The Immersive Lens Podcast

Paul Engin | Dave Ghidiu | Jeff Kidd

Episode 23: AI Summit Wrap-Up

Cover art for an episode of The Immersive Lens

 

The landscape of artificial intelligence is evolving at breakneck speed, and staying ahead means understanding both the bleeding-edge models and how they are applied in local communities and classrooms. In this episode, the conversation centers around the recent AI Convening at Finger Lakes Community College, moving the discussion from basic chat interfaces to the highly anticipated era of agentic AI and on-device processing. It matters right now because local enterprises, educators, and the general public are moving past the initial shock of generative tech and are now eager to build practical, everyday applications to wear multiple hats more efficiently.

Hosts Paul and Dave, alongside FLCC VP of Strategic Initiatives Debora Ortloff, share their unique perspectives from the ground floor of the event, highlighting the massive community engagement and the democratization of tech skills. The trio's final verdict suggests that next year will be defined by seamless AI integration, where visible interfaces begin to fade away in favor of background agents, offline local models, and wearable smart devices that execute tasks asynchronously.




Key Topics

The Rise of Vibe Coding: The barrier to entry for software development has drastically shifted, allowing users to go from "zero to hero" with minimal technical background. The hosts highlight a wildly popular session on "vibe coding," proving there is a massive appetite for using AI to generate code through natural language prompts.

Community-Driven AI Adoption: AI is actively reshaping local businesses and municipal operations. The episode spotlights how small business owners are eager to discover an "AI stack" that allows them to juggle their many daily responsibilities more effectively, demonstrating a strong need for practical AI literacy at the local level.

The Sandbox Experience: True AI fluency requires a safe, accessible space to experiment and play without the pressure of needing a perfect prompt. The success of the "AI Playground" at the convening showcased that hands-on experimentation is the most effective way to help beginners overcome their hesitation, giving them pre-built scenarios to understand what these tools can actually accomplish.

The Agentic Future is Offline and Wearable: The next major leap in spatial computing and AI won't just live in a browser tab requiring manual typing. Paul and Dave predict a massive shift toward offline, on-device models and agentic AI that acts autonomously in the background, increasingly accessed through smart glasses or wearable tech rather than traditional keyboards.





Transcript

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Dave Ghidiu: It's not I was not ready for that. I know. He always tries to jam you up right there. Okay. All right, here we go.

Paul Engin: Welcome to the immersive lens, the podcast exploring the technologies reshaping how we live, work, and learn.

Dave Ghidiu: From AI and virtual reality to creative media and design, we are diving into the tools and ideas shaping our connected world.

Paul Engin: My name is Paul Engin, join us as we uncover people and ideas driving the next wave of interactive experiences.

Dave Ghidiu: And I'm Dave Ghidiu, this is the immersive lens.

Paul Engin: All right, Dave. We have another special guest.

Dave Ghidiu: Special, special guest.

Paul Engin: So Debora Ortloff, um, joined us, vice president of strategic initiatives here at Finger Lakes Community College. Thank you for coming back, we are right off the second annual convening and we thought that today we could talk a little bit about the event. And before we get into it though, did you guys hear about the IPOs happening and...

Dave Ghidiu: Oh, the IPO for the immersive lens? Get in at the ground level folks. It's only for select investors right now. Only for select investors right now.

Paul Engin: So SpaceX is going public today. It's starting at 135, which is it's interesting cause you hear the stock market talk about the actual technology and what he's lumping into it. And then there's a whole political aspect of it as well. Um, and then the other two IPOs that are going to be coming are Anthropic and Open AI. Um, and I don't know what your thoughts on Anthropic and Open AI as far as their IPOs. I know which one you're leaning toward.

Dave Ghidiu: Well, so a few things, Elon Musk might be the first trillionaire, right? And this IPO is going to shatter records. All three of these will shatter records. In fact I heard in some reporting in Silicon Valley that realtors are taking now stock instead of cash for houses. Because it's such a valuable commodity. Yeah, it's bonkers.

Paul Engin: It's crazy. Yeah, I'm curious to see what happens with it. Um, I do think that they will be, uh, all three will be pretty popular IPOs that are coming up. But I definitely think it's something that we could talk about more in a future podcast.

Dave Ghidiu: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Engin: But let's get into the event. Um, so I'll ask both of you this question right now. Uh, first of all, Dave you gave the closing remarks and you gave a few sessions. Um, Deb you gave a few sessions and you orchestrated this whole thing. So when you look back at the conference now, what moment or session are you most proud of or, uh, what do you kind of want to mention that was a highlight?

Dave Ghidiu: My personal highlight, so leading up to this event we've had a few meetings with the whole team, and I was not able to attend the first portion of the day because I had an emergency. Uh, but during all these meetings I kept saying how I really, really, really wanted one of those s'more muffins because we had them last year. And Adam HP saved me one. Cause he knew they were gonna go fast. So that was my personal win for the day.

Paul Engin: Well you know what? I had one. And Jeff got it for me. Jeff was like Paul, this is the muffin he speaks about. I'm like this is the muffin as hot as SpaceX IPO stocks. But the, I did a session on vibe coding which a lot of the, a lot of these sessions like we were dragging chairs in because people were like we want to see the and it really just validated that there is such an appetite and a thirst for vibe coding that we will now be having sessions in the fall. I think probably like 3 hour workshops for vibe coding. You will go from zero to hero. So keep your eyes peeled for that, sign up um for for that, get on a list, but I thought that this was a great proving ground for understanding what people in the community writ large wanted for AI.

Debora Ortloff: Yeah, absolutely. It's hard to pick out one session, right? And of course I also couldn't be in every session, um, neither could, um, could any of you, but, uh, I heard I got such great feedback from the really diverse array of folks that we had at this, um, at this event. And, uh, I think one of the things I was most excited about, like just broadly as a real win for the day is we have some fantastic folks at FLCC doing all of this work and I'm so incredibly proud of that work and that we have this array of experts that can serve the community in this way. But we also brought in this time, um, for the second annual convening, really three very strong outside folks. Our keynote speaker Jen O'Brien, I know we're going to come back and talk a little bit about that. But we also had, uh, two businesses, two local businesses step up, they've been engaged with us and say hey we'd love to offer a session. Uh, we had Katie Pullen from Allstate, uh, insurance out of Newark, her session was so on target about small businesses and discovering your AI stack. Just really thinking about this idea of more than one tool, how can these tools help you, and really focused on that idea of I'm a small business owner, I wear 18 hats. How can these different tools help me? And I so appreciated her thinking about that and happened to also be outside the room when people were coming out and they there was such excitement about what they had just seen and and heard and I love that. And we also had a local software technology company, um, ITX, that had, um, recently started connecting with us and, you know, I think they very often are speaking to audiences that are very tech savvy and, uh, serving sort of a a high level tech field. And then bringing their knowledge to this they were so adept at it, so able to to really talk to a more generalist audience. I love that we're making these connections and bringing our community together in new ways. For me that's just a huge win.

Dave Ghidiu: Yeah, we're delivering on the promise of the hub.

Debora Ortloff: Yes. It truly is emerging as a real hub. Um, obviously also Ontario County Chamber of Commerce goes without saying. Fantastic to work with. Yes, absolutely.

Paul Engin: That's great. I know, um, as far as, uh, we had a pretty diverse audience, um, from some people that are more technical to some people that still, you, you mentioned like that on ramp that people are waiting on, um, and I know we'll we'll segue into it, but it leads to your prediction for the next, the 3rd annual convening, that they'll be on that on ramp and automated tasks might be coming. But, uh, it was interesting. So, uh, let me ask you guys as far as the sessions and resources, um, what do you think the most conversation or questions that attendees... I know you mentioned that somebody, we had a place where they could actually use the AI. Was that something that...

Debora Ortloff: Yeah, the AI playground. Uh, so that's definitely an area I want to see us repeat. I think, um, we need to relocate it. It was a little bit hard to find. Uh, so that's a good lesson learned and we can we can certainly do that next time. Dave and I have used this concept of the AI playground in other scenarios when we've worked with other groups, and I think it's a really powerful idea. I had the opportunity to speak with a couple of folks who did attend the playground and were able to find it in our labyrinth here at FLCC. But what they came away from was such a powerful reminder of why it is we wanted to have that playground there. So just one example, I spoke with a a woman, um, who works for a local municipality and she, um, she had gone actually to the session that I taught, so I was able to talk with her a little bit about that.

Paul Engin: And what was your session Deb?

Debora Ortloff: On infographic development using using data to develop infographics. So she and I conversed a little bit about that session and what that meant for her and her work and that of course is always very gratifying to hear. But, more specifically, she chose for her third concurrent session to go to the AI playground and gave me some great examples of how she just went in there and while we had lots of prompts for people to try so you didn't need to have an idea we had some for you, she went in with the ideas she got from her first two sessions and started playing and started really building ideas, uh, right then and there and applying that knowledge. I loved hearing that and it's exciting.

Dave Ghidiu: That is a great design principle too. So the next year we should do that. Anyone who's presenting should have prompts that people can try in the playground.

Debora Ortloff: Yes. Yes.

Dave Ghidiu: And then positioning it so it's easy to get to. Exactly.

Debora Ortloff: Signage is, as I said, we have a labyrinth, but I have some ideas of where we'll move our playground to next.

Dave Ghidiu: Paul, what was your favorite moment of yesterday by the way?

Paul Engin: So I'll be honest with you, I loved, uh, the keynote and I loved your closing remarks.

Dave Ghidiu: Thank you.

Paul Engin: I thought that it gave, uh, slightly different perspectives on things. Um, I know our opening keynote, um, I thought she really connected with associating it with a real graphic design person, um, fearing about AI and positioning and, um, you you hear that, you know, there is this real fear to this and, um, I thought she did a nice job in positioning it and, um, I like how, you know, things are evolving and, uh, she mentioned at the end that maybe if she comes back next year, it's no longer marketing it's gonna be something else because, you know, maybe that term is gonna be shifting. Um, so there is no more typists, right? It's it's changed, um, as far as a position goes. But, um, it was really interesting to hear that perspective. And then at the end I loved your messaging and how you positioned AI because it was positioned slightly differently.

Dave Ghidiu: Yeah that was not planned.

Paul Engin: And I loved your projections. And it and it could be cause we're connected but, um, it's the same projections that I would have thought. And in fact, you spoke about RAG and I spoke about RAG in our session. And that's the retrieval augmented generation where like it only pulls answers from your own content.

Debora Ortloff: Yes.

Paul Engin: Yes. And and I think that it's an important aspect that people don't understand so I in my session I broke down terms because, you know, people don't understand tokens, they don't understand RAG, they don't understand the privacy elements even though the training elements and all of that stuff. So I tried to break out some of those terms but, um, I really liked how you positioned it. And again, there is, if you look at this in a fearful way, uh, versus a tool, I think that that's something that, um, is a distinction when we talk about AI because I think it has to be human-led. And I think that, um, it is a tool to expedite but that doesn't mean it should take away things, if that makes sense.

Dave Ghidiu: Yeah, and I was in that talk I'll talk about the potentiation line which is is kind of like if you are in a domain of like your domain of excellence is say like graphic design, then when you use AI you're really like retreating to the mean because that it will operate at like middle and you're well above that. But if you're operating and you're doing things, say in social media, and I use an example like I don't do social media and I don't understand it, but I know that I need to kind of have a space like maybe it's okay to use AI to do my social media posts for LinkedIn and Facebook because I don't have the time to do it, I don't have the expertise. Um, or maybe it's better that I actually use AI to help me understand how to do it and then I'm not using AI just to produce, but I'm using it to learn. And I still might be punching up and below that like potentiation line, but I'm like getting there and I'm making it genuine. And sometimes it's better just not to use AI. And that's the whole AI judgment, which is what I was talking about, where it's not AI literacy or AI fluency, it's understanding like what tools to use, what do you want to accomplish, and like maybe when not to use a tool.

Debora Ortloff: Absolutely.

Paul Engin: Yeah. And I'll and I'll just quick example and we'll keep moving, but uh I actually I'm creating this 3D print and it's it holds a I call it a a dice dispenser. Um, and but now tell me more. With Autodesk they have a AI so you can type in. So out of curiosity, I typed in, I'm looking for this, these are the dimensions, da da da. And it produced, but it's not what I was envisioning. Sure. So, you know, I took 30. And again, I'm skilled at 3D so I'm not expect I'm not it was just an exploration like you said, like I'm just curious to see what it can produce, if it gets me closer, because then I can modify it. But it wasn't because there's these nuances.

Dave Ghidiu: Yeah, but the differences if I had done that, I'd been like this is great, cause I know nothing about 3D printing. I'd been like, this is perfect, this is exactly what I want. So I think that's a great analogy of exactly what we're talking about.

Paul Engin: Yes, and so I ended up doing it myself because I had these little nuances that I wanted. And I'm sure I could have kept prompting and kept prompting and I could have probably got there, but in my head I was like I just. But it was it was a good to your point, sometimes you can try it, if it doesn't work or it's something that you might want to push yourself I think that that's important too. So.

Dave Ghidiu: Yeah. So Debora let me ask you, how did you think about balancing the beginner friendly like putting together the schedule for that cause we kind of had to cover every every sector but then also every level of AI comfortability. So what was the driving force between that, how did it work out, how do you think it panned out?

Debora Ortloff: It's a great question because it is something we spent a lot of time on. So while we didn't name these tracks when we were planning the schedule, we created a beginner, advanced beginner, and um what's next track, right? That uh that maybe it's not quite here for everyone but you really want to be thinking about uh the next move you're gonna make. And then in addition to that, this year we also added the conversations uh which we had not had previously. We hosted one with Jen O'Brien so people could follow up directly with her. We hosted the environmental conversation which I think was um really important to to bring in and well attended. And also our colleague Jen Carney led uh AI leadership, another really key piece to some of this work especially for companies where they have uh supervision and management as part of of their business model. So we did have a lot of deliberate thinking around this. The question is did we hit the mark? It did we hit the mark. And I think we were close to the mark. I think the sessions were well attended and I think there were folks that might have been more in the beginner realm who attended sessions that were more advanced. Um and I'll give you an example of that. Um we had some folks who really had never used AI and they went to the build a chatbot session that our colleague Jeff Dugan led.

Dave Ghidiu: Yeah, Jeff Dugan led that.

Debora Ortloff: And I think for them, they walked out, I was chatting with them and they they truly enjoyed the session. Their answer was I didn't know what a chatbot was, I'd heard about them, I hear about them on the news, but I didn't know what one was. Now I really understand what it is and why it might be useful. I'm maybe not ready to go build one, but I now have sort of progressed in my learning. So I thought that was great. Um they self-selected into something that maybe they need a little a little bit more skill, they need to be really fully on the ramp, they really hadn't used AI before, but it gave them good ideas.

Dave Ghidiu: Yeah, and I think that's kind of that's a big win because especially with AI, it's such a technology where even if you you just need to know what's possible, so if you don't have the technical acumen to make a chatbot, as long as you see it and you're like oh that's what it can do, it's so easy to to to to get there with AI, you just experiment. You're like you can't AI wrong, you'll get there. Um, all sorts of stuff.

Paul Engin: So, um, as far as, uh, I guess the FLX AI hub positions FLCC as a AI literacy leader. Did the conference reinforce that?

Debora Ortloff: I hope so.

Dave Ghidiu: Yeah.

Debora Ortloff: I think it did. Uh, that doesn't mean there isn't more we need to do, more we can do, more we should do. But ultimately we had about 160 folks at the um event and what I observed was a high level of engagement, excitement, and great dialogue. And for me that means we hit the mark in serving our community in an important way and continuing to be a place where people are coming to get and engage in this kind of learning.

Dave Ghidiu: Yeah, and that just gives me all sorts of ideas for how to expand the hub and make it like bring people into the fold that might not necessarily work here but have that expertise. So I think this is equally fact finding for us as it was for for people who came.

Paul Engin: Yes. Yep.

Dave Ghidiu: I do want to just name that AI does move incredibly fast and every speaker probably everywhere about AI says that. But literally this week the before in the two days before the convening Anthropics Claude dropped Fable 5, which is an astronomically new LLM and it's so powerful. And the day before that Apple has had their WWDC and there were questions that people had asked where had they had we had the conference on Monday the answers would have been radically different. Yes. Like what one gentleman was like oh I really want AI on my phone and I'm I really believe in it but I have an iPhone and he's like is it worth switching to Android. I was like well, if you'd asked me Monday, yes, but like let me tell you about how Apple is rolling out Siri. So that's that was an interesting thing to me and even Jeff Dugan was like you know what the last week Google moved where the gems are in Gemini. And so it took me a minute to and I was like yeah, this is just such a portrait of how fast things go. So my question to the two of you, did you see anything or hear any conversations about how fast it's changing, what that means, is it scary, are people just used to it by now? Or like did it affect any sessions?

Paul Engin: Do you want me to start? I can start with my session. I did local LLMs, so setting up working with local LLMs and um all the development conferences just happened. So Microsoft's conference, they said that Windows is going to have a offline model built into it. Um interesting. Apple did theirs and they said that they're also going to have an off um uh on device model for their iOS and their Mac.

Dave Ghidiu: And their hardware is so good that it's kind of like born for that almost. The GPUs hardwired right into the CPUs.

Paul Engin: Yeah and again I don't know the context, I don't know I know they have a deal with Google as far as Apple goes so I don't know if it's going to be Gemini or if they're going to do their own flavor for the local LLM. Um but uh it's just interesting because uh it is moving really fast. So even Google has Edge AI which is a local model that you can download and um you can do it on any iOS device, on any Android device. And uh I know you alluded to that and even your keynote that this is the direction it's going, but these are all things that are just like are happening like within the week. Yeah. Also this week so Gemma 4 has the 32 or 31 gigabyte or 31 billion uh model for for local models. So it's just so fast.

Dave Ghidiu: Yeah. How about you?

Debora Ortloff: Yeah, I definitely think there were many people commenting on being happy to be engaged in this conversation because of the pace and the fact that it's dizzying almost. Um, so often folks remarked that they haven't necessarily known where to start or they've started and then sort of felt a little frozen. So I I heard that comment a lot and I'm I'm hoping that we gave them some inspiration to be able to keep going and to think about experimentation as a core value in the way they're they're working through their own AI use for their business or personal life. More particularly though, we did have a discussion about this in my session on infographics. So I shared with them that if we had been hosting this 4 weeks ago, and I've been planning on this session for quite a while, I would not have been talking about Chat GPT. I forgot about that. Right? And that in fact I ended up sort of shifting what I was talking about and fundamentally focusing on Chat GPT as the end space that I would use for infographic development right now. And it is has completely changed my own practice because their interface is simply better right now. Now will that change again? And I told the folks in my audience, you know, hold on, of course this is going to change again. But um, that's interesting, right? Uh, and I I think also knowing that it's okay if you're not using the absolute perfect tool, getting in there and learning just some of the basic skills of how to put an infographic or or whatever we're talking about together, you can then apply that in other spaces.

Dave Ghidiu: Yeah, such a transferable skill. And yeah I also think people should realize AI is not good for everything. So until that release AI was very bad at putting text on graphics. Terrible.

Paul Engin: Terrible. Odd. Inconsistent. Exceedingly inconsistent. Typos.

Dave Ghidiu: Typos. I mean it just, it's not good at that. Um, and so it's one of those things where it's evolving and absolutely. It just Chat GPT released that Image Gen 2 and it was just okay, now it's good. Now I can do text well. It was a game changer.

Debora Ortloff: Yeah it was absolutely a game changer.

Paul Engin: Um, so let me ask you both, and I'll give you my opinion on this too. Um, if you could add one entirely new session or track for next year's 3rd annual event, what do you think it'll be? I think I know what Dave is going to say.

Dave Ghidiu: I think we're gonna call it the Tri-wizard uh...

Paul Engin: The we're gonna have a cauldron...

Dave Ghidiu: Oh please can we please call it that? It would make me so happy. Yes let's do it. So we'll have a theme, basically that's the end. The one thing I think is actually one of our quiet strengths is our ability to peek around the corner. So last year we did an awful lot with prompt engineering and and and we were like when you come back like many of you will already have kind of acquired that skill, we won't do as much prompt engineering, it'll be more about chatbots and maybe some light agentic AI, which it was. I think next year between this year and next year, and you alluded this to to to this earlier, I think we're going to prompt engineering might not even be there. We might have a session for for the onramp for for people well always have our onramp. Yeah. And but it might be a merging of like there might not be a 101 and 102 it might just be like this is prompt engineering. But I think that we're really going to see much more with agentic AI. So having AI uh do things for you because we're seeing that right now in Google Gemini, you can do scheduled tasks, like it sends me I get a PDF every morning of the major headlines of agentic AI, which is kind of meta. But I there there's like Claude co-work, there's uh now even in Google Docs you can put markdown instructions in there. And so like just all these skills that you can add so there's all these things that are toeing the line with agentic AI cause that's still really hard for people to apprehend because you need to have some technical acumen to do full-blown agentic AI. But I don't think that's going to be the case next year. So I think we might have an agentic AI track next year. That's my prediction. We should do a follow up to this next year and see if we were right or not.

Paul Engin: Yeah, oh we do. All right, your prediction.

Debora Ortloff: Unfortunately my prediction's fairly similar. I was trying to think on the fly of something else that we might need to add, but it that's really clearly where things are are going in AI. And the technical acumen point Dave made is particularly key. That continues to change, right? Um AI is making the ability to AI easier and easier. So as these uh new skills become more integrated into the AI and into the LLMs in general, we're then able to bring that and break that down for a new new folks to think about and be able to apply uh more simply and more easily. And there's no question that it's going to be agents. I think also connected very much to that will be the use of multiple devices, right? The use of, you know, using agentic AI with your phone, with um while you're away, you know that kind of really creating new space for your work. Oh that's interesting. And um, and and that's exciting. Uh it's already talked about a lot but it isn't commonplace yet and so I think next year, that's the track, uh, and it'll manifest in some different ways.

Dave Ghidiu: Yeah. You sound a little bit like Marshall McLuhan that like media theorist who was like the medium is the message. And and I hadn't really thought about it until I just heard you talking about it like oh yeah cause you can start something on your desktop and then when you're getting your oil changed pop open your phone and continue vibe coding or whatever. All right Paul you're up.

Paul Engin: All right so I got a few things I'm thinking about. And these might be stretches, I don't know. So I do think the agent-based AI, even like Claude co-work, like, you know, you mentioned this in your closing statements that it it might be a little difficult now, but it's going to get easier and easier and easier. So I think that that's going to be, we'll probably have more sessions on on that and like, you know, people want to know Open Claude or absolutely safe how how do we use it in a safe way. Or Microsoft Scout, which is the new one that's coming out. Right, so we have all of these things that are going to be easier and safer, right? I think that's the other thing. Um, so here are my two stretch ones that stretch goals. You mentioned this before. How do you develop invisible UI?

Dave Ghidiu: Oh so you're talking about when I mentioned that websites now you have to design for agents cause this is the first year Cloudflare just released that more bots have been using the internet than humans. Yes. And and that's a trend that's not going away.

Paul Engin: So most people like even Google, the first thing that comes up is Gemini AI related things. So absolutely. How do you gear your site if it is a site or if it's just a public text document that feeds I think that's what it's going to be. Well you you said this like a few weeks ago or a few months ago. I did, but when you mentioned it again, I'm thinking to myself, I wonder if there's going to be tools by the end of this year that will allow us to build that. I'm sure Google has already released like a draft of it. And then the other thing is physical device.

Dave Ghidiu: So can you create a smart coffee cup that understands when it's cold or hot or it and it feeds off of AI so the internet of things AI of things.

Paul Engin: ...become AI of things that all communicate together. Um and again.

Dave Ghidiu: No that's interesting and I think one step that is actually kind of merging both your ideas is when I was listening to how Apple is thinking about AI, they're like most people will go to Gemini or go to Claude on their phone, but like we might not even have those apps. It might just be such general intelligence that everything you're doing on the phone is being seen by AI and being used locally. So that like AI just becomes kind of like I saw this this woman who is a runner and she got these exoskeleton legs and she's like I just have to think about it and it like carries me up the stairs when she was like running up these stairs and I think that's what this AI is gonna do when it's at the operating system level like you're talking about and like you're talking about.

Paul Engin: Yeah. And then obviously glasses.

Dave Ghidiu: And the glasses.

Paul Engin: I still think glasses are going to be...

Debora Ortloff: They're coming. For real this time.

Paul Engin: Yes. For real. And whatever Jony Ive is working on.

Dave Ghidiu: Johnny yeah.

Paul Engin: Um, great. So do you guys want to, before we end, I know we're running out of time, do you guys want to add anything else?

Dave Ghidiu: I I kind of like to to just pose a question to Debora, what what would you want someone who's listening to this podcast who's thinking of maybe doing something similar like this at their own institution or their organization. What's some advice you would have for them?

Debora Ortloff: Build your hub.

Dave Ghidiu: Build the hub. So it's a community.

Debora Ortloff: It's, as with many, many things in this world, when you have a good team, you can do many things. Um, and I think one of the best things we've done with this work is the partnerships we've built, I I mentioned some of them at the beginning, but really discovering who you can bring into your hub, we have so much talent here at FLCC and discovering that and empowering that, that's very exciting to me. Um, but making sure that we can keep building the hub, that's uh that's what will carry our work forward.

Dave Ghidiu: I think that should be the title of this show, it should be building your hub or keep building the hub.

Paul Engin: Well maybe we can do a blog post.

Dave Ghidiu: You don't have to change the entire episode.

Paul Engin: All right. Well I think that's all the time we have. Did you want to add anything else Dave? Did you?

Dave Ghidiu: Do I have any advice for people running an event like this? I I hadn't put an event like this together, I know there's a lot of uh behind the scenes stuff that happens, then uh have great people.

Paul Engin: Yeah. I'm just uh I just enjoyed doing my session and I appreciated being involved in it. Um, it was great to see the diverse groups and I love all the different sessions. Um, and I was actually I'm looking forward to co-work as well.

Dave Ghidiu: All right.

Debora Ortloff: Yes. Oh, that's one thing I do sort of want to mention since we can sort of quasi plug things here.

Dave Ghidiu: Give us a plug.

Debora Ortloff: So, uh one thing we definitely have been thinking about but I think was reinforced by the learning we all did together um at the convening is we want to start offering slightly more intensive workshops that won't replace the convening, I think that's an important thing that we'll continue to do. These are snacks, right? Until the next big event. Yes, snacks until the next big event, but also so folks can come in and do a little bit deeper learning on a particular topic co-work. Um, we've already promised that will be one for the fall, and I think it is because uh it's sort of what's next, it makes a lot of sense. But I think we'll also make sure to do some on ramp level activities as well, folks that want either a follow up from what they've already done or they're just hearing uh new things and saying no I need I need to find out more about this. So look for that and uh we'll make sure to get that out in all the usual means.

Dave Ghidiu: All the channels.

Paul Engin: Well, Debora thank you so much for coming, really appreciate it.

Debora Ortloff: My pleasure. Thanks for for putting on the event and championing the whole thing.

Dave Ghidiu: Thank you. And building the hub. Thanks for building the hub.

Paul Engin: Um, my name is Paul Engin.

Dave Ghidiu: I'm Dave Ghidiu. If you enjoyed today's conversation, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Let's be careful out there folks.

Paul Engin: And share it with a friend or colleague.

Dave Ghidiu: Or an enemy, or an enemy.

Paul Engin: Or an enemy, why do you always say an enemy?

Dave Ghidiu: We need those, we need people to smash those like and subscribe buttons. I don't care if they hate me.

Paul Engin: That's right. We need to be controversial so this way.

Dave Ghidiu: That's right.

Paul Engin: Um, so share it with a friend or a colleague, until next time stay curious, stay connected and thanks for looking through the immersive lens with us.

Dave Ghidiu: This episode was engineered by Jeff Kidd. Recorded at Finger Lakes Community College podcast studios located in beautiful Canandaigua, New York in the heart of the Finger Lakes region offering more than 55 degrees, certificates, micro credentials including...

Paul Engin: Oh, the AI integration specialist! Hot off the press! Sign up now.

Dave Ghidiu: Oh look at that! Smash that like and subscribe button. Tell your enemies.

Paul Engin: Fully online.

Dave Ghidiu: Fully online, you can do it in one semester, no prerequisites. That's great. What are you waiting for, why aren't you taking it right now?

Debora Ortloff: Vibe coding's a part of it.

Dave Ghidiu: Vibe coding is, yeah, it's 33% of it.

Paul Engin: There you go. Awesome. Thank you to public relations and communications, marketing and the FLX AI hub.

Dave Ghidiu: Eager to delve into passion discover exciting and immersive opportunities at www.flcc.edu.

Paul Engin: See Dave always messes my W's up so.

Dave Ghidiu: We're in a shared google doc I always I just I just read right from the document.

Paul Engin: I know I should have just read it.

Dave Ghidiu: As part of our mission at FLCC we are committed to making education accessible, innovative, and aligned with the needs of both learners and employers. The views expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts, guests and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Finger Lakes Community College. Or their enemies.

Paul Engin: Music by Den from Pixabay. This is the immersive lens. Thank you again for coming.

Dave Ghidiu: Hey Jeff, this this monitor went off like 20 minutes ago is that bad?

Paul Engin: That was good Dave.


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