Open MicFriday

Upcoming

Schedule

Most Fridays are open discussion — just show up. Featured guests and deep-dives are posted here as they’re confirmed.

• July 24, 2026 AI in Practice: From Personal Productivity to Product Innovation with Open Discussion Open Mic Friday is back, and we hope you'll join the discussion.Many executives are being pressured to “have an AI project,” but AI is already showing up in many ways: helping individuals work faster, helping organizations improve productivity, supporting product development, and becoming part of product features. Let’s talk about where AI is actually being used, what seems useful, what may be overhyped, and how organizations can think about AI in practical terms.
• July 31, 2026 AI in supply chain — practical use & pitfalls with Open Discussion This week, we'll take a deeper dive into practical ways AI is being used, where it can create real value, and where organizations should be cautious. We’ll also discuss common pitfalls, including poor data quality, unclear business objectives, overreliance on automation, trust and transparency issues, and the challenge of moving from pilots to production.
• August 7, 2026 AI and Business Intelligence, and Data Security with Dr. Swamy Narayanaswamy, Triggerware.ai AI is creating new opportunities for business intelligence, from improving analytics workflows to combining external data with internal data streams for richer analysis. This discussion will focus on practical security, governance, and trust considerations, while also exploring how AI can help organizations turn broader data sources into better business insight.
• August 14, 2026 Intro - AI, the log is the Agent with Open Discussion This session will introduce Ishaan Sehgal’s white paper and highlight several of its key ideas about AI agents, accountability, and the importance of logs as evidence of AI activity. We’ll also discuss how the Center has begun incorporating some of these concepts into its own AI-enabled workflows and project practices.
• August 21, 2026 Marketing technology in an AI world with Leah Beitler, Listrak / VP of Partnerships and Ecosystem We will explore how Listrak is using AI in marketing technology, offering a different perspective for our audience. We’ll hear how AI is shaping customer engagement, personalization, and the movement of signals, content, offers, and feedback through the marketing ecosystem.For supply chain professionals, this creates an interesting parallel: marketing can also be viewed as a kind of supply chain, where AI helps connect demand signals, decisions, and actions more effectively.
• August 28, 2026 From Paper Receiving to AI Augmentation: 45 Years Inside Hospital Supply Chain with Todd Brandt, Mayo Clinic, Senior Director, Supply Chain Operations Todd has spent 45 years working in the hospital supply chain, and we’ll be exploring how the field has evolved from paper-based receiving and manual coordination to today’s world of data, automation, AI, and digital twins.This discussion will go well beyond purchasing. The hospital supply chain functions as an operational nervous system connecting clinical care, facilities, finance, technology, risk, and patient flow. We’ll talk about what has changed, what has stayed surprisingly consistent, what executives and technologists often misunderstand, and where AI and automation can genuinely help.This will be a great conversation for healthcare leaders, supply chain professionals, technology providers, and anyone interested in how complex hospital operations really work.
• September 18, 2026 From Farm to Fork: Why Food Traceability Is Harder Than It Sounds with Ben Miller, Ph. D., MPH, COO & EVP of Scientific and Regulatory Affairs, The Acheson Group LLC   When food moves from farms to processors, distributors, retailers, restaurants, and consumers, the path is rarely simple. Ingredients are mixed, transformed, repacked, relabeled, and routed through many trading partners before reaching the plate. FSMA 204 is changing how the food industry thinks about traceability, not just as a compliance requirement, but as a public health, data-sharing, and supply-chain coordination challenge.In this session, we’ll discuss what the rule is intended to accomplish, why food traceability is harder than it sounds, how the FDA is framing the path forward, and what industry pilots are revealing about interoperability, supply-chain partner readiness, and the role of using probability to understand likely product paths when perfect data is unavailable. This discussion is designed for food industry professionals, technology providers, supply chain leaders, public health stakeholders, and anyone interested in how better data can improve food safety and outbreak response.
• September 25, 2026 Agentic Commerce and the Future of Supply Chain with Stephan Baur, Principal IT Architect, Enterprise Architecture, Kaiser Permanente, Information Technology    AI is moving beyond chatbots and dashboards into systems that can act, negotiate, purchase, coordinate, and respond on behalf of people and organizations. This emerging world of agentic commerce raises important questions for supply chain leaders: What happens when AI agents participate in buying, selling, planning, and exception management? In this session, we’ll explore how agentic AI and emerging commerce protocols could affect supply chain operations, trading partner relationships, data exchange, trust, and governance. The discussion will be designed for both business and technical audiences, focusing on practical implications rather than hype.