Make AI Practical Day | Real AI. Real Life. Real Connections
About this Event
Summary
AI doesn’t replace people. It reprices them. Four Melbourne builders on what judgment is worth now that execution is cheap.
Description
Sunday 8 November 2026 · 2:00–5:00pm · University of Melbourne
AI doesn’t replace people. It reprices them.
The question stopped being “can AI do this” a while ago. The harder one is what your judgment is worth now that execution has gone cheap.
MAP Day is an afternoon spent on that question, worked through in public by four Melbourne people who have already restructured something real around it — a role, a workflow, a business, a household.
Back in Building 189, the same room where 70 of you turned up last December. Our third demo day this year, and the biggest of them.
Who this is for
You’re past prompt tips. You’ve automated a few things and noticed the uncomfortable part: the bottleneck moved. It isn’t speed of output anymore. It’s the quality of the question, the taste to know when the output is actually good, and the willingness to own a decision no model will own for you.
Who this isn’t for
Anyone looking for a beginner introduction or a tool roundup. We assume fluency and spend the afternoon on judgment.
The thesis we keep returning to
Four things are losing value quickly: passive execution, relaying information, manual work without leverage, narrow specialisation.
Five are gaining: agency, problem definition, human-AI collaboration, rapid learning, and the ability to genuinely connect with people.
Everything on the program is a worked example of moving from the first list to the second.
The speakers
Carmen Zhu — From Signal to System: AI-Enabled Decision Intelligence
Analytics across Microsoft, Endeavour Group and Origin Energy. Carmen rebuilt a high-volume, judgement-heavy VOC process into an AI-enabled system — and found it didn’t just cut manual effort, it surfaced business questions nobody had been asking. What makes a problem genuinely suitable for AI, and where the line between automation and human decision should sit.
Wesley Li — Building a Smarter Home with AI
Data & Business Analytics · AI, Cloud, Professional Mentoring. Apple, Google, Alexa, Matter, Home Assistant — five ecosystems that don’t talk to each other. Wesley uses AI to connect them, control them, and troubleshoot them, so the house behaves like one system instead of five.
Loki Yan — Ranked, Cited, Bought: SEO, GEO and Agentic Commerce
Co-Founder, First Optimise · Speaker at Google Search Central Live (×2), Ahrefs Evolve Singapore, Shenzhen SEO Conference · Search Awards winner (×3). SEO gets you ranked. GEO gets you cited. Agentic commerce gets your product chosen and bought by an AI agent shopping on someone else’s behalf. Three different mechanics — and one site architecture that can serve all three.
Carol Liu — Judgment: Your Ultimate AI Moat
Principal Engineer at REA Group, 20 years in system architecture · AI Architecture & Product Advisor. When AI drives execution and code generation towards zero, what is human judgment actually worth? The “grilling skill” for extracting hidden context, why early AI startups die of UX friction, and a three-step blueprint for turning unstructured domain knowledge into an advantage that can’t be copied.
Run sheet
· 1:45 — Doors open, name tags
· 2:00–4:00 — Four speakers, 20 minutes each plus questions, with a break
· 4:00–5:00 — Networking and close
What you’ll leave with
· A sharper read on where your own leverage actually sits, and where it’s quietly eroding
· Four worked examples of judgment under uncertainty, failures included
· Language for the conversation you probably need to have at work
· A few people operating at the same altitude, who’ll take your message when you’re stuck
About Make AI Practical
We started in May 2025 as a small AI coffee chat around a kitchen table. Since then: 15+ events, 200+ people, ranging from first-time users to engineers shipping AI products.
We’re a registered Victorian incorporated association (A0129220S), run by a team of co-creators rather than a business. We hold one line hard: proof over promotion. Real stories, real numbers, real builds.
Led by Michelle Yang, ICF-certified coach with 16 years in tech, alongside the MAP co-creator team.
Details
Sunday 8 November 2026
Doors 1:45pm · first speaker 2:00pm sharp · close 5:00pm
University of Melbourne, Building 189 (Frank Tate Building), Parkville — enter off Swanston Street, trams stop at the door
English session
$15 to confirm your spot
The more capable the models get, the scarcer real judgment and real connection become. That’s the whole premise.
Real AI. Real Life. Real Connections.
Agenda
🕑: 01:50 PM - 02:00 PM
Checkin
🕑: 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Guest Speeches
🕑: 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Networking & QA
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
AUD 17.19
