is really good at helping you compile
the data and the information that you need.
So the humans are still gonna be there to giveyou the feeling, to give you the emotion, to
(35:40):
give you the feedback.
AI is not gonna cry when it reads a part ofyour book that's sad.
You know, when you're proofreading it, thenyou're gonna feel it.
Yeah.
So I think it's really pretty cool.
And what you said there just made me think ofthis too, is it's humans still have taste,
Okay, we know what we like and what we don'tlike.
We may not necessarily, you know, music's agood example.
(36:02):
Not all of us can play guitar, you know, like,you know, Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix or you
name it.
But we know what good guitar sounds like whenwe hear it.
And one of the things with AI, these largelanguage models were trained on the entire body
of human knowledge, like the good and the bad,great stuff and the crappy stuff.
(36:23):
And so, in those models, as they write for youor as they produce things for you or do other
cognitive work, they've been in the trainingprocess.
It was very hard to get them, get all of thatout of there.
So they still have kind of bad output or stuffthat's subpar if you're a writer, you know, and
they don't necessarily carry the taste.
(36:43):
Now you can prompt them to have taste.
You can say, you know, you can you can you canask a large language model in a chat session to
behave as if you're the editor of the world'sgreatest publishing house and then take a
critical look at the manuscript.
You can do things like that, but you have to.
Those are some techniques that takes a littlewhile to learn and you're not always going to
get it perfectly from an AI, but you have tothink of it kind of like a multistep process.
(37:08):
Here's the thing we want to write about, expandon it, go do the writing, and then here's an
editor that goes in and checks whether that'sa, you know, which version and for what reason
would you pick or how would you change it.
And what you what I just described there is anagentic flow where you're going to see these
sort of, you know, collaboration of agents thatare going to be all AI based, but each one has
(37:29):
a different role and a different objective,just like humans do.
Yeah, know, it's pretty, I think you just gottajump on the wagon and not pretend that it
doesn't exist.
And even if you just start playing around withit yourself, get a little comfortable with it,
and then once you see, oh my God, it's really,listen, I'll get out for people listening, I'll
give you another thing.
(37:50):
Like, you know, I've got a, for me, I've got alot, I get a lot of great ideas and a lot of
thought in my head that I can't always get outor get to that first sentence, you know, pen to
paper.
And, you know, using chat, I just sit there andI just type or talk in a few things and I'm
thinking out loud.
And then I say, can you help me create my firstlist or first thoughts of what I'd like to, you
(38:15):
know, what I'm thinking and summarize, and itputs it out, and then all of a sudden, from
there, I'm off to the races.
So I've saved that, I'll call it writer'sblock, just people could understand when you're
just sitting there staring at your screen andyou don't know what to do.
But wow, wow, wow, wow.
It's just great.
And then we had young Spielberg there with hismusic.
(38:37):
Yep.
Which was just off the charts.
We're getting it, we're feeling it everywhere.
There's a retrain of kind of the rewiring ofour minds I think that has happened.
I don't if you ever noticed this but like, youknow, when you hang around a lot of creative
people, you know, it could be said probably ina similar way if you hang around a lot of
technical people or engineers.
(38:59):
If you hang around a lot of creative people,especially people that do, you know, creative
for a living, you know, advertising, creativesand so forth, their minds become their pathways
become wired to think of creativity all thetime.
So it's kind of like a musician, the more youplay, the better you get.
The more you use that aspect of your mentalenergy, the better you get, the easier it gets
(39:21):
for you to be creative.
And I think the same applies for using AI.
It's almost like we've been trained our wholelives that we have to do this, you have to
think every problem through until your brainhurts.
No, you don't have to anymore.
But you have to rethink, hey, this would be agreat way to bring to the AI to help and here's
a great way to set it up for the AI, you know,to start me on a process or whatever.
(39:43):
So I think that takes a little time andpractice and you know, two years ago, a year
and a half ago, when I was out there talking topeople, I would always do show of hands how
many people use a ChatGPT or something like it.
And you would, you know, everybody had heard ofit, but a lot of hands went down when we were
saying, Okay, who's using it?
And so now I ask the question because nowpretty much everybody's tried these things.
(40:04):
It's like, well, how many people are using itevery day, multiple sessions a day?
And that's, you know, why wouldn't we use it asoften as we're picking up our phones, you know,
to help us with a with a thing?
Right?
So I think that's where we're starting to seethat sort of broader adoption.
As people get more comfortable and their mindsget sort of rewired to think, what can the AI
(40:26):
do for us?
Life gets easier, you get more productive freetime.
And you're you start imagining all the otherthings that you can do with AI.
Like what if I create a turn this into an app,you know, that just did it for me every day, or
agents and there's so much stuff coming ourway.
You know, we'll be talking a lot about thisyear at the conference too.
(40:46):
Yeah, another area that I really like, and it'sall, I'm thinking just the basic human stuff.
Even when I write an email and it gets a littlelong, I'll take the email and I'll put it into
chat and I'll prompt it to polish it up or, youknow, make the points that I wanna make
evident, or I had to write an email that like,it was a little nasty and I put it into chat
(41:07):
and I said, okay, can you please get thesecritical points across, make me sound
professional, take out the emotion, there's novengeance in it.
And when it finished, I was like, oh my God, ina hundred years, I could never write an email
like that.
Also not a wordsmith, that just made itquicker.
And then, you know, the other people, and witheveryone using AI, because I've had some people
(41:30):
say, Oh, well you used AI.
And I'm like, Yes, so what?
So what?
Everybody's using it now.
It's fine, it's good.
Just reread what you're writing, know whatyou're writing.
If you're questioned, you should know what youwrote anyways and sent off to somebody.
Right?
It's It's
a question like, does anybody question when youpull out a calculator or use a calculator on
(41:50):
your computer or your phone?
Does anybody say, hey, buddy, that's
used to
you should be doing long division by hand on anapkin.
And you're like, no, that would make my brainhurt.
So I think we're going to see the same way aslike, dude, that's a thing you should bring to
AI, just like you should Google it instead ofgoing to find the yellow pages.
(42:12):
You know, like it's just this change that we'reall going to it's all going to feel pretty
normal, I think, pretty soon.
And the young people now that are coming intothis world out of high school and college,
they're going
to be able It's what they know.
They're already getting in trouble with theirteachers but I think the right teachers in our
schools and universities are embracing it.
(42:34):
That this is a tool they're going to have andlet's get you better with the tools.
Let's not, you know, so you're not necessarilydoing something and never checking it, but
you're becoming the orchestrator.
You're still the creator, but you're using AIpowered cognition and computation and reason.
I remember
(42:56):
in school, I got in trouble for cheating.
Now the kids are allowed to bring cheat sheetsinto class, right?
Whatever they can get on a piece of paper, Tohave it on my arm, on my upper lip and
whatever, and then I'd in trouble.
Now it's almost, it's acceptable.
So AI will just take that to another level.
And it's also like a game.
So the more people that like it, the morepeople that use it, the more people will learn.
(43:18):
Yeah.
It's it's it's a beautiful The
the old sort of emphasis on memory wrotememorization of everything.
I think that's going away.
It's like really what we should be teachingpeople is how to be resourceful.
You know, how do you how do you use AI in a ina in a in a good way that helps you accomplish
things faster, get more time back in your lifeif that's what you desire, or maybe you just
(43:41):
want to be 10 x, a hundred x more productiveand work the same number of hours.
I know some people like that.
They work more with AI because they can getmore done and it's like, it's kind of a thrill.
But at the end of the day, it should be a tool,a power tool for your mind is an analogy I've
kind of often used, much like you probably arenot going to use a hand saw over the weekend
(44:03):
where you're going to be working on your, youknow, shed that you're building or the deck
that you want to add to your porch.
You're probably going to be bringing a powertool, you know, a power drill, you know, a
power saw, etc.
And you kind of see where this goes.
So when you start doing the thinking that hurtsyour brain, start bringing those power tools.
(44:24):
And we're already seeing the effects.
Oh, that's great.
Okay, let's let's switch up here.
Have because a lot of people in the world ofprint listen to the podcast.
We've got a special track running at Imagine AIwith printing United, printing impressions, you
know, the main
Printing root word, I think.
(44:46):
That's that's a printing United Alliance, whichis the largest association, at least in this
side of the world for the printing industry.
It's membership based, but they also do a lotwith, you know, for the industry in terms of
shows and expos and leadership summits.
And in fact, there's going be another one onthe inkjet industry.
(45:07):
Inkjet summit's happening, I think in, you'recoming up very quickly in April and I'll be
there.
But the coolest thing is the people that runthe Printing United Alliance are very forward
thinking folks and we started chatting aboutthis, you know, months ago, I spoke at their
(45:28):
event, the expo they did last year in LasVegas, Warren, you were there, we were all And
I spoke on AI, it was a great, they gave me astage, a little side stage for a while.
It was a it was a packed event.
Met some great people out of it, too.
But one of the things that it kind of lateremerged was this idea of let's do an AI event
for the printing industry.
(45:49):
And because we're already running Imagine AILive for basically two and a half, two and
three quarters days, It just made sense tolet's just add a whole printing industry day
track onto that.
And you're going to be helping out as the MC tokeep this thing, you know, on the right rail.
By the way, I'm super excited because likebeing, you're in print with me for a long time,
(46:14):
it is a slow moving industry, right?
So I am super excited to get this littlejumpstart and kick some people in the ass.
Some of them have already awoken, but what anopportunity to have these people that are, I'll
call them leaders in print because they'recoming to this event, and then they'll be able
(46:34):
to take back what they see and what they learnand start to spread it around.
Then we will expand on it.
Because the more people using it in the worldto print, the better it is.
It'll help with production, it'll help withpeople's bottom line.
And I say that because the industrypredominantly has you know, low margin.
So let's use this help them, help the customer.
(46:58):
I've never, you know, I've been around a lot ofindustries in my career, adult life, You know,
the printing industry is really one of the bestfor AI because there's so many different kind
of, I want to call them attack vectors, butmaybe use case vectors is probably the better
way.
You know, first of all, printing itself is acreative industry.
(47:18):
There's a lot of innovation, a lot ofinnovative people already.
The kinds of work that you do.
And there's this aspect of art and creativitythat is sort of the driving force of what goes
into print.
Everything that you see, whether it's, youknow, whether it's printed content, words, or
whether it's imagery, that's all comingtogether and AI can help in all of that aspect
(47:40):
of it.
AI is great at data.
So it's great at wrangling.
You imagine, you know, you had a large factoryat one point, All the data flying off of
machines and the production schedules and allthe headaches, all the variables that go into
the print process, the chemistries, the inksand the coatings, the substrates, the
(48:02):
temperatures, and the humidities, and themachines are getting more and more sensorized
all the time.
What if you could take all that data, and noone's ever gonna like, look at that data
stream, but AI will.
AI would love to do that for you, and it woulddo it dirt cheap, $20 a month.
And then you ask any question you want thatyou're thinking, and you'll get an answer.
How did the machine run
last night?
How did it run?
(48:23):
Yeah.
You know, there you go.
Well, it was an estimating makes it quickeronce you once you've put in your information.
You will never have to do a job again that youdidn't make money on.
Right.
Because you could prompt the AI to tell you,right, analyze cost versus run.
Do you see
get
from customers that we lost money on?
(48:46):
Right, no, exactly.
And then you could actually take that and postit out there so other printers know and you
could help the brotherhood or the sisterhood.
And then you turn around and when I talk toprinting industry leaders, one of the you say,
hey, what problem would you love to solve?
A lot of it's growth.
A lot of it's like growing our company, ourbusiness.
AI is perfect for outreach, for marketresearch, for reaching out to new customers,
(49:11):
unlocking doors, writing emails to them thatdon't sound like they're cringe.
You know, there there's just so many potentialuse cases, and and that's just another reason.
So when this printing industry day or afternoonthat we're having on May 28 will proceed the
general conference, but it's a chance for andeverybody attending can attend the entire
conference.
That's what that's the whole point of it.
(49:31):
But they'll have this sort of afternoon ofprinting industry specific discussion that
we're pulling in some really cool people totake part in panels and lead some talks.
And we've got some sponsors that we'll beannouncing very soon as well.
So Oh,
no, I think it's Oh, man.
I think just AI in general, I mean, it's thetalk of the town to begin with.
(49:53):
But for anyone who has the opportunity to come,anyone in print who gets to jump on it.
The other thing is I just wanna mention withall this AI out there, you still have to be
really careful because there's a lot ofcompanies, call them startups that are, I won't
say scamming you, but they're talking reallyfast and they're getting you to buy in and it's
(50:15):
$23 a month for this or that, a lot of lead genstuff out there, just please still be careful,
still have your guard up, it's not perfectedand you don't wanna spend a whole lot of money
and find out that it wasn't useful, right?
So coming to the conference actually is anotherreason because you're gonna learn here and know
(50:35):
more so that when you're in front of AI orpeople, you'll be able to ask some relevant
questions.
You won't be like that newbie or a stranger.
You'll know some of the lingo and you know howto get around it.
Yeah.
That's a great point.
I mean, we're all getting inbounded with morestuff than we could possibly imagine.
And if you, if you're running a company, yourteam is everybody in your company is getting
(50:57):
inbounded by new tools.
They all like, they all like and sound great.
A lot of these, it's easier than ever to startan AI company.
So you're going to get a lot of these toolsthat may sound very professional and vetted
that aren't, that they just came out ofnowhere.
And one of the, one of the purposes that we'reserving at Imagine dot AI Live is to try to
help vet and curate some of the platforms andtools that are out there.
(51:19):
You know, we're bringing real people that haveinnovative companies.
They're well backed.
If they're not well backed, we'll tell
You know, but you basically get them
great ideas, right?
They're just getting started.
But right.
And we bring very established companies in.
It's a little easier to navigate in thedifferent domains of a company or your
(51:40):
business.
You know, where do we, you know, place somebets or maybe pull people together so that
we're not chasing every shiny AI object thatcomes our way?
Yeah, no, it's so easy to get sucked into thatvortex of it.
You know, you're just looking and listening.
Listen, I've been on a few calls with a few ofthese AI lead gen companies, and, you know, at
(52:03):
the end of the day, actually, I'll just tellyou something that just recently happened with
one, and you guys should be, girls should beaware of it.
I get an email on LinkedIn from the CEO of acompany saying, Hey, this is what we do, would
you like to meet?
I replied and said, Hey, great, would love tomeet, traveling, try me next week.
Then it came back and it said, are youavailable Wednesday for an appointment or an
(52:28):
online meeting?
And I said, no, I'm traveling right now, callme next week.
Then it came back and it said, oh, are youavailable on Monday?
And I went, No, now you can go back and tellyour team how you just lost a really solid lead
by pushing it too far, because they didn'ttrain their AI to respond to the right response
(52:52):
because they had me, I was in.
And after I was done.
Yep.
Now these AI agents that help do your calendar,they do outreach for you.
They're coming fast and furious and we'reactually gonna be dogfooding a couple of these
for ImagineIFI.
I don't think I've even told you about it yet,but we've got a couple on the docket that we're
going to.
(53:12):
One of our sponsors is a company calledIgnitech.
They were there.
Eric Vaughn, their CEO, spoke at both of ourevents.
And they're bringing out some, they've alreadystarted bringing it to market, several
different AI tools that, you know, are usingbasically, you know, video avatars as sort of
(53:33):
your, you know, it's it's taking chatbot into awhole another level is one use case.
But you could also internally clone an avatar.
If you're the CEO of a company, you can trainan avatar on your likeness and have to give a
talk to your entire company every Mondaymorning and you just have a you just have a
chat script go into it or or or you haveanother agent that is answering your emails all
(53:54):
day long and just learns how to answer yourinbox and set up your calendar.
And so we're gonna be dogging.
When you see me at Imagine AI Live, ask me howit's going and I'll tell you what our
experience is so far with it.
But yeah, it's a strange world that we're innow.
And you absolutely are right.
You've got to be a little bit, keep your guardup, but don't do it to a point where you've got
(54:17):
the brakes on everything and you won't tryanything either.
This is a chance really to experience thefuture.
It's happening so fast.
Love it, love it, love it.
Cool.
Wow, that was a great little session on AI.
I'm hoping everybody that's listening, that yougot to the end, first of all, I always hope
people get to the end.
You got to the end.
(54:38):
You're coming
to Imagine.
Live and we will see you there.
Yeah, a lot of content out there, but Imagine.
AI is definitely where you wanna be.
The AI is absolutely where you want to be.
The way the tracks run, I'm not pushing it justbecause I'm a founding member, I'm pushing it
because it actually kept my attention the wholetime, which if you know me, it's pretty hard.
So yeah, anybody wants to know anything aboutAI, Imagine AI, feel free to reach out to me.
(55:03):
When this is posted, I'll have Steve's email inthe section so you can reach out to him if you
have any questions.
Any departing words, before we go?
No, I think this is, like I said, if anybodyhas listened all the way through,
congratulations.
But this is a great time to be doing what youdo and learning and investing in AI is one of
(55:24):
the most important things you could be doingright now.
Just to, you know, up level yourself, yourcompany, your team, explore the ideas and the
opportunities.
So if you wanna find us, we'rewww.imagineailive.
Imagine like imagination, ai.
Live.
Check it out and if you go over to the PrintingUnited, I think if you just Google it, you'll
(55:47):
get to the registration page for the PrintingUnited Alliance sponsored Imagine AI Day, which
is May 28.
And hope to see, it's already filling up.
I hope to
see something from I was gonna say, sorry, forthe print people, like it's over 50% or 57%
filled.
A lot of those people were at the leadershipsummit.
(56:08):
So look to the leaders, see what they're doingand beat out the rest of them and come sign up
before it's too late and sold out.
But awesome.
Steve, it is always a pleasure to chat withyou, be it here on the phone or live, but love
the AI stuff.
To everybody else, I hope you really enjoyedit.
I'm just gonna put out there, if anybody outthere knows anyone who should be on this
(56:32):
podcast, who has something to print to talkabout, something AI to talk about, something,
anything talk, mergers, acquisitions, lawyers,accountants, I don't care.
Anything as long as it's interesting andrelated in some way to print, what we see, what
we do, what we touch, that would be great.
Otherwise, Steve, thank you again.
(56:52):
Everybody else, we will see you back here soon.
Thanks, Warren.
Appreciate it.
Pleasure's mine always.
Cheers.
Hey, and welcome everybody to another edition,another podcast of Printing's Alive.
Today we have another special guest.
We are blessed with a guest.
I said I would only use that when John Baileywas on, but I like it so much I'm gonna keep
using it.
Today we have Steve Metcalf.
Welcome, Steve.
Hey Warren, welcome yourself and thanks forhaving me again.
(00:32):
Always a pleasure.
So we have Steve Metcalf, is the co founder ofImagine AI Live.
For full transparency, will say it that I am afounding member, so I was there at the
beginning with him and going along for theride.
And wow, what a ride.
So first, I just want to touch on Imagine AILive.
(00:54):
For those of you that are tuning in for thefirst time and haven't heard of it or seen it,
last year was our first conference.
It was at the Fontainebleau.
I speak a little bit of a French accent beingin Quebec.
Fontainebleau, if you're, you know, true redblooded American.
And it was a year ago at All About AI and blewme away completely out of the water and
(01:19):
actually blew everybody out of the waterbecause I've never been to a conference where
500 people came and nobody left at the end.
Right?
So Steve, just give us a little bit of how didyou come up with the idea for Imagine.aiLive?
I'll also add in that Steve was the founderalong with, you know, late Hans Zulin, the
Print UV, which we just had the Print UVconference, which was off the charts.
(01:42):
But in no time at all, we were talking and thenext thing I know you're putting together this
conference Imagine AI Live.
So tell us a little bit about it.
Yeah, you know, I remember the first time youand I spoke about it was January of last year,
maybe 2024.
And we kind of did our, you know, you know,semi annual check-in with each other.
(02:03):
And you're like, what's new?
Thinking the print review is really the newthing.
But actually, think that was when I firstmentioned this idea for this conference about
AI, Imagine AI.
And if people kind of remember what was goingon, I can't tell you sort of how we came upon
this myself and a number of sort of co foundersand founding members that have come together to
help make this happen.
But we all remember our ChatGPT moments, Ithink, when, you know, at some point we heard
(02:28):
about this thing or got access to this thingcalled ChatGPT.
A lot of us were on wait lists.
It was all over the headlines.
And I remember my chat GPT moment was inNovember of twenty twenty two.
It was after Thanksgiving here in The US and Iread about it, heard about it took me like a
week to get into it when they finally let my mymy me log in and start using it.
(02:52):
And I was completely blown away.
I remember staying up all night with my collegeage daughter and, you know, coming up with all
kinds of funny things.
And I I literally woke up the next daythinking, what can a business do with this?
This is game changing because AI before thatwas not very good, at least the stuff we had
been exposed to.
(03:12):
It was starting to creep into writing andmarketing and things like that.
But know, you either had the realm of machinelearning, which was kind of deep tech, you
know, stuff, or you had this sort of veryimmature, you know, these large language models
that were starting to emerge.
But the GPT, the ChatGPT moment with GPT, Ithink was 3.5 at that time, really just hit me
(03:33):
like a lightning bolt.
Like there's got to be a way to do somethingwith business related to these things.
So I started looking around for conferences andevents.
And there were a lot of great events out therethat were deep tech or there were there was
NeurIPS for all the those were where themachine learning guys go to figure out how to
do more machine learning and weights and biasesand all that stuff.
(03:55):
But there weren't really any conferences thatlooked like they were serving up the kind of
thing where a business leader could go into.
And within two to three days, just go in, getimmersed, kind of like we do with Print UV is
literally, let's bring people that are reallyinterested in this and going deeper in it, get
them out of their daily flow.
Because I think one of the challenges that weall face is that we're all busy.
(04:16):
I mean, we all have day jobs and other thingsgoing on in our lives to really sort of figure
out with this wave coming with AI, probably themost monumental thing that'll happen in our
lifetime.
How do we take advantage of harness it?
How do we find our way with AI for ourcompanies and our businesses?
And we couldn't find the conference.
So we thought, well, we'll take a page out ofthe playbook with print UV and see if we can
(04:39):
apply it to a broader audience.
And that was how it was born.
And then when I mentioned it to you in Januaryof twenty four of last year, it was well under
its way.
So somewhere in that 2023 timeframe that thethe idea started hatching, I remember writing,
some ideas down, reached out to the FountainBlue.
They were they weren't even open yet.
So I got ahold of a salesperson there and overthe summer, and then that led to the first
(05:04):
event, which was a sellout.
And then we did another one day event in NewYork City last year, which was awesome.
But what we found, I think, is that the thegreater impact we can have is to really bring
people into a multi day event where there'stime to network, there's time to discover
companies, ideas, use cases, attend workshops.
(05:24):
We're going to be running those this year.
So that's really what this has kind of emergedinto now is kind of a year round thing.
And we're serving up content.
So we record all of our content and we makethat accessible to people that wanna if they
can't make the event, they could just become amember and access our content, or they can come
to the events and they get the membershipthrown in as well.
(05:45):
Yeah, know.
So what I remember last year was just, well,the whole AI thing when it came out and chat
came out, I mean, AI has been around for a longtime, I think the average person doesn't know
it because they never knew what it was untilchat came out.
And then since chat came out, I've been kind ofblown away because it actually makes my life
easier every day and I've only scraped thesurface of it.
(06:06):
Just making sure what I write and even comingup with ideas that are hard to get out of my
head, you sit down and I mean, listen, youstill got to check everything, you still got to
read everything, you can't cut and paste.
I will tell you, I remember a few peoplecutting and pasting, what they didn't realize
was they never put their name in the bracketswhere it said, put your name in the brackets,
right?
(06:27):
So like the little things that you learn likethat.
But at the conference, I mean, it's likeeverybody in AI is a startup, right?
As far as I'm concerned right now, because it'salso new and everyone's vying for position.
But the amount of people that were therepresenting, the conversations going on.
I mean, was sitting next to somebody, and Idon't want to say any names just in case, but I
(06:50):
was sitting next to two people that actuallymade a deal.
There was like a finance capital company andthen another software guy, AI, and they made a
deal and it was almost like a love fest.
And the other thing was nobody left.
I think if we didn't tell them we had to leave,they'd still be standing there.
So it was really cool.
(07:11):
For the weekend too.
Yeah, I like what you just said.
It's a good way of thinking about it.
Everybody is a startup now.
Again, it doesn't matter if you're the oldest,most established business in the world or
you're an AI startup company that's building,you know, in, you know, AI native.
Everybody has this startup opportunity.
(07:32):
It's kind of like when the Internet first cameout and businesses are trying to decide if it
was a good idea to have a website or not, youknow, and I think that we're all kind learning,
hey, would it be a good idea to bring some AIinto our companies?
And and if so, how and where and who's doing itand what platforms and tools do you use?
And that's kind of what we're trying to to getout there is to is to educate people to to let
(07:54):
them find this, discover this faster.
Then really, I've always said the bestconferences that I've ever attended are
actually networking events, they're justdisguised as conferences.
They have content, so you have something that'ssort of programmed and structured, but you also
have this sort of hive mind of activity that isgoing into it.
That's really
it's nonstop.
(08:14):
I mean, what I liked about the event is goingto sound kind of funny, but you had the light
breakfast and you had the lunch and you hadsomething after.
So A, you're not trying to scramble to gosomewhere and think what to eat in the hotel,
you're getting all the resources you need inyour belly to make it through the day, and it
keeps you there because you're almost afraid togo somewhere to miss something.
(08:35):
Mean, I was walking by trying to talk to everysingle person just to find out who, what, how,
And even in the sponsor room, call it thesponsor room with all of our exhibitors, I
mean, people were lining up to talk toeverybody.
So it was really, really Anyways, it was offthe charts.
And I think it's good for anybody listening toeither come or sign up and be a member and get
(09:01):
the video, because it's the only way you'regoing to find what's going on in AI, where
you're going to hear, unless you spend time on,you know, YouTube looking.
And there was a couple of guys at theconference last year that have regular stuff on
YouTube, Alex Northstar, and I forget, Igor isanother one.
Igor's got 400,000 subscribers almost onYouTube now, he's pumping out content on how to
(09:26):
use everything every day.
Right?
There's Alex Northstar.
He'll help you save one to two hours out ofyour regular day without getting fancy.
Right?
Yeah.
It was just like, I mean, now I have chat andPerplexity on my phone and I use the audio
voice for recording.
And I'll just tell everyone real quickly, I dida LinkedIn post.
(09:49):
I spoke into chat, told it what I wanted to do,prompted it properly, it wrote it, then I
attached an image.
Then in less than four minutes, I had it up andposted where before it would take me twenty
four minutes cause I'm looking and I'm checkingand I'm thinking and I'm doing, right?
So it was really just all amazing.
(10:11):
What turned you on the most?
And then at last year's conference and we'll goto this year's conference just after, but I'm
still reeling from it.
And I still speak to people by the way, who arelike, Oh my God, oh my God, I can't either I
missed it or I can't, I'm so happy I went orchanged my life.
Yeah, I think we really somehow kind of, westruck the right chord with everybody.
(10:34):
The best conferences to me, as I mentioned,there's a vibe, there's a sharing vibe, a
networking vibe, there's an energy to them.
And maybe in part because during the pandemic,lot of us were kind of locked up and we didn't
really get out to these conferences and events.
But it really kind of came back and I thinkpeople crave this in person experience,
(10:55):
especially with AI where it's getting harderand harder to tell what's real and what isn't.
These are these are real people.
These are AI first.
These are some of the best AI first people thatI've come across and I hunt them for a living
now.
This is my job as an AI people hunter.
And like I said-
An AI enthusiast.
Enthusiasts, AI people that some of thebuilding, some of the greatest tools and
(11:19):
companies that a lot of folks have never heardof.
And so that was really, I think, part of themagic of the original Imagine AI Live.
We actually have some of the video footage ofit running last year here, but it just was just
such a great experience.
You know, I usually when you especially whenyou run conference for the first time, usually
(11:40):
there's going to be all kinds of glitches andpeople are upset about something.
There wasn't.
It was like I literally kept checking the frontdesk with our registration team.
I said, Is anybody like unhappy?
Is there?
And they said, no, they were stunned too.
So really, really, I think it was hats off toreally the team behind this.
There are a lot of people that have cometogether that have really made this this work
(12:03):
for us.
Of course, Warren, you're you're one of thoseguys.
But we've got quite a few people that haveliterally stepped in and volunteered to help
us.
More recently, the Printing United team, peoplemight recognize Mark Subers has kind of stepped
in.
They're actually helping us run this printingindustry track this year on May 28 on our
arrival day in the afternoon, is filling uppretty quick.
(12:24):
But yeah, we've we've just got an incredibleteam behind this.
Of course, the hotel makes it easy.
And yeah, but the content you
show up, you don't have to go anywhere.
It's perfect.
It's the content and people.
And, you know, this was the unlock that I waslooking for how do how do businesses get into
AI faster?
How do they do it the right way?
(12:45):
How do they share their concerns, their usecases, their ambitions?
And how do we serve it all up so you can reallylearn?
The tagline I've kind of worked with is learnmore in in in a few days, and most people are
gonna learn about AI in in a in a year or two.
And I really believe true.
It's
true for me.
I'm the perfect example, right?
(13:05):
Because I knew a little bit and talking to you,obviously I know a little bit more because you
talk about it all the time.
And then at the conference, I had whiplashbecause I just wanted to hear everything and
turning everywhere.
And I'm going to give a plug right now topodcastai.com.
The Printing's Alive podcast is done usingPodcast.ai's software, and basically I upload
(13:32):
my recording and they do about 80% of the postproduction and the distribution.
So for a monthly fee, which is crazy, becausewhen I tried to do it on my own, AI couldn't do
it as good or as well.
And AI helps with your English grammar, by theway, and your pronunciation.
But I couldn't do it as well.
(13:53):
And the final product was just, oh my God, it'slike AI is everything's minute, so to speak.
Maybe a little more because you still got tolearn it.
But wow.
So if you're going to do a podcast, check outPodcast.ai.
So let's move right now into our second annualevent, which is taking place very shortly in
May.
(14:14):
Very nice.
The good thing about May is if you stay a day,you can do the little pool party to rest after.
But tell me what's special about this year orwhat's the added bonus that we have coming?
Think,
Yeah, I mean, great question.
And, you know, I think one of the things welearned, so we're doing two full main tracks or
main tracks of content with our main stage,with everything, the networking, the exhibit,
(14:38):
what we call the AI arena.
We have a lot of companies that are going to bedemos and just having discussions with people
about what they're building, and that's allintegrated together in kind of a networking
hall.
But we're also adding this sort of arrival day,which I mentioned, we're running these I call
them AI acceleration workshops.
So if you want a deep dive, we mentioned we'vegot one for the printing industry in
(15:00):
conjunction with Printing United.
We've got sponsors coming in for that as well,which is great.
We also have some we're gonna we're working onone for AI in marketing and advertising, which
is really related to growth.
So a lot of companies are going to hear moreabout, you know, one of the best use cases.
And there's so many great use cases with AI,but it's around growth.
(15:20):
It's around how do you go into to how do youscale marketing?
How do you scale advertising?
How do you do advertising?
How do you get into sort of outreach and someof these things?
And there's a whole series of tools that we'regonna get into.
So look for a track that we're gonna be addingthat's also on our arrival day to kinda deep
dive and workshop that a bit.
And we're bringing in some great people to tohold court on that topic as well.
(15:45):
But that's really what's different.
We're adding these workshops in
kind
of a on the in the main two days of the event,there will also be a side stage as well.
So we'll have stuff for people that, hey, if ifyou wanna go in and kind of immerse yourself
more in maybe the legal aspects of AI, we'llhave some different topical tracks.
Not so much that it's an overwhelming choice,but just enough so there's a little bit of
(16:06):
variety and we can kind of keep people moving,especially we'll do those in the afternoons.
So that's that's really what's coming up.
And, of course, you know, for those that havenever been to the Fountain Blue, the Fountain
Blue, it is a treat among itself.
So it is one of the nicest places and we've gotobviously an incredible rate to stay at this
(16:27):
place.
So we did sell our room rate or booking blocksold out last year early.
So we encourage everybody to get that now.
But yeah, that's but I think beyond that,Warren, it's like the mix of speakers.
We're bringing back some people that just havebeen phenomenal for us.
And we're introducing some new folks.
This guy, Nathan LaBenz, that I'm looking athere really is used to be a red teamer for
(16:52):
OpenAI before most people had access to ChatGPTand built a marketing company on AI called
Waymark, which he'll be talking about just- He
knows his shit.
He knows his stuff.
Dan Soroker is another guy that we've beenhunting Dan.
I've been hunting him personally for about twoyears now.
He's the CEO of a company called Limitless,which used to be called Rewind.
(17:13):
And they're the ones that are recordingeverything and they have these pendants now.
Actually have one over here that you can usequite literally.
I use this at the Print UV conference to recordmy talk.
And so you can transcribe your entire day.
The use cases of this are endless, but these AIwearables that are coming out, and they're one
of the lead horses in this right now,especially in the printing industry.
(17:37):
Some of the use cases to record stuff thathappens, you know, on the factory floor, the
shop floor, that just gets lost, is reallyimportant.
This guy who is right, Peter Serrano, Pietro isworks for Anthropic, which is one of the
leading large language model providers as adeveloper.
And he's also built some amazing things, andhe's building design tools for graphic
(17:59):
designers now, which is incredible.
So he'll we're gonna have this guy on stage andkind of the list goes on.
There's there's business people.
By the way, Andy Sack and his partner wereawesome as keynotes last time.
Like I
think they got everybody on their toes the waythey were talking.
I mean, I remember one thing they said, they'retwo great guys and you could look them up and
(18:20):
see what their backgrounds are, but they said,you know, we're partners and we never have
issues and the odd time that we're together andwe have an issue, and to resolve it, we go to
our third partner.
We go to the third co founder, and everyone'slike, Well, who's that?
And he goes, ChatGPT.
Can't argue with the facts.
I thought that was pretty Yeah,
and it's a mindset change in how to lead now inbusiness in the AI era.
(18:45):
We've got Alicia Bhatti.
She's incredible.
She speaks more from kind of a leadership inthe era of AI, sort of the whole people and
human element.
We've got Michael Moe coming back.
He's a he's one of the one of the mostsuccessful Silicon Valley venture capital
firms.
You might buy your company there if it's good.
We never know.
(19:06):
You have a good company.
Michael's got cash.
And then you've got, as you mentioned, AlexNorthstar.
We bring a lot of these AI educators andinfluencers in.
Kyle Corbett over here is a company called OpenPipe.
He used to work for Sam Altman.
And his company is building a platform whereyou could fine tune a language model.
Let's say you have a large language model, butyou're just you got sensitive data or you don't
(19:30):
want to have it out there.
You don't want be putting your stuff into intoOpenAI all the time or one of these other
platforms or and or you want to train it to bemore specific on your business.
They're building a platform called Open Pipe,which allows you to to fine tune models.
And then of course, Rossman, who is fantastic.
John's an ex Amazon guy who wrote a book calledBig Bet Leadership.
(19:52):
He's going to be coming back to tease us withsome new stuff that he's working on that we're
also involved in.
Yep, there's the book.
Got the book.
Yeah, some familiar faces here.
My my co founder, Chris Madden, Marco.
Marco's one of the foremost, I guess,influencers and educators on how to use the
image generation platforms like Midjourney andall the other things that are out there,
(20:15):
including the video generation platforms.
And we've got a few more people like Jared Lou.
Jared is great.
Exactly.
Dustin Hollywood is a works for a Hollywoodfilm studio.
It's going to be talking about how they'reusing AI.
You know, the list goes on.
So we've got some incredible folks, and we'reabout we we have another six people at least
(20:39):
that need to be added on here that are aregonna be added this week.
Aaron Lanuti is the chief innovation officer ofOmnicom, which is one of the largest agencies
in the world, advertising PR agencies.
And this guy, Lewis Rosenberg, I don't know ifyou've heard about this.
Chris when Chris Madden interviews people, heusually gives me a little ping when he's done
(21:00):
with a with a guest.
He was floored when he interviewed Lewis on ourpod.
I don't even know if the episode is out yet,but they're building this thing called Swarm
AI, which allows you to AI and human teams tocollaborate together or human teams to work in
sort of an enterprise or company setting andallows AI to sort of augment the hive knowledge
(21:23):
of everybody in a company.
And then Nico Klemke, he's coming back.
This is Neural Frames.
They're doing some really cool stuff with AI,music and video generation.
Daniel Cohen Dumani is a guy that's building aplatform to retrieve knowledge.
And I'll have to stop there because that's asfar as we have the roster right now, but it's
(21:44):
filling up like every week.
And every day we're interviewing more speakersand workshop leaders and panelists to join us.
So yeah, that's what's really exciting aboutthis year is now the conference, the word is
out about the event.
It's easier for us to get speakers and we'regetting some incredible people lined up.
Yeah, so the other thing that I liked about itis, you know, with everybody coming and going,
(22:04):
everybody was speaking for like twenty fiveminutes or forty five minutes, maybe an hour,
depending.
So you weren't getting too into it where you'renot going to remember anything.
It was just enough to get you excited to wannahave conversation and keep it going after.
But I away from it because, you know, again, AIa year ago was a lot newer than it is now.
(22:26):
And I mean, even today I find that there arepeople that are fearful of it.
And I'd like to remind everyone that you're notgonna lose your job to AI, you're gonna lose
your job to someone who knows AI more than youor better than you.
It's really important to not be afraid of it,kind of like Windows when it originally came
out and, you know, most of us probably only use6% of what Windows does anyways.
(22:50):
But if you familiarize yourself with the AI andimagine AI, great place to come learn about it,
Then you start to make use of it.
You start to benefit from it because you'reworking with it.
You're not afraid of it, right?
And then, I mean, even me playing with it,forget work wise, just the stuff you do on your
own.
I'll just give you one example for people thatare listening.
(23:13):
So I had to orchestrate a podcast with threepeople from around the world, all different
time zones, send out the email, they all sendit back to me with their local times and when
their availability is.
My first thought was, oh shit, gotta take outan Excel sheet, put everything down there, then
I gotta figure out daylight savings time, thenI gotta figure out where they are.
And then I just said, oh my God, stop.
(23:34):
And I cut and pasted the whole thing intoChatGPT and I prompted it to find me the dates
that were common amongst the three, to give itback to me in my local time.
And it did, and it gave me back like twochoices.
I then narrowed it down to one.
I didn't wanna give these guys two choices togo longer.
And then I asked it to write the email to theseexecutives.
And then I said, could you make the emailshorter please?
(23:56):
Because these guys don't read them, you know,they don't read, they're busy.
And then it made it smaller.
I sent out the email within like thirty sixhours, I had all my replies, everything was
done and boom.
And chances are if I didn't have the AI thirtysix hours later, I'd still be trying to figure
out the time zones.
Oh yeah.
I mean, you're describing it and I keepreminding everybody, this is the worst it's
(24:19):
ever gonna be.
The experience you just had blew your andthat's the worst that experience will ever be
because the stuff gets better literally by theweek in many cases.
And what what you just described was what Iwould call a classic AI jam session where you
just go up and you take a hold of Claude or youtake a hold of ChatGPT or you know, pick your
(24:40):
language model complexity and you just go totown and you just start, you get the work done,
the derivative work.
I love starting with a transcript from a call,so I usually will start with a meeting
transcript, throw it in there and then let's goto town now on the stuff we got to do, you
know, that we talked about.
Exactly.
But the cool thing is that's just the tip ofthe iceberg.
(25:01):
What I talk a lot about these days when I goout there and talk about AI, which I do a lot
to other groups, I've recently been at some ofthe Cranean United events talking about it.
I remind people that, hey, if you find an AIprompt that works, you can turn that into an
agent.
You can literally take a good prompt, turn itinto what I call an agentic prompt, and then
(25:25):
put inputs and outputs.
Every time I give you x, you go do yourcognitive thing, AI, and then you come out with
with y on the other end.
And then we put it together in a flow.
So we could put it together using an automationlayer and there's so many of them available
now.
Don't have to understand programming oranything to use.
These are all no code.
We're going to be showing these at the event.
There's a couple that I really like.
(25:47):
They're similar to Zapier.
Zapier is a great platform for those using it,but some of the newer ones are just AI native
top to bottom.
And you'll hear about platforms like Gumloop,which is a really cool one.
N8N, which is one out of Germany that's opensource, very robust platform.
And then you don't have to stop there.
If you really like that thing, why not build anapp around it?
(26:10):
And AI can help you build apps.
And so I always say that everybody has an appin them somewhere.
If you have enough lived experience, youprobably have more than one.
And you can literally now go out and use toolslike Replit or Bolt or Lovable is another one,
Cursor, if you're a little more hardcore on thesoftware side.
(26:30):
And you can literally create apps.
In fact, the entire Imagine AI Live websitethat I showed you was designed by AI, was
designed by one called vZero, which is great atfront end, and it was built by Cursor using
CloudSana 3.5, which is the language modelbehind Cursor is sort of a coding platform.
(26:50):
And these things, again, this is the worst it'sever going be.
This is getting better and better.
Every time I go make updates to the site, itgets easier now and easier.
And people ask me, Steve, who does yourwebsite?
I'm like, well, I refer to them as we.
When I say we, it's like me and the AI agent.
The team, team AI.
Me and Cursor.
(27:11):
So yeah, it's just incredible.
It's an incredible time to be doing andthinking about this stuff.
If you're running a company or in a business,this is like one of the most incredible times
we've ever gone through.
We thought the internet was pretty important.
The internet was just a staging ground for, youknow, what's happening now with cognitive
intelligence.
(27:31):
Yeah, no, it's, oh my God, when the computercame out and then the internet came out, it was
great.
This is, I don't even know how to explain this.
It's just so, it's almost like, you know, Ialways used to joke and other people too, I
guess, that, you know, we're the future wherethe movie, relating to the movies we watched
back then.
You know, Star Trek, we had the Motorola flipphone.
(27:53):
And the only thing that we've just, and then,you know, now we're in space and we're talking
and even this, the chatting and the Riverside,like, where does it all go?
The only thing we're missing from Star Trek is,you know, you just, where you can transport
yourself from one place to the other.
But it's really, I mean, I keep using it justfor my personal stuff, but in business, I was
(28:15):
doing it to track some things that I was doingcontinuously putting in new updates, and then
it just organizes it for you.
Took the Print UV, I took the whole list of allthe attendees, and before Katie sent us the
Excel one, I took the other one, paper one andI scanned it, I put it in and I drafted an
(28:38):
email to send to everybody, just thanking themfor coming to the show.
And I was like, Oh my God, that was like, youknow, I had like six hours left in the day, I
didn't know what to do.
There's always something to do, but it reallyis incredible.
And when I think about work now, and I thinkabout the printing industry, the first thing
that comes to my mind, only because I think ofthe press, but for all the problems that people
(29:04):
have on printing presses or the digital pressesor whatever equipment, you set up a little
model to have there, the computer there, or youhave it on people's phones, they could talk in
all their problems, all their solutions,reference the date, reference the docket, the
job, the customer, etcetera.
Anyone who ever has a problem similar to thatis gonna go in and put it in pocket or type it
(29:32):
and up will come a few resources that arethere.
I mean, when were in the UV and going aroundand you were on our press, you could be there
for hours and hours and hours just trying tofigure out something so small that somebody
forgot.
Absolutely.
I mean, it's like the knowledge was so preciousand scarce before AI, right?
(29:55):
So you had to have the person with you.
Always had one or two technicians like like myPierre Jelinas comes to mind.
He was probably in your plant quite a bit.
Hundred times.
Montreal.
And Pierre was this walking encyclopedia.
He knew everything to check.
He knew all how to troubleshoot everything on,not just the UV system connected to your press.
(30:16):
He knew a lot about the press itself and the UVprocess.
And so we would we would get calls fromcustomers like, yeah, we want Pierre.
Not that our other techs weren't great, butthey want Pierre because he would start to
learn their environment, their equipment.
Now you don't have to We love Pierre, but youcan clone that kind of knowledge.
(30:37):
You can ingest that kind of information fromyour experts, not just your in house experts,
from your supplier experts.
And you can put that into a private chatbotknowledge base and you would be amazed at how
resourceful that is and how helpful that is.
And I'm working with quite a few companies nowthat are doing just that.
(30:57):
And the results are just getting better andbetter and better.
Listen, I was sitting around just the other dayon the couch, just to be funny, but I was
thinking like, okay, maybe I'm get anothertattoo.
And then it's always, what are you gonna get,what are you gonna get?
And then I thought of, you know, I was thinkingof the Nova Music Festival, October seventh,
(31:19):
and I came up and I just, through prompts, Ihad it design the tattoo, like the turntables,
because it was the music festival, date, that,you know, We'll Never Stop Dancing.
And I did that in minutes and I just kept reprompting to make some changes and adjustments,
and I'm like, Oh my God, how amazing.
(31:40):
And then I go and I use it for work and towrite something or even, so the one thing that,
I was with some people the other day and thenthey were talking about, oh, it's not good
because it's, you know, it's bad for theirindustry.
And, you know, they were lawyers and whatever.
And I'm kind of chuckling because the lawyersdidn't complain when Uber came out and changed
(32:04):
the taxi industry.
Right, right.
Now technology is hitting their industry,they're getting a little like, I don't know,
the hair on the back of their neck is rising,but I took a contract that I was given, I
uploaded it into chat and asked it to act as mylawyer and advisor, and if it could just give
(32:24):
me the good, the bad, the ugly of the contract,and I kid you not, I probably saved $2,500 on
the first read just to pull out the stuff thatwas really relevant, but I was able to go back
with and converse with them on.
And then, you know, maybe before you go tosign, then you need your lawyer to do a final
read to give you You'll
(32:44):
need the lawyers to grease the skids and callthe judge and set things You you still need
lawyers to help you with deal making.
But a lot of that cognitive process, you canall the front end stuff, you're going to see
this in every knowledge intensive industry, allthat front end work or repetitive work is just
(33:05):
going to go to large language models like likeand you're going to see it in advertising.
You're going to see it in big consulting.
You're going to see it in law, you know.
What makes you think about is that thoseindustries have been profiting on an
information scarcity arbitrage for for decades,you know, since inception.
(33:25):
So the experts have all the knowledge and thenthey can build themselves out at high prices to
people that need that knowledge when they needit.
Because it's very hard for everybody to be anexpert all the time in anything.
Well, now AI is an expert in everything.
And it's at PhD level reasoning capability,research capabilities.
It is literally completely disruptive for thoseindustries, but they'll adapt.
(33:48):
They'll figure out the stuff that inadvertising, you still need people to go
produce if you want to actually hire a liveactor, which maybe you still need somebody to
go produce the commercial, you know, and youknow, you've got but with so much of this stuff
can be automated now.
I'll give you an example.
Like I just, you know, I'll just I'll plug itagain, because I always gotta plug it in case
(34:12):
you didn't know, but I wrote a book.
Okay, I didn't really write a book, I had anauthor help me out, a ghost writer, Call It
What You Want.
But even through that exercise, at one point Isaid to him, I said, Are you using chat?
And he said, A little bit.
And I asked him, I said, Are you afraid thatyou're gonna lose your job, right, to chat?
And he said, basically said, Yeah.
(34:35):
And I said to I said, I think you've got it allwrong.
I said, Chat's only gonna make your lifeeasier.
I said, Because now maybe people will come toyou with more of an idea, maybe a partial
transcript of what they're thinking to build iton.
And then you can go from there and expand onit, and then there's still the proofreading,
(34:56):
that's human because you can't trust a machine.
I still find some things when I reread it.
I said, so your job will change.
But a friend of mine said to me, why didn't youuse chat when you do your book?
And then you could have saved some money andnot used, you know, the writer.
And to people listening, you need to know this.
I don't know writing.
(35:16):
So I don't even know if chat's giving mesomething good or not because it's not my field
that I'm in, right?
Maybe down the road, if I write a few books,I'll get the hang of it.
So you still need the experts out there, butthe AI is really good at helping you compile
the data and the information that you need.
So the humans are still gonna be there to giveyou the feeling, to give you the emotion, to
(35:40):
give you the feedback.
AI is not gonna cry when it reads a part ofyour book that's sad.
You know, when you're proofreading it, thenyou're gonna feel it.
Yeah.
So I think it's really pretty cool.
And what you said there just made me think ofthis too, is it's humans still have taste,
Okay, we know what we like and what we don'tlike.
We may not necessarily, you know, music's agood example.
(36:02):
Not all of us can play guitar, you know, like,you know, Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix or you
name it.
But we know what good guitar sounds like whenwe hear it.
And one of the things with AI, these largelanguage models were trained on the entire body
of human knowledge, like the good and the bad,great stuff and the crappy stuff.
(36:23):
And so, in those models, as they write for youor as they produce things for you or do other
cognitive work, they've been in the trainingprocess.
It was very hard to get them, get all of thatout of there.
So they still have kind of bad output or stuffthat's subpar if you're a writer, you know, and
they don't necessarily carry the taste.
(36:43):
Now you can prompt them to have taste.
You can say, you know, you can you can you canask a large language model in a chat session to
behave as if you're the editor of the world'sgreatest publishing house and then take a
critical look at the manuscript.
You can do things like that, but you have to.
Those are some techniques that takes a littlewhile to learn and you're not always going to
get it perfectly from an AI, but you have tothink of it kind of like a multistep process.
(37:08):
Here's the thing we want to write about, expandon it, go do the writing, and then here's an
editor that goes in and checks whether that'sa, you know, which version and for what reason
would you pick or how would you change it.
And what you what I just described there is anagentic flow where you're going to see these
sort of, you know, collaboration of agents thatare going to be all AI based, but each one has
(37:29):
a different role and a different objective,just like humans do.
Yeah, know, it's pretty, I think you just gottajump on the wagon and not pretend that it
doesn't exist.
And even if you just start playing around withit yourself, get a little comfortable with it,
and then once you see, oh my God, it's really,listen, I'll get out for people listening, I'll
give you another thing.
(37:50):
Like, you know, I've got a, for me, I've got alot, I get a lot of great ideas and a lot of
thought in my head that I can't always get outor get to that first sentence, you know, pen to
paper.
And, you know, using chat, I just sit there andI just type or talk in a few things and I'm
thinking out loud.
And then I say, can you help me create my firstlist or first thoughts of what I'd like to, you
(38:15):
know, what I'm thinking and summarize, and itputs it out, and then all of a sudden, from
there, I'm off to the races.
So I've saved that, I'll call it writer'sblock, just people could understand when you're
just sitting there staring at your screen andyou don't know what to do.
But wow, wow, wow, wow.
It's just great.
And then we had young Spielberg there with hismusic.
(38:37):
Yep.
Which was just off the charts.
We're getting it, we're feeling it everywhere.
There's a retrain of kind of the rewiring ofour minds I think that has happened.
I don't if you ever noticed this but like, youknow, when you hang around a lot of creative
people, you know, it could be said probably ina similar way if you hang around a lot of
technical people or engineers.
(38:59):
If you hang around a lot of creative people,especially people that do, you know, creative
for a living, you know, advertising, creativesand so forth, their minds become their pathways
become wired to think of creativity all thetime.
So it's kind of like a musician, the more youplay, the better you get.
The more you use that aspect of your mentalenergy, the better you get, the easier it gets
(39:21):
for you to be creative.
And I think the same applies for using AI.
It's almost like we've been trained our wholelives that we have to do this, you have to
think every problem through until your brainhurts.
No, you don't have to anymore.
But you have to rethink, hey, this would be agreat way to bring to the AI to help and here's
a great way to set it up for the AI, you know,to start me on a process or whatever.
(39:43):
So I think that takes a little time andpractice and you know, two years ago, a year
and a half ago, when I was out there talking topeople, I would always do show of hands how
many people use a ChatGPT or something like it.
And you would, you know, everybody had heard ofit, but a lot of hands went down when we were
saying, Okay, who's using it?
And so now I ask the question because nowpretty much everybody's tried these things.
(40:04):
It's like, well, how many people are using itevery day, multiple sessions a day?
And that's, you know, why wouldn't we use it asoften as we're picking up our phones, you know,
to help us with a with a thing?
Right?
So I think that's where we're starting to seethat sort of broader adoption.
As people get more comfortable and their mindsget sort of rewired to think, what can the AI
(40:26):
do for us?
Life gets easier, you get more productive freetime.
And you're you start imagining all the otherthings that you can do with AI.
Like what if I create a turn this into an app,you know, that just did it for me every day, or
agents and there's so much stuff coming ourway.
You know, we'll be talking a lot about thisyear at the conference too.
(40:46):
Yeah, another area that I really like, and it'sall, I'm thinking just the basic human stuff.
Even when I write an email and it gets a littlelong, I'll take the email and I'll put it into
chat and I'll prompt it to polish it up or, youknow, make the points that I wanna make
evident, or I had to write an email that like,it was a little nasty and I put it into chat
(41:07):
and I said, okay, can you please get thesecritical points across, make me sound
professional, take out the emotion, there's novengeance in it.
And when it finished, I was like, oh my God, ina hundred years, I could never write an email
like that.
Also not a wordsmith, that just made itquicker.
And then, you know, the other people, and witheveryone using AI, because I've had some people
(41:30):
say, Oh, well you used AI.
And I'm like, Yes, so what?
So what?
Everybody's using it now.
It's fine, it's good.
Just reread what you're writing, know whatyou're writing.
If you're questioned, you should know what youwrote anyways and sent off to somebody.
Right?
It's It's
a question like, does anybody question when youpull out a calculator or use a calculator on
(41:50):
your computer or your phone?
Does anybody say, hey, buddy, that's
used to
you should be doing long division by hand on anapkin.
And you're like, no, that would make my brainhurt.
So I think we're going to see the same way aslike, dude, that's a thing you should bring to
AI, just like you should Google it instead ofgoing to find the yellow pages.
(42:12):
You know, like it's just this change that we'reall going to it's all going to feel pretty
normal, I think, pretty soon.
And the young people now that are coming intothis world out of high school and college,
they're going
to be able It's what they know.
They're already getting in trouble with theirteachers but I think the right teachers in our
schools and universities are embracing it.
(42:34):
That this is a tool they're going to have andlet's get you better with the tools.
Let's not, you know, so you're not necessarilydoing something and never checking it, but
you're becoming the orchestrator.
You're still the creator, but you're using AIpowered cognition and computation and reason.
I remember
(42:56):
in school, I got in trouble for cheating.
Now the kids are allowed to bring cheat sheetsinto class, right?
Whatever they can get on a piece of paper, Tohave it on my arm, on my upper lip and
whatever, and then I'd in trouble.
Now it's almost, it's acceptable.
So AI will just take that to another level.
And it's also like a game.
So the more people that like it, the morepeople that use it, the more people will learn.
(43:18):
Yeah.
It's it's it's a beautiful The
the old sort of emphasis on memory wrotememorization of everything.
I think that's going away.
It's like really what we should be teachingpeople is how to be resourceful.
You know, how do you how do you use AI in a ina in a in a good way that helps you accomplish
things faster, get more time back in your lifeif that's what you desire, or maybe you just
(43:41):
want to be 10 x, a hundred x more productiveand work the same number of hours.
I know some people like that.
They work more with AI because they can getmore done and it's like, it's kind of a thrill.
But at the end of the day, it should be a tool,a power tool for your mind is an analogy I've
kind of often used, much like you probably arenot going to use a hand saw over the weekend
(44:03):
where you're going to be working on your, youknow, shed that you're building or the deck
that you want to add to your porch.
You're probably going to be bringing a powertool, you know, a power drill, you know, a
power saw, etc.
And you kind of see where this goes.
So when you start doing the thinking that hurtsyour brain, start bringing those power tools.
(44:24):
And we're already seeing the effects.
Oh, that's great.
Okay, let's let's switch up here.
Have because a lot of people in the world ofprint listen to the podcast.
We've got a special track running at Imagine AIwith printing United, printing impressions, you
know, the main
Printing root word, I think.
(44:46):
That's that's a printing United Alliance, whichis the largest association, at least in this
side of the world for the printing industry.
It's membership based, but they also do a lotwith, you know, for the industry in terms of
shows and expos and leadership summits.
And in fact, there's going be another one onthe inkjet industry.
(45:07):
Inkjet summit's happening, I think in, you'recoming up very quickly in April and I'll be
there.
But the coolest thing is the people that runthe Printing United Alliance are very forward
thinking folks and we started chatting aboutthis, you know, months ago, I spoke at their
(45:28):
event, the expo they did last year in LasVegas, Warren, you were there, we were all And
I spoke on AI, it was a great, they gave me astage, a little side stage for a while.
It was a it was a packed event.
Met some great people out of it, too.
But one of the things that it kind of lateremerged was this idea of let's do an AI event
for the printing industry.
(45:49):
And because we're already running Imagine AILive for basically two and a half, two and
three quarters days, It just made sense tolet's just add a whole printing industry day
track onto that.
And you're going to be helping out as the MC tokeep this thing, you know, on the right rail.
By the way, I'm super excited because likebeing, you're in print with me for a long time,
(46:14):
it is a slow moving industry, right?
So I am super excited to get this littlejumpstart and kick some people in the ass.
Some of them have already awoken, but what anopportunity to have these people that are, I'll
call them leaders in print because they'recoming to this event, and then they'll be able
(46:34):
to take back what they see and what they learnand start to spread it around.
Then we will expand on it.
Because the more people using it in the worldto print, the better it is.
It'll help with production, it'll help withpeople's bottom line.
And I say that because the industrypredominantly has you know, low margin.
So let's use this help them, help the customer.
(46:58):
I've never, you know, I've been around a lot ofindustries in my career, adult life, You know,
the printing industry is really one of the bestfor AI because there's so many different kind
of, I want to call them attack vectors, butmaybe use case vectors is probably the better
way.
You know, first of all, printing itself is acreative industry.
(47:18):
There's a lot of innovation, a lot ofinnovative people already.
The kinds of work that you do.
And there's this aspect of art and creativitythat is sort of the driving force of what goes
into print.
Everything that you see, whether it's, youknow, whether it's printed content, words, or
whether it's imagery, that's all comingtogether and AI can help in all of that aspect
(47:40):
of it.
AI is great at data.
So it's great at wrangling.
You imagine, you know, you had a large factoryat one point, All the data flying off of
machines and the production schedules and allthe headaches, all the variables that go into
the print process, the chemistries, the inksand the coatings, the substrates, the
(48:02):
temperatures, and the humidities, and themachines are getting more and more sensorized
all the time.
What if you could take all that data, and noone's ever gonna like, look at that data
stream, but AI will.
AI would love to do that for you, and it woulddo it dirt cheap, $20 a month.
And then you ask any question you want thatyou're thinking, and you'll get an answer.
How did the machine run
last night?
How did it run?
(48:23):
Yeah.
You know, there you go.
Well, it was an estimating makes it quickeronce you once you've put in your information.
You will never have to do a job again that youdidn't make money on.
Right.
Because you could prompt the AI to tell you,right, analyze cost versus run.
Do you see
get
from customers that we lost money on?
(48:46):
Right, no, exactly.
And then you could actually take that and postit out there so other printers know and you
could help the brotherhood or the sisterhood.
And then you turn around and when I talk toprinting industry leaders, one of the you say,
hey, what problem would you love to solve?
A lot of it's growth.
A lot of it's like growing our company, ourbusiness.
AI is perfect for outreach, for marketresearch, for reaching out to new customers,
(49:11):
unlocking doors, writing emails to them thatdon't sound like they're cringe.
You know, there there's just so many potentialuse cases, and and that's just another reason.
So when this printing industry day or afternoonthat we're having on May 28 will proceed the
general conference, but it's a chance for andeverybody attending can attend the entire
conference.
That's what that's the whole point of it.
(49:31):
But they'll have this sort of afternoon ofprinting industry specific discussion that
we're pulling in some really cool people totake part in panels and lead some talks.
And we've got some sponsors that we'll beannouncing very soon as well.
So Oh,
no, I think it's Oh, man.
I think just AI in general, I mean, it's thetalk of the town to begin with.
(49:53):
But for anyone who has the opportunity to come,anyone in print who gets to jump on it.
The other thing is I just wanna mention withall this AI out there, you still have to be
really careful because there's a lot ofcompanies, call them startups that are, I won't
say scamming you, but they're talking reallyfast and they're getting you to buy in and it's
(50:15):
$23 a month for this or that, a lot of lead genstuff out there, just please still be careful,
still have your guard up, it's not perfectedand you don't wanna spend a whole lot of money
and find out that it wasn't useful, right?
So coming to the conference actually is anotherreason because you're gonna learn here and know
(50:35):
more so that when you're in front of AI orpeople, you'll be able to ask some relevant
questions.
You won't be like that newbie or a stranger.
You'll know some of the lingo and you know howto get around it.
Yeah.
That's a great point.
I mean, we're all getting inbounded with morestuff than we could possibly imagine.
And if you, if you're running a company, yourteam is everybody in your company is getting
(50:57):
inbounded by new tools.
They all like, they all like and sound great.
A lot of these, it's easier than ever to startan AI company.
So you're going to get a lot of these toolsthat may sound very professional and vetted
that aren't, that they just came out ofnowhere.
And one of the, one of the purposes that we'reserving at Imagine dot AI Live is to try to
help vet and curate some of the platforms andtools that are out there.
(51:19):
You know, we're bringing real people that haveinnovative companies.
They're well backed.
If they're not well backed, we'll tell
You know, but you basically get them
great ideas, right?
They're just getting started.
But right.
And we bring very established companies in.
It's a little easier to navigate in thedifferent domains of a company or your
(51:40):
business.
You know, where do we, you know, place somebets or maybe pull people together so that
we're not chasing every shiny AI object thatcomes our way?
Yeah, no, it's so easy to get sucked into thatvortex of it.
You know, you're just looking and listening.
Listen, I've been on a few calls with a few ofthese AI lead gen companies, and, you know, at
(52:03):
the end of the day, actually, I'll just tellyou something that just recently happened with
one, and you guys should be, girls should beaware of it.
I get an email on LinkedIn from the CEO of acompany saying, Hey, this is what we do, would
you like to meet?
I replied and said, Hey, great, would love tomeet, traveling, try me next week.
Then it came back and it said, are youavailable Wednesday for an appointment or an
(52:28):
online meeting?
And I said, no, I'm traveling right now, callme next week.
Then it came back and it said, oh, are youavailable on Monday?
And I went, No, now you can go back and tellyour team how you just lost a really solid lead
by pushing it too far, because they didn'ttrain their AI to respond to the right response
(52:52):
because they had me, I was in.
And after I was done.
Yep.
Now these AI agents that help do your calendar,they do outreach for you.
They're coming fast and furious and we'reactually gonna be dogfooding a couple of these
for ImagineIFI.
I don't think I've even told you about it yet,but we've got a couple on the docket that we're
going to.
(53:12):
One of our sponsors is a company calledIgnitech.
They were there.
Eric Vaughn, their CEO, spoke at both of ourevents.
And they're bringing out some, they've alreadystarted bringing it to market, several
different AI tools that, you know, are usingbasically, you know, video avatars as sort of
(53:33):
your, you know, it's it's taking chatbot into awhole another level is one use case.
But you could also internally clone an avatar.
If you're the CEO of a company, you can trainan avatar on your likeness and have to give a
talk to your entire company every Mondaymorning and you just have a you just have a
chat script go into it or or or you haveanother agent that is answering your emails all
(53:54):
day long and just learns how to answer yourinbox and set up your calendar.
And so we're gonna be dogging.
When you see me at Imagine AI Live, ask me howit's going and I'll tell you what our
experience is so far with it.
But yeah, it's a strange world that we're innow.
And you absolutely are right.
You've got to be a little bit, keep your guardup, but don't do it to a point where you've got
(54:17):
the brakes on everything and you won't tryanything either.
This is a chance really to experience thefuture.
It's happening so fast.
Love it, love it, love it.
Cool.
Wow, that was a great little session on AI.
I'm hoping everybody that's listening, that yougot to the end, first of all, I always hope
people get to the end.
You got to the end.
(54:38):
You're coming
to Imagine.
Live and we will see you there.
Yeah, a lot of content out there, but Imagine.
AI is definitely where you wanna be.
The AI is absolutely where you want to be.
The way the tracks run, I'm not pushing it justbecause I'm a founding member, I'm pushing it
because it actually kept my attention the wholetime, which if you know me, it's pretty hard.
So yeah, anybody wants to know anything aboutAI, Imagine AI, feel free to reach out to me.
(55:03):
When this is posted, I'll have Steve's email inthe section so you can reach out to him if you
have any questions.
Any departing words, before we go?
No, I think this is, like I said, if anybodyhas listened all the way through,
congratulations.
But this is a great time to be doing what youdo and learning and investing in AI is one of
(55:24):
the most important things you could be doingright now.
Just to, you know, up level yourself, yourcompany, your team, explore the ideas and the
opportunities.
So if you wanna find us, we'rewww.imagineailive.
Imagine like imagination, ai.
Live.
Check it out and if you go over to the PrintingUnited, I think if you just Google it, you'll
(55:47):
get to the registration page for the PrintingUnited Alliance sponsored Imagine AI Day, which
is May 28.
And hope to see, it's already filling up.
I hope to
see something from I was gonna say, sorry, forthe print people, like it's over 50% or 57%
filled.
A lot of those people were at the leadershipsummit.
(56:08):
So look to the leaders, see what they're doingand beat out the rest of them and come sign up
before it's too late and sold out.
But awesome.
Steve, it is always a pleasure to chat withyou, be it here on the phone or live, but love
the AI stuff.
To everybody else, I hope you really enjoyedit.
I'm just gonna put out there, if anybody outthere knows anyone who should be on this
(56:32):
podcast, who has something to print to talkabout, something AI to talk about, something,
anything talk, mergers, acquisitions, lawyers,accountants, I don't care.
Anything as long as it's interesting andrelated in some way to print, what we see, what
we do, what we touch, that would be great.
Otherwise, Steve, thank you again.
(56:52):
Everybody else, we will see you back here soon.
Thanks, Warren.
Appreciate it.
Pleasure's mine always.
Cheers.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.