I am speaking at the USAEDC Forum in Baltimore this November. Wednesday, November 18, 4:00 PM, Maryland Ballroom ABC, Renaissance Harborplace, in the Organizational Excellence track. The session runs 60 minutes and is titled “Superpowers for Cooperators: Practical AI for Market Development Program Data and Results Reporting.”
The problem the session is actually about
Reporting requirements keep getting heavier. Headcount does not. The gap between those two lines gets closed by people working evenings, rebuilding the same spreadsheet every cycle, and hunting through three years of email for a number a board member asked for on a Tuesday.
None of that is a technology problem, which is why buying a tool never fixes it. It is a data problem wearing a staffing problem as a coat.
What the hour covers
Four sections, then a worked example.
From dead data to living data. Most cooperator data is not missing. It is unreachable. Activity records, market reports, correspondence, and program files sit in shared drives where no one can ask them a question. Getting to the point where you can ask is the foundation, and it comes before anything with “AI” in the name.
Offload what was never a good use of a person. Morning news triage across seven languages. Reformatting numbers you already have into the shape a program officer wants. Assembling the same narrative every reporting cycle. Nobody grew up wanting to do this work.
Superpowers, not replacements. The goal is a three-person team that operates like a ten-person team, with the three people doing the part that needs judgment. I will be specific about what the technology cannot do, because that list matters more than the other one.
Policy, and where your data lives. Every cooperator conversation reaches the same question: what happens to our data, and does it stay in the United States. I will show what a workable AI usage policy looks like on one page.
Running through all of it is change management, which is where most of these projects die. The technology is rarely the reason a project fails. The working patterns around it are.
Then one real workflow on screen, start to finish, with anonymized data. Not a demo reel. The unglamorous version, including the parts that need a human to approve them.
What you leave with
A one-page worksheet for mapping your own data and your own time sinks. You can fill it in during the session. It is useful whether or not you ever work with me.
What you will not get: a comparison of language models, prompt tricks, or a vendor pitch. There is nothing to buy in the room.
Who it is for
Every size of cooperator, not just the small ones. The largest teams have the same reachability problem, they just have more of it.
Finding me at the Forum
I am in Baltimore for all three days, November 17 to 19. Wednesday and Thursday breakfasts, the Wednesday cocktail reception, and the hallways in between. If you want a proper conversation rather than a two-minute one, book a slot and we will find a table.
After the Forum I am sending the slides, the worksheet and the AI usage policy one-pager to any USAEDC member who wants them, whether or not you make it to the session. Leave your email here and they arrive after November 18.
If you want the longer version of how I work with export-development organizations, it is on the cooperators page.
See you in Baltimore.