Copilot for Business: A Full-Day Hands-On Intensive (Melbourne)
About this Event
Most businesses paying for Copilot are getting maybe a tenth out of it. It sits there inside Microsoft 365, occasionally summarising a meeting, and everyone quietly wonders what the licence is actually for. This day is about closing that gap inside your own business, in a room full of other owners and leaders doing exactly the same thing.
We ran the first of these at the MCEC in August. A full room from roughly 20 different businesses, laptops open the whole way through. The post-event NPS came back at +80, and four companies came back to us that same week wanting to do more.
It runs 9:00am to 5:00pm, one room, led from the front by Andrew Gargiulo with a floor team moving between tables so nobody gets stuck. You bring your laptop and a couple of real jobs from your business, and you leave having actually done them with Copilot, not just watched someone else do it.
Location: Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC), South Wharf. A 10-minute walk from Southern Cross Station, or trams 96, 109 and 12 stop at the Clarendon Street door. Secure underground parking on site.
What is new for October
The August room told us they wanted more time to apply. So this run has two blocks of protected build time where you work on your own jobs with Andy and the floor team circulating and no new content coming at you.
What you will walk out with
By 5:00pm you will have Copilot set up properly, you will understand exactly what it can and cannot see inside your tenancy, which explains most of the complaints people have about it, and you will have put it to work on real tasks from your own desk. The centrepiece of the day is Cowork, Skills, Notebooks and Agents, and the afternoon puts Copilot to work inside Excel, Word and Teams.
Who it is for
Owners, directors, founders, managing directors, leaders and senior managers of Melbourne businesses, plus the people they trust to lead AI internally. If you are curious about AI but not yet using it properly across the business, this is built for you. No technical background needed, we take you from wherever you are today.
Why hands-on, and why the floor team
The usual failure mode of big AI sessions is that half the room falls behind in the first hour and quietly gives up. We run it the other way. Small-group energy at your table, experts circulating the whole day, and real work in your own context so it actually sticks. You are not here to take notes on theory, you are here to get your own work done faster by the time you leave.
What is included
A full day of hands-on training, morning tea, a working lunch, afternoon tea, good coffee, and a toolkit to take away.
Before you book, worth knowing
You will need your own laptop, a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, and a significant allocation of Copilot Cowork credits for a full day of heavy use. If you are on a locked-down work laptop, have a quick word with your IT team first. We send a full setup guide once you book, run a short online session before the day, and our team is on the setup desk from 8:30am.
Agenda
🕑: 08:00 AM - 09:00 AM
Arrival, registration and setup desk
Info: Coffee on, laptops out. We check your account and clear any setup issues so you start at 9:00 ready to work.
🕑: 09:00 AM - 09:20 AM
The big picture
Info: Where AI actually earns its keep in a business, what the top 1% do differently, and how to treat Copilot as a Strategic Thought Partner, going beyond just a productivity tool.
🕑: 09:20 AM - 09:45 AM
Get Copilot set up properly
Info: Switch on the capabilities most people never find, and get clear on the difference between what Copilot can see inside your work tenancy and what it can see on the open web. That one distinction explains most of the complaints people have about Copilot. Connecting it to your world is the easy part here, because it is already sitting on it.
🕑: 09:45 AM - 10:15 AM
Building critical context
Info: Context is the single biggest lever on output quality. Copilot already has your files, email and calendar, so the work is in shaping what it draws on rather than plumbing it in. You load the context files you prepared before the day and put them where Copilot will actually find them.
🕑: 10:15 AM - 11:00 AM
Everyday productivity
Info: Scheduled morning research briefs, working from screenshots, turning a messy email thread into a reusable draft-reply skill, meeting recaps and actions out of Teams, and prompting properly with dictation. On your own inbox and your own meetings.
🕑: 11:00 AM - 11:20 AM
Morning tea
🕑: 11:20 AM - 12:30 PM
Cowork, Notebooks, Skills and Agents
Info: The centrepiece, and if you take one thing home from the day make it this. Notebooks are persistent workspaces that hold everything about a piece of work and keep it together across sessions, so you stop re-explaining yourself. Skills are workflows you build once and run with a single command. Agents take a brief and go away and do the work while you get on with something else. Cowork is where the heavy jobs run, and you will set an ambitious one going before you break for lunch.
🕑: 12:30 PM - 01:00 PM
Working lunch
Info: Eat, problem solve, keep building.
🕑: 01:00 PM - 01:35 PM
Open build
Info: Protected time on your own work, with support from the floor crew and Andy, going deep into building skills and projects for your actual work.
🕑: 01:35 PM - 02:35 PM
Dashboards and interactive tools
Info: Turn a conversation into something you can use. Calculators, decision trees, checklists, dashboards and scoring rubrics, all built and shareable without writing a line of code. We finish with something we will not give away here, except to say there is a prize on the line.
🕑: 02:35 PM - 02:55 PM
Afternoon tea
🕑: 02:55 PM - 03:35 PM
Image generation and Pages
Info: Finished visual collateral for your business, from social graphics to product mockups to diagrams, made properly rather than by luck. Then turning your work into a Page your team can actually open and use, rather than something that dies in your chat history.
🕑: 03:35 PM - 04:15 PM
Copilot inside Excel, Word and Teams
Info: Copilot working in the tools you already run your day in. Cleaning and analysing your own data in Excel and building the model that goes with it, drafting and reviewing documents in Word, and turning meetings into recaps and actions in Teams.
🕑: 04:15 PM - 04:45 PM
Bring your own job
Info: The second block of protected time. You brought two or three real jobs from your business, this is the room and the help to get them finished.
🕑: 04:45 PM - 05:00 PM
Wrap up and problem solving
Info: A rapid review of the day, then we roam and help with anything still stuck. Our team stays on after 5:00pm for questions and to tidy up remaining builds.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
AUD 690.82
