Community
We don't just sell AI services - we built Wisconsin's AI leadership ecosystem. Two peer groups. One goal: practical progress on real work.
AI Agent Innovation Group
The longest-running AI practitioner group in Wisconsin.
Founded in 2024. Every Tuesday, 12-1pm. StartingBlock Madison. AAIG isn't a meetup - it's a build session. Members bring real work, build together, and share what works.
Less talking about AI in the abstract. More using it on real work.
- Open to all levels - advanced users sharpen workflow, beginners find permission to start simply
- Every session: expert framing + hands-on building + peer sharing
- No vendor pitches. No hype. Just useful progress.
AAIG at a glance
- When
- Every Tuesday, 12:00 - 1:00 PM
- Where
- StartingBlock Madison, 821 E Washington Ave, 2nd Floor
- Running since
- 2024
- Format
- Build & Learn Sessions
- Cost
- Free
- Founded by
- Mike Zhang, WiscAI
Inside AAIG: expert framing, hands-on building, peer sharing. Every week in Madison.
AI Leadership Breakfast Forum
Invitation-only. Closed-door. Peer-level.
A bi-monthly breakfast forum for senior leaders - VP, CIO, C-suite - navigating AI adoption. Co-hosted by Mike Zhang (WiscAI) and Steve Cretney (EVP, Colony Brands). No slides. No vendor pitches. Just frank conversation among leaders accountable for execution.
AI changes the cost of thinking, not just tools.
- Uneven adoption across teams - and what to do about it
- Cost lever vs. capacity expansion - the real strategic question
- Where human judgment still matters
- Real examples from other sectors and organizations
Forum at a glance
- When
- Monthly, 8:30 - 10:00 AM
- Where
- American Family Insurance Spark Building, Madison, WI
- Format
- Closed-door peer conversation
- Who
- VP / CIO / C-suite
- Co-hosts
- Mike Zhang (WiscAI) + Steve Cretney (EVP, Colony Brands)
Senior leaders at $1B+ Wisconsin organizations
Members include CIOs, CFOs, and VPs of IT, Operations, Marketing, and Strategic Sourcing across life sciences, financial services, manufacturing, insurance, retail and e-commerce, education foundations, and specialty retail. Everyone in the room is on the hook to make AI work at their own company. Steve Cretney (EVP, Colony Brands) co-sponsors. The room has included senior leaders from organizations like Promega, Lands' End, and Colony Brands; individual members are named only with permission.
A few of the conversations that have happened in the room
Quotes are anonymized to preserve the closed-door framing. The substance is real and verbatim from session notes.
A 50-year-old, FDA-regulated manufacturer where 1,800 of 2,000 employees now use AI every day. 25% of every workday mandated for AI work. Hiring frozen - not for cuts, but because AI is absorbing the capacity.
“We have no choice.”
A VP of IT at a regional insurance carrier ran a customer segmentation analysis with anonymized policy data and AI tooling. When a top actuarial firm independently delivered their version:
“The readout was exactly the same as what I had just gotten done - and I'm not an actuary.”
An LLM-built tool that compares invoices to contracts at one carrier. Vendors know it runs on every invoice they send.
“Our expenses have dropped 30% on our largest vendors - because they know we do it.”
A CIO described scrapping annual MBOs for 90-day plans - because annual planning cycles can't keep up with how fast AI is changing what's possible. The forum returns to this theme repeatedly: cadence is the new constraint.
Why this matters if you hire us: WiscAI's perspective on AI in regulated industries, mid-market manufacturing, and operational AI doesn't come from a deck. It comes from a room of senior leaders working through it in real time, every month. That's the lens we bring into client engagements.
Find your entry point.
Whether you build things or make the decisions, there's a room for you.
I build things
Join practitioners from across Wisconsin every Tuesday for hands-on build sessions at StartingBlock Madison.
Get the Tuesday InviteI make decisions
A closed-door bi-monthly forum for senior leaders navigating AI adoption at the organizational level.
Request an Invitation