The Power of Taking the AI Journey Together

Recently, a group of 20 association professionals representing diverse titles, specialties, and level of AI experience came together to be curious, vulnerable, and intent on learning more about how their adoption of AI tools could move their organizations forward.

This was the Forum’s first Microsoft Copilot & AI LAB session, and it reinforced why as professionals we need safe spaces to learn and grow outside of our day-to-day teams.

According to session leader Ron Moen, CAE, Vice President at DelCor Technology Solutions, our AI success stories begin with embracing a culture of experimentation, however, he cautioned that AI is like atomic energy being both good and bad, so you need to educate your self and keep your organization’s data protected. One of the key take aways from Ron was, “If the license is free, your data is the commodity.”

As association leaders, we interact with proprietary data all the time, and this is why our internal tech leaders are “AI cautious” with more organizations turning to enterprise licenses on Microsoft Copilot where data inputs have a better security fence.

The rise in the number of associations exclusively using Microsoft tools is why new programs like the the Microsoft Copilot & AI LAB are critical and also why I was happy to attend.

Here are some topics explored in this session:

• The new imperative is to hire people who are comfortable with AI tools before those who are not. This is why we must all level up and become “AI competent.”
  
  
• Strengths and limitations for prompts and results were discussed and example exercises tested. A fun tip was to look up the You Tube video “Why Can’t ChatGPT Draw a Full Glass of Wine?”
  
  
• Setting up custom instructions on your Copilot account giving your AI tool memory parameters on your brand voice, tone, writing style and other instructions so that when the tool creates for you, the results are more like you.
  
  
• How to create agents that can work for your team (it’s easier than you think). Examples included a process template for the creation of podcast show notes or an internal question and answer agent on a specific program.
  
  
• How AI works in the suite of Microsoft Office products – well, at least what is working today and what still needs to evolve (yes, PowerPoint, we were talking about you!).
  
  
• Participants also shared examples of how they are using AI to create shortcuts in work and common tools used, such as Claude, Perplexity, Descript, POP AI, Napkin and more (again with a conversation about paid versus free accounts).

This LAB session was a reminder that we can all move ahead on this AI journey at a faster pace if we work together. No one needs to feel behind, you just need to embrace experimentation, be willing to ask questions, and accelerate uncovering what you don’t know.

“The ability for a group of people to do remarkable things hinges on how well those people can pull together as a team.” — Simon Sinek

SAVE THE DATE! The Microsoft CoPilot & AI LAB will be offered again on Feb. 19, 2026

Take a look at all of Forum’s LAB sessions and bundle to save! Buy any two LABs and save 10%, buy three to save 20%. Learn more here.