I teach the work around the tool.
Eleven years at a Geek Squad counter taught me how to explain technology to people who are busy, skeptical, and a little embarrassed to ask. That is still the room I like best. Nobody leaves my sessions with a bag of prompts they will forget by Friday.
Safety rules, printed inside the cover.
Capability is not authority.
The model being able to do something does not make it the one who decides.
Fluent is not true.
A confident paragraph is a writing style. It tells you nothing about whether the facts are right.
Recognition is not verification.
“That looks right” is a feeling. Checking is a step, and somebody has to own it.
Put the hard guarantee outside the model.
If something must be true, a person or a plain piece of code is responsible for it.
Local business owners, after a long day.
My favorite audience is a room of owners in northeastern Connecticut who showed up tired and a little skeptical. I ask what hurts before I plan anything, then I build the session around their answers.
AI Workshop Series
Northeastern Connecticut Chamber of Commerce
A four-session series of 90-minute workshops for small-business owners and professionals, with the cohort capped near 20. Session one, Getting Started with AI Safely, ran in September 2026. Open all four participant presentations, notes, clips, and handouts →
Fall 2026AI in your daily workflow
Thompson Business Association · Thompson, CT
Guest speaker at the monthly meeting. I surveyed the members first, then built 30 minutes around what they asked for: a Facebook post for a promo, Google review replies, and an estimate drafted from a voice note, all live. We closed by running one prompt in ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude side by side. Everything shown can be repeated the next day with a free account.
May 21, 2026Sessions I wrote, start to finish.
Mixed-skill rooms are the normal case, so I plan for them. Every session is built around one artifact we make together and one the participant makes for their own work.
Getting started with AI safely
People leave understanding how to ask clearly, explain what useful looks like, verify reality, and keep authority outside the model. Comes with a starter recipe card and a prompt pack.
90 minMake AI look and sound like your business
Voice, examples, and brand rules that hold up with a real model. The live demo uses a fictional practice company with its own brand kit, so nothing in the room depends on fabricated reviews, savings figures, or results.
90 minLearn a new skill, then prove it works
Each participant picks one process from their own job, builds it with AI, and tests it against a source packet. Everyone leaves with one tested process card and one planned real use.
90 minTeam training and multi-session programs
Workshops and longer programs for organizations run through my company, not this site. Details, formats, and the way to start that conversation all live there.
starforgedynamics.com →Something they made. A way to check it.
A working example from their own job.
We use the emails, reports, and repetitive tasks people bring with them. Sample data when the real thing is private.
A habit for catching almost-right.
Every exercise includes the step where you try to break the output before you trust it.
A recipe card they can reuse.
One page. What to ask, what good looks like, what to verify, and when to stop and ask a person.
What I do not do in a classroom. Fabricated reviews, made-up savings figures, or invented results, even in a demo. The practice company in my branding session is fictional and labeled that way. If I teach people to fake it in the exercise, I have taught them to fake it at work.