I recently had the opportunity to speak at the Springfield Tech Council’s CIO/IT Leadership event at Big Cedar Lodge in Branson, Missouri. I was honored to be the event’s only speaker focused specifically on artificial intelligence.
My session centered on AI infrastructure, execution, and operational leadership—not from a purely theoretical perspective, but through the lens of what it takes to deploy and operate complex technology in the real world.
Rather than delivering a traditional presentation, I facilitated an interactive discussion with technology and business leaders around several important questions:
- How can organizations separate genuine AI opportunities from industry hype?
- What prevents promising AI strategies from reaching actual deployment?
- What infrastructure is required to scale AI responsibly?
- How should leaders approach security, resilience, power availability, and operational risk?
- Which decisions need to be made today to prepare for rapidly changing AI workloads?
One of the strongest themes was that AI adoption is no longer just a software or data strategy. Organizations must also consider the physical infrastructure behind it—including computing capacity, power, cooling, connectivity, security, and the people needed to operate it.
The technology is moving quickly, but successful adoption still depends on disciplined execution. Having an AI strategy is only the beginning. Organizations also need a practical path from experimentation to production, along with infrastructure that can grow without creating unnecessary operational or financial risk.
I appreciated the candid discussion and the opportunity to hear directly from CIOs and IT leaders about the challenges they are navigating. Events like this are valuable because they move the AI conversation beyond predictions and headlines and toward the practical decisions organizations must make right now.
Thank you to the Springfield Tech Council, the event organizers, sponsors, and everyone who participated in the conversation. I was grateful for the invitation and enjoyed contributing a practitioner’s perspective to an important and timely discussion.
