ep003 - How I AI, the AI-generted version

This is the same content as yesterday's... just an AI generated voice clone of Mark.  

In Episode 2 of the MAD Events Podcast, Mark Bowling shares how he moved from viewing AI as a novelty to building a team of AI specialists that now works alongside the human team at BlackSheep Productions.

He introduces his AI team members, explains the technology behind the system, and gives real examples of how AI is being used for research, client intelligence, software development, meeting notes, creative exploration, operational support, and strategic decision-making.

This episode is not about replacing people. It is about expanding what a small, experienced team is capable of doing.

Same people. Bigger reach.

Mark also previews the custom applications BlackSheep is building for its own team and the live event industry, including tools for audience engagement, run of show, scheduling, availability, and budgeting.

Connect with Mark: https://www.linkedin.com/in/blacksheepshepherd/

BlackSheep Productions: https://www.blacksheepproductions.com/

MAD Events Podcast:  https://madeventspodcast.com/ 

Transcript

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Welcome back to the MAD Events Podcast and back to Episode 2, the AI generated version. To showcase the use of voice cloning, today's installment takes the transcript from yesterday and uses a clone of my voice at 11Labs to create an AI generated version. 

I'm Mark Bowling, Chief Shepherd of BlackSheep Productions. If you're listening to this, you already know why this show exists, to make a difference for the live event industry. Episode one was about why. This episode is about the tools that I use and what I've actually built. I know what people hear when others use the words AI and team in the same sentence, so let me say this clearly. People keep asking if AI is going to replace our team. My answer is exactly the opposite. AI is helping us build a bigger team. Today, that includes AI specialists working alongside us. Tomorrow, it means serving more client partners, which means growing our human team, not shrinking it. I built an AI team around a real one, not on top of it, not instead of it, around it. When I say AI team, I don't mean that I signed up for ChatGPT or Claude. I mean that I have a group of AI specialists that run 24 hours a day, built to enhance the human community at BlackSheep, the team that we've been growing for the last 20 years. Same people, bigger reach. That's the whole promise of this episode.

Let me give you a little bit of a tour. For the last several years, AI to me meant image generations and party tricks. I didn't see a business application for what we do. I wasn't looking for one. And then something changed. I was listening to Peter Diamandis' Moonshots podcast, and he interviewed a guy named Alex Fenn. Alex was talking about using an AI agent as a business partner, not as a tool that you pick up when you have a question, but as a true partner. It made me think of the way that Tony Stark, better known as Iron Man, uses Jarvis. That was the frame that he used. And that reframing did everything for me. Because it stopped being about which app should I download, and started being about what would it look like to have a team member who never sleeps, who reads everything that I read, who shows up in the morning with three things that I need to know. Once I saw it that way, I couldn't unsee it, and I went deep, and I started building.

Looking back though, the biggest change wasn't the technology, it was me. I ask different questions than I used to. I tackle problems that I probably would have ignored because I felt that they were too big. I spend less time staring at a blank page, wondering where to start, and more time evaluating ideas, making decisions, and refining the work. AI didn't make me less creative, it gave me the freedom to be more creative because the cost of exploring an idea dropped dramatically. If one approach didn't work, we'd try another one, then another, and another. And that may have been the biggest gift that AI has given me. Not speed, but permission to think bigger. I say this up front too. I know that I came to this later than I probably should have. Part of the reason for this show is that you don't have to be as late as I was.

So let me actually introduce you to my AI team. Four specialists, each one of them named after a Top Gun's call sign. Not because I'm trying to be cute, but because when you've got specialists on a team, it helps to have names. First, there's Maverick. Maverick is my orchestrator. He runs on Anthropic's Claude, and he's the one that I talk to every single day through Telegram on my phone. He runs the daily jobs, he runs the weekly jobs. He coordinates with the other agents. He's my main partner. And if I could only have one of these, it would be Maverick.

Second is Rooster. Rooster is my research agent built on Google's Gemini stack. When I need deep web research pulled and synthesized on a topic, Rooster runs it for me. Third is Goose. Goose is my quality and safety partner. He's a second set of eyes. When I'm about to send something important that another agent created, Goose reviews it for a second opinion.

Fourth, Iceman. Iceman lives on a Hermes stack. And that's a separate piece of infrastructure that I'll explain in a second. Iceman was originally set up to help me code. But over the last month and a half to two months, I've been leaning much heavier into Claude Code through my Anthropic subscription, which I'm already paying for. And that has become my day-to-day engineering partner. Iceman's still there when I need him, but Claude Code is really where the building happens now. And to be clear about what that means, because this matters, the software we build at BlackSheep Productions belongs to us. I'm not renting a development team. I'm partnering with a tool that lets me build what we need, when we need it.

Think about that for a second. Every hour we invest, building a tool doesn't disappear when the project is over. It becomes another asset that our team owns. The next event benefits from it. The next client benefits from it. And every improvement we make continues to compound over time. For years, custom software was something only very large organizations could afford. Today, AI has dramatically lowered the barrier. We still need ideas. We still need the experience. We still need judgment. But now we can create software that reflects the way that BlackSheep works instead of forcing BlackSheep to work the way someone else's software was designed. And that's incredibly empowering for a company our size.

Now for a quick technical detour. Two minutes. Skip ahead if you're not into what's happening behind the curtain, but I do think it matters. When most people say I use AI, they typically mean that they open ChatGPT, or they open the Claude app, they ask a question, they get an answer, and then they close the app. And that's a great starting point. It's what everybody should be doing today. But it stops being enough the moment you want AI doing work while you're doing something else. But what I run at BlackSheep goes one step beyond simply opening ChatGPT or Claude in a browser. There are three pieces to the system, but don't worry. You don't have to be technical to understand why they matter.

First, the hardware. My AI team runs on a dedicated Apple Mac mini. Think of that as another employee's workstation. It's powered on for 24 hours a day, securely connected to files, calendars, email, documentation, GitHub repositories, and business systems that I've given it permission to access. While I'm sleeping, traveling, or focused on something else, it's still working. It's researching. It's monitoring. It's preparing reports. It's looking for things that deserve my attention and the attention of our team members. Instead of being a tool that I have to open, it becomes a digital teammate that's already on the job.

Second, Maverick runs on a platform called OpenClaw. Think of OpenClaw as an operating system behind my AI team. It gives Maverick long-term memory, allows him to coordinate with other AI specialists, allows him to schedule recurring work, and even send me updates through Telegram and by email without me ever having to ask. I don't wake up wondering what happened overnight, Maverick tells me. Here's the simplest way to explain the difference. Using ChatGPT or Claude by themselves is like hiring a consultant that you call whenever you need advice. What I've built is one step further. It's like hiring a staff member, one who works while I sleep, keeps up with the information as it changes, and shows up every morning with things that I need to know. That's not just a different tool. It's a different way of working. And for me, that's been the real breakthrough.

One more thing about these four AI specialists, because I want to be really clear about it. Most of the stack runs on Anthropic. Google, through Rooster, does the research. OpenAI's ChatGPT is kind of like a creative partner. I've leaned heavily on ChatGPT to help our team craft a new BlackSheep team handbook, for example. Different models are good at different things. Assembling the right team matters more than picking one vendor in particular. But here's the important thing about all of them. They're teammates, not replacements for anyone on our human team. They're additions to it. Every member of BlackSheep still plays a critical role. Every one of them has access to more advanced tools and information. With their experience, this makes them more valuable, not less needed. Maverick and the others are on the bench, ready when they're needed, invisible when they're not.

Everybody talks about AI saving time. That's not actually the biggest opportunity. The time saving is nice, but the real unlock is being able to do work your company simply could not afford to do before. Not we can do the same work with fewer people. It's we can do work our size of company was never able to do at all before. All right, let me tell you what this AI team is actually doing week to week, because it's easy to say AI team and stay vague. Specifics matter here.

Every Sunday, Maverick produces a weekly AI intelligence report. He cross-references what happened in AI that week against deep-dive profiles of BlackSheep's key client partners. And then he emails from a Gmail account that I set up just for him, a tailored analysis to me and our select clients showing exactly how the week's AI developments affected their industry and their upcoming events. He also runs a separate report on how that week's AI news affects BlackSheep's own operations. And that's just Sunday.

Daily and weekly, Maverick also runs research for me on the topics that I care about outside of work. He runs in-depth research on medical conditions affecting people that I care deeply about. I won't name them here, that's their story to tell. But I have agents doing daily and weekly deep dives on rare conditions that I could not physically read enough medical journals to keep up with on my own. And honestly, I probably wouldn't understand it if I did. That alone would justify the entire stack for me. He reviews my Oura Ring data and tells me what's happening with my sleep and my recovery. And every morning he sends me an agent status report so I'll know what all of my agents did overnight and give me an estimate of what the investment was.

Now let me get to the piece that I care most about, how this shows up inside of BlackSheep day-to-day in our actual operations, because this is where I want you to see the pattern. We use AI notetakers on client calls. The human is still running the meeting, the AI is just taking notes so that the humans can be more present in the conversation instead of typing while somebody else is talking. Notes and action items flow into monday.com automatically. No one at BlackSheep does less work, everyone is empowered to do better work.

Previously, if we needed to create a storyboard to communicate the vision of a video, hours may have been spent looking for just the right image to represent a scene. Now that same image can be created in seconds with the right prompt. We're evaluating tools to help generate motion graphics and mood pieces from prompts, original work that fits a brief exactly instead of settling for the closest match in a stock library. Again, same people, bigger reach.

And here's one more decision we've made. BlackSheep is assembling a board of advisors, and one of those seats will permanently be held by an AI advisor as a genuine voice at the table. Pattern recognition across every conversation we've had, every event that we're producing, every trend line in our industry, speaking in strategic decisions alongside our human advisors. AI gets a voice, but not a vote. Decisions will still be made by humans, but if AI is going to be a part of how we work at BlackSheep, it should be part of how we think about the work at the highest level. And that's the direction of where we're going.

We're also building custom applications for our team first, and then eventually for the industry. Five of them right now. The first is an audience engagement app for mainstage sessions. Think of it as a replacement for Slido. The second, a run of show application, the tool that runs the minute-by-minute of a live event. Think of it as a replacement for Showflow, Rundown Studio, or Planning Center. The third is a schedule generation tool. The one that solves the Sudoku of a three- to five-day agenda so that humans can focus on the design of the show and not the scheduling. The fourth is an availability tool that allows us to be able to quickly and effectively determine who within the BlackSheep community is available for an event and for which roles. And the fifth is a budgeting tool that allows for easy reconciliation once an event is completed.

I'm going to spend the next two episodes diving into these applications, so I won't go much deeper than that today, but here's the point that ties it all together. None of these tools would exist without AI as an enabling layer, not because AI is doing the creative work, it's because AI made it affordable for a company our size to build custom software at all. Ten years ago, that would have required an entire development team. Today it's me, Claude Code, and a clear vision of what it is that we want to create to be able to better serve our clients.

And here's the part that I'm excited about. These applications aren't just for BlackSheep Productions. Over the coming months, we'll begin making them available to the live event industry as a whole, but we're approaching it differently from most software companies. We're not interested in locking you into another monthly subscription. Instead, you can purchase the code, you'll own it, and with the help of today's AI tools, you'll be able to customize it to fit your own team, your workflow, and your organization's unique needs. Instead of forcing your business to adapt to someone else's software, your software can finally adapt to the way that your business works. I honestly believe that that's where the software industry is headed. That's the unlock. That's what this technology actually did for BlackSheep, and I believe that it'll do the same for the live event industry.

Three quick things before I close. The biggest challenge is the pace. New tools appear every single day. There's no way to know if you're using the best ones. My perspective on this one, as I've said before, I'd rather be on the track, even if I'm a little bit behind than in the stands watching. That's it. I'm suspicious of anyone that says that they have everything completely figured out as it relates to AI.

The biggest surprise for me during this journey is that it actually does feel like a partnership. Claude Code and my AI agent team don't just execute what I tell them to do. They ask qualifying and clarifying questions. They surface ideas that I hadn't considered. They push back when I'm about to do something or I start to deviate from what it is that I established that I was trying to achieve in the first place. Once you cross that line, once you stop treating AI like a tool and start treating it like a collaborator, you stop asking, which app should I use, and you start asking, how do I build a team of AI specialists that extends what my business can actually achieve?

My advice, if you're skeptical, AI is going to widen the gap between the people who use it and the people who don't. That's not a threat. It's a fact. Here's the on-ramp exercise that I give people that are skeptical. Open Claude or ChatGPT. Type this sentence. Ask me 20 questions to learn about me, my work, and what I care about. As it asks those questions, answer them. And then hand it a real problem that you're working through. Watch how it approaches the problem. Let it ask defining questions as you go further into the context. That single exercise did more for me than any tutorial I've ever seen. And I bet it'll do the same for you.

Here's what I really want you to hear before I close. AI is both a threat to the jobs that we do today and an invitation that carries us into what's next. Someone using AI will eventually replace today's version of every job that we do in this industry. That's the threat. But that someone can be a more capable version of you. That's the invitation. Use these tools to replace yourself with a better version, one that's ready for whatever comes next.

And to be clear about what I mean by that, because I don't want anyone hearing me wrong, at BlackSheep that more capable version is the person that's already sitting at the desk. It's someone with the tools to do more of what they do best. It's not a new hire. It's not a bot. It's someone with a new image tool. It's someone with better data. It's someone that might be a little bit more rested because they didn't have to stay up most of the night before working on something that now takes them less than an hour to accomplish. That's the vision of the future that I'm interested in. Same people, bigger reach.

As BlackSheep grows and we serve more client partners, the AI team is what's going to let us serve them at the level we hold ourselves to without losing what makes BlackSheep BlackSheep. Where does this go from here? A few things. More time our team gets back for the work only they can do. More creative options we couldn't afford to explore before. Consolidated client information so we spot trends earlier. Faster speech writing and editing with more room for the writer to iterate on what actually matters. And more custom tools, more shared with the industry.

One last thing before I close. If you took anything away from this, take this. Same people, bigger reach. That's the vision of AI, of what we're building at BlackSheep. And I believe that that can be the case for your organization as well. We're not a smaller company doing the same work. We're a better company. We're the same or larger team. We're doing more of what we're actually good at. At the end of the day, AI isn't the mission. People are. Our mission is to make a difference. And it's not for AI. It's for the clients that we serve, our BlackSheep community, the live event industry, and the world that we live in. AI just gives us more opportunities to make a difference for more people than we ever could before.

So I have three quick asks at this time. One, if you got value from this episode, please like and subscribe. If you're especially generous with your time, leave a quick review. Wherever you're listening, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, take 10 seconds. It matters more than you think for a young show like this. Two, come to madeventspodcast.com. That's where we host the show notes live. And it's where you can tell me what you'd like to hear more of in future episodes. And number three, who should be on this show? Please let me know. If there's somebody that you can think of that's making a difference for the live event industry, I'd love to have a conversation with them and feature their story in future episodes. Guest recommendations, go to madeventspodcast.com. The best conversations of this show are going to be the ones that you helped me find.

Next episode, I'm going to dig deeper into the actual apps that we built at BlackSheep Productions. You'll see exactly what they do and why we built them. Until then, go make a difference. Every event. This is Mark Bowling, or at least a close approximation to him. Thank you for listening.