Turning AI Into a Smarter Event Workflow
Practical takeaways from the August EPN Meetup on building repeatable AI systems that save time, strengthen decisions, and reduce repetitive work.
AI is showing up everywhere – but for event professionals, the biggest opportunity isn’t finding one more tool to try. It’s learning how to make AI genuinely useful within the work they already do.
At the August Event Professionals Network Meetup, AI & Automation in Events: What’s Actually Working?,160 event professionals registered to explore that question. Traci Myers (Director of Event Marketing at Pulumi), Nick Borelli (AI educator and event industry strategist), and Lisa Gregory (CEO & Founder of Gregory Event Services), moved the conversation beyond one-off prompts and generic content generation to practical, repeatable systems.
The biggest takeaway?
AI becomes far more useful when you give it reliable context, clear instructions, and examples of what good work looks like.
Key Takeaways
Create one reliable source of event information and build from it.
Turn repeated tasks into reusable AI workflows.
Adapt the same information for different stakeholders instead of starting over.
Use AI to uncover trends – not just generate content.
Keep a human review between every AI-generated draft and its audience.
Start With Context, Not a Better Prompt
Traci manages a global portfolio ranging from major conferences to small meetups – all as a team of one. Her realization was simple: she did not have a problem she could hire her way out of. She had a context problem.
When event details live across emails, calendars, spreadsheets, project plans, and someone’s memory, every new prompt creates another opportunity to omit a detail or use outdated information.
To solve that, Traci created a single event record containing the essential facts for each program: dates, event tier, booth information, hotel details, staffing, teardown timing, and more. That record now powers downstream tasks, budgets, communications, and workback schedules.
The tool matters less than the structure. A connected platform may retrieve the data automatically; with a free tool, an event professional can paste it in manually. Either way, the principle is the same:
Enter the facts once. Review them carefully. Reuse that context everywhere.
Traci also asks AI, “What else is happening in our industry that week?” That one question can uncover competing conferences, major announcements, or other activity that could affect an event’s promotional calendar and audience availability.
Ivan Burazin, Daytona's Co-Founder and CEO, called it one of the smoothest events his team has run with any agency, on par with or better than any partner they'd used before. The expo floor turned out to be even more popular than expected, and that insight is already shaping next year's agenda and sponsor hours.
Turn Repeated Work Into Reusable Workflows
If you have written the same prompt three times, prepared the same update every Friday, or rebuilt the same report after every event, you may have found a workflow worth systematizing.
Traci shared several examples from her own work:
A weekly manager update covering what she completed, what is next, and what is blocking progress
Monthly company updates tailored to leadership, sales, marketing, and product teams
A consistent end-of-day refresh for lead and registration numbers
A morning “know before you go” message using the previous day’s scans, goals, run of show, and staffing details
Her weekly update once took about an hour to assemble. With AI gathering and drafting the information, it now takes approximately six minutes to review.
She also creates one core event report, then asks AI to adapt it for each stakeholder. Leadership receives trends and business implications; sales receives named accounts, ownership, and next steps. The facts stay the same, but each audience can quickly understand what matters to them.
To get started, ask your AI tool:
I complete this same task every week or month. What reusable instructions should I create so I do not have to explain it from the beginning each time?
Whether a platform calls it a skill, agent, GPT, Gem, or project, the idea is the same: turn a repeated process into a reusable instruction.
Build Specialists, Not Generalists
Nick expanded the conversation from automation to AI assistants designed for specific roles. A general AI chat knows little about your organization, audience, or standards and can produce fast – but average – work. A specialist has a defined job, relevant knowledge, and clear boundaries.
Nick introduced a simple framework for building those instructions:
Always
Define the standards AI should follow. Provide examples of excellent work, explain why they are strong, and include preferred formats, stakeholder language, and brand voice.
Sometimes
Document conditional “if-then” scenarios. Ask AI to flag small samples, identify outliers, or qualify recommendations when evidence is limited.
Never
Set hard boundaries, such as protecting personal data, avoiding unsupported claims, and never conflicting with your mission, vision, or values.
Together, these instructions produce work that better reflects your standards – not simply the average of what AI has seen elsewhere.
Move Beyond Content Generation
Writing emails, social posts, and event copy is a helpful entry point for AI – but it is not the finish line.
Nick challenged attendees to analyze historical event data and identify patterns that lead to better decisions. Instead of asking how to persuade everyone to register earlier, analyze whotends to register at each stage and why. AI can examine attendee history, role, tenure, timing, and prior conversion behavior.
From there, the workflow becomes:
Identify meaningful trends.
Build audience segments based on those trends.
Develop the right message for each segment.
Deliver it when that audience is most likely to act.
This moves event marketing from assumptions and aspirational targets toward recommendations grounded in historical behavior – and gives event professionals stronger evidence when advocating for strategy and resources.
AI Drafts. A Human Publishes.
Across every workflow, one principle remained non-negotiable: AI-generated work should be reviewed before it goes anywhere.
Traci does not allow her systems to post automatically. Every draft comes to her first to verify facts, correct the output, and approve the final communication.
Her rule is simple:
AI drafts. A human publishes.
That habit – not the name of the tool – is what makes these workflows safer. AI can gather, organize, analyze, and accelerate. Event professionals still own the final result.
From “Mediocre Fast” to “Excellent Fast”
Event professionals already know what strong work looks like. The challenge is applying that standard while managing hundreds of moving details. Nick encouraged attendees to deliberately build one system at a time – an investment that can create more space for strategy, creativity, relationships, and better decisions.
You do not need to automate your entire role tomorrow. Start with one repeated task. Give AI reliable context. Define what good looks like. Review what it produces. Then improve the system as you learn.
That is how AI becomes more than another tool to manage – and starts becoming a practical extension of how you work.
Want to Dive Deeper?
Watch the full August EPN Meetup for additional examples, community discussion, tool recommendations, and practical ideas you can apply to your own event workflows.
Thank you again to Traci Myers, Nick Borelli, and Lisa Gregory for sharing their experience – and to every member of the EPN community who contributed questions, tools, and ideas.
There’s Plenty More Ahead for the EPN Community!
✨ September 16 | Field Marketing in AI Town Hall
A candid conversation for field and event marketers working inside fast-moving AI companies.Hosted by Gregory Event Services, this interactive town hall will explore the pace, pressure, and unpredictability of leading field marketing at an AI company.
Register for the Field Marketing in AI Town Hall
✨ November 5 | November EPN Meetup: Annual Planning Without the Panic
How Event Pros Are Building Smarter Plans for 2027
Join us for an honest, practical conversation about setting priorities, building flexibility, aligning stakeholders, and creating a plan your team can realistically deliver.
*Last meetup of the year!
Register for the November EPN Meetup
✨ Save the Dates for EPN 2027
EPN Leadership Summit: January 28, 2027
EPN Annual Conference: February 18, 2027
And if you have insights, experiences, or ideas that could help fellow event professionals lead and work more effectively, our 2027 Call for Speakers is now open.
✨ Continue the Conversation
The Event Professionals Network is a free community where event professionals connect, share what is working, and help one another navigate the challenges shaping our industry.
