Have a real-world AI story to share? The Call for Speakers for the Pittsburgh Technology Council’s Think!AI Summit will open soon.

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Sponsorship Opportunities
Interested in connecting your organization with Pittsburgh’s AI and technology community? Sponsorship opportunities will open in October 2026. Click here to be notified in October. 

Show Us What AI Looks Like in the Real World

AI has moved beyond experimentation. We want to hear what happens when organizations actually put it to work.

The Pittsburgh Technology Council is seeking compelling real-world AI stories for the 2027 Think!AI Summit. We want to hear from the people building, deploying and using AI inside their organizations, and who are willing to share what they are learning along the way.

What have you built or implemented? What problem were you trying to solve? What changed because of it? And just as importantly: What surprised you, didn’t work as expected, or caused you to change course?

What We Want to Hear About

We’re especially interested in real-world stories involving:

• Agentic AI — AI agents and autonomous workflows moving from experimentation into real business processes
• Physical AI & Robotics — AI interacting with the physical world through robotics, autonomous systems, sensing and intelligent machines
• AI in Operations & Manufacturing — improving productivity, quality, maintenance, supply chains and decision-making
• AI in Healthcare — improving care delivery, clinical or operational decision-making, research and patient experience
• AI in the Enterprise — transforming internal operations, customer engagement, finance, knowledge management and professional services
• AI Reality Check — lessons learned from projects that didn’t go exactly as planned, including adoption challenges, unexpected limitations and course corrections
• Responsible & Trusted AI — governance, security, privacy, data quality and responsible deployment
• What’s Emerging — new applications and approaches that could change how organizations use AI next

Have a great application that doesn’t fit neatly into one of these categories? We still want to hear it.

What Makes a Strong Submission?

We’re looking for specific stories, not AI overviews.

The strongest proposals will tell us:

• What problem or opportunity you were addressing
• What you actually built, implemented or changed
• How AI is being used in the real world
• What results or measurable impact you’ve seen
• What you learned along the way
• What another organization could take away from your experience

No sales pitches. No product presentations. No live demos.

Who Should Submit?

We especially encourage submissions from practitioners working inside organizations that are deploying or using AI, including leaders and professionals in technology, data, operations, manufacturing, engineering, healthcare, finance, innovation, cybersecurity and other business functions.

We also want to surface new voices and emerging companies doing genuinely interesting work, particularly from the Pittsburgh region.

Eligibility & Speaker Guidelines

1. Real-world application required. Presentations should focus on an actual AI implementation, initiative, use case or lesson learned, not a general discussion of AI trends.

2. Practitioners receive priority. Our goal is to put the people doing the work on stage. Preference will be given to speakers representing organizations using AI within their own operations, products or services.

3. Vendor speaking policy. AI platform providers, consultants and AI/data services firms are not eligible for non-sponsored Tech Talks intended for practitioners.

   Vendors interested in speaking opportunities should contact Ashley Steckel to discuss sponsorship opportunities.

   Joint submissions featuring a customer and focused on the customer’s implementation, experience and results may be considered.

4. No sales pitches. Selected presentations must be educational and focused on lessons, results and practical takeaways rather than promotion of a product or service.

5. New voices encouraged. We want to keep the Think!AI stage fresh and introduce our audience to people they haven’t heard from before. Previous speakers may submit, but preference may be given to new perspectives, new organizations and new stories.

6. In-person participation. Selected speakers must be available to participate in person at the Think!AI Summit in Pittsburgh.

By submitting a proposal, you acknowledge and agree to these guidelines.

Questions?

Questions about content or whether your idea is a fit?
Contact Program Director Monica Takacs.

About Think!AI Summit

Where Pittsburgh’s AI Community Gets Real About AI

Now in its 13th year, the Pittsburgh Technology Council’s Think!AI Summit brings together the people building, deploying and leading AI initiatives to examine what’s working, what’s emerging and what’s next.

AI is rapidly moving from experimentation into the infrastructure of organizations, and increasingly into the physical world. Agentic AI is beginning to reshape workflows. AI-powered robotics and autonomous systems are changing how work gets done. Organizations are rethinking how people, data and intelligent systems work together.

But adoption also raises harder questions. Where is AI delivering meaningful returns? Where is it falling short? How should organizations govern increasingly autonomous systems? And which emerging capabilities deserve attention now?

Think!AI brings together executives, technologists, AI practitioners, researchers and innovators for candid conversations about those questions.

From agentic and physical AI to enterprise applications, robotics, manufacturing, healthcare and responsible deployment, the Summit focuses on practical experience rather than hype.

Come to Think!AI to see what AI looks like when it leaves the slide deck and enters the real world.