The Applied Artificial Intelligence Bootcamp for Economic Development
Intermediate | Two days. Four working sessions. Everything you build is yours.
August 13–14, 2026
Ohio University – Dublin Integrated Education Center
6805 Bobcat Way | Dublin, Ohio 43016
$499 per person. 40 seats.
Artificial intelligence is already changing how economic development organizations conduct research, prepare proposals, communicate with stakeholders, analyze data, and make decisions. The question is no longer whether to use AI. It is how to use it better than everyone else.
Join us for two intensive days alongside some of the leading practitioners applying AI in economic development today. This is not a conference, and it is not an introduction to artificial intelligence. It is a working session for professionals who already know the basics and are ready to build practical skills that immediately improve their effectiveness.
You will not spend the day watching demonstrations. You will spend it solving real problems, with instructors and floor coaches working alongside you as you build prompts, test approaches, refine results, and learn from your peers.
You will leave with things you can use: work products from four applied sessions, and a repeatable method built around one of your own recurring responsibilities. Whether it is business retention, site selection, marketing, grant writing, research, strategic planning, or another critical function, you will have a practical system you can begin using as soon as you return to the office.
Walk in with a task on your desk. Walk out with a way to do it.
How the course will work
Day one builds the model. How these systems actually work. Thinking strategically about how to use AI well. How a major organization is actually adopting it. Then the first applied session, on advocacy and public affairs, with your hands on the keyboard. The day closes with a clinic and a working discussion.
Day two builds the practice. Three applied sessions back to back: business retention and funding, research and analytics, strategic communications. Then a closing clinic where you build your own method with faculty and coaches on the floor.
Two clinics, not one. You build something Thursday afternoon, sleep on it, and build again Friday with a full day of practice behind you. That sequence is deliberate.
Faculty
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Jefferson Barlew, VP of Delivery for AI/ML Data, Innodata. Previously AWS and Scale AI. PhD, Ohio State. How AI works.
Floor coaches: Dell Gines, Joe Simkins, David Zak both days. Kristi Tanner, The O.H.I.O. Fund, and Jeremiah Gracia, City of Dublin, from OEDA's AI Committee. Session instructors work the floor alongside them.
Why 40 seats
Five floor coaches, in the room the whole time, with session instructors working alongside them. The closing clinic puts the entire faculty in the room at once.
That is what forty supports. Not sixty. Every applied block is coached, both clinics are working sessions rather than presentations, and nobody spends two days waiting for a hand to be raised at them. The coverage is the product.
Registration
$499 per person. One price, for everyone in the first class.
This is the first time we have run this. There is no early bird, no member rate, no tiers. Everyone in the inaugural cohort pays the same, because everyone in the inaugural cohort is doing the same thing: helping us build the next one.
That is the trade, and we mean it as one. We want a candid debrief afterward. What worked, what did not, what you would cut. Your read shapes the 2027 build and the AI curriculum behind it.
Forty seats, filled in the order registrations arrive. We do not expect to offer this again until 2027.
Lodging information: A variety of hotel options to fit specific travel needs and budgets are nearby. Visit VISIT DUBLIN OHIO for a full list of options. For those looking to stay close to the facility, the following hotels are recommended (all within six miles of Ohio University's Dublin campus): Columbus Marriott Northwest, Crowne Plaza Dublin, Embassy Suites Columbus-Dublin, and Residence Inn by Marriott. Please note that the start time for the first day is 9:45 a.m.
Thanks to JobsOhio, our primary training sponsor, as well as our other Leadership Circle partners, who help underwrite our educational programming.
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