The AI Collective · Colorado Springs

Founding Mixer — Team Ops

Thu Oct 15, 2026 5:30–7:30 PM Call time 5:00 ACA · 905 Garden of the Gods Rd, Suite E

Living page — updated Oct 13. Refresh after Wed AM signup pull.

Run of Show

~11 min on mic, then the room. Bookend the stage, protect the mingle.

Design rule: stage time is ~11 minutes, scripted. Everything after is the room — the chips, the Stuck Wall, and people finding each other. The room is the content.
Open before Thursday:
  • Run the relay once with Eric + Matt — one pass so the handoff and the chip tee-up land clean, not improvised.
  • Build the stations — four labeled jars + chips, the color-key check-in sign, the Stuck Wall, and print the topper cards.
Andrea confirmed in person.
Stage portion — ~11 min
BeatWhoTime
Welcome + the whyMichael2 min
Agent-headlines relayEric → Matt Aponte5 min
Team intro round (one line each, 7 people)Team2 min
The ask + point at the stationsMichael2 min

Then the room opens: chips get placed, the Stuck Wall fills, testimonial camera runs. Michael's close reads the tally — “Let's see where the chips landed.”

Intro round — one line each

Spoken, one breath each.

Michael“I'm Michael — I started this. I'll be the guy who won't shut up about why this city needed a room like this. Fair warning.”

Eric Goodman (Strategic Advisor, Programming)“Eric runs The AI Nation and the AI Clarity Challenge — if you're drowning in AI noise and want a path through it, he's your guy.”

Matt Aponte“Matt handles what we actually build. Find him if you want to argue about which of those four comes first — he enjoys it.”

Marcial B. Dumlao (Chapter Organizer, Strategy & Ops)“Marcial makes the thing run. If your question is ‘okay, but how does this actually work,' that's a Marcial conversation.”

Andrea Palten (Marketing Committee Lead)“Andrea's the reason anyone outside this room will ever hear about us. Find her if you want to help people find this.”

Karrie Pittman (ACA Marketing Partner)“Karrie's ACA, and she knows everyone in this building and most of the city. She's your shortcut to whoever you're looking for.”

Matt Watkins / “Chewie” (Chapter Organizer — self-intros from the crowd)“Somewhere in this room, six-foot-five with a camera, is Chewie — he runs Cinegraph and he's the reason any of this gets filmed. Chewie, wave. Find him if you want to make something with AI instead of just talking about it.”

The relay — Eric opens, Matt lands
  • Frame (Eric): “You keep hearing the word agents. Here are three headlines — and what's actually true underneath.”
  • HL1 (Eric): “40% of agent projects get scrapped by 2027” (Gartner) → not agents failing — people deploying with no guardrails or measurement. A maturation signal, same as ERP and cloud. Hands off: “Matt — take the two that matter.”
  • HL2 (Matt): “95% of enterprise AI pilots show no measurable impact” (MIT GenAI Divide) → the 5% that worked picked one narrow job wired into real systems; the rest built isolated demos.
  • HL3 (Matt): “Agents will replace your team” → reality ~67% automation vs. a promised 90%. They augment — pick the repetitive slice.
  • Mic-drop (Matt): of thousands of vendors claiming “agentic AI,” Gartner says ~130 are real — the rest is “agent washing.” Translation: most of what you're pitched is a chatbot in a trench coat.
  • Chip tee-up (Matt, close): “Every one of these is someone who read the headline instead of touching the thing. That's the whole reason this chapter exists — and the whole reason there are four jars by the door. You got a chip on your way in. Go bet it on the one you want us to build first. That's how the 2027 calendar gets built — not by me, not by Eric. By where the chips land.”
Stations
  • Four Buckets — jars: Policy / Build Workshops / Done-With-You / Build-a-thons. Topper card: “Place your bet. Which one do we build first?” Right past the door. Greeter demos the first drop for the opening 20 min.
  • Color layer — chip color = who you are, flat, no ranking: White = haven't started / curious · Green = business owner · Blue = builder / engineer · Red = tinkerer / hobbyist. Check-in sign: “Grab the chip that's most like you.” If anyone asks “which is worth more?” → “none — that's the point.” The jar vote survives even if the color sort gets sloppy.
  • Stuck Wall — mid-room, sticky notes + sharpies at the wall (not at check-in). Header card: “The thing I'm stuck on is… Write it. Stick it. Odds are three other people wrote the same thing.”
Roles — lock these
  • Door + greeters: 2 people — name tags, warm welcome, hand out chips (color = who you are) and opt-out photo dots (orange dot = don't publish me). Demo the first chip drop.
  • Steven Lucks: our honored ACA elder. Keep him good company, let him talk shop one-on-one, make sure he never stands alone. Scott or Karrie are natural anchors. No mic.
  • Beginner welcome: greeters keep an eye on the newer folks (see Host Map) so the builders don't swallow them.
  • Capture: Watkins — stills + testimonial station once the room opens. Needs a helper to run the station. (See Shot List.)
  • Stuck Wall + chips: someone owns restocking sticky notes and nudging people to place a chip before they leave.
  • Name capture at close: someone owns the list. That list is the chapter.
  • N.P. Dawson: if he demos, handle access — he's deaf; quiet corner, visual cues.
Sponsor thank-you lines

Say it warm, twice — top nod + full close.

“Two thank-yous, and I mean both. This room exists because the ACA opened its doors — Scott, you've been in our corner since before there was an ‘our.' And the beer in your hand is courtesy of Red Leg Brewing — Colorado Springs taking care of Colorado Springs. Raise it to both.”