The Human Advantage: AI + Strategic Communication Forum

AI has changed the mechanics of communication. Join us at a half-day forum on the judgment, ethics and choices that still belong to people.
About this Event

The standards for AI in communication are being written right now.

Not in five years. Not by a committee. They are being set right now, in the daily decisions of communicators who are figuring it out as they go — what to automate, what to disclose, what to sign their name to, and what to refuse.

The Human Advantage brings Twin Cities communications professionals together with the next generation of strategic communicators to work through that question in one room, in one morning.

This is not a forum about whether AI is coming for the profession. It is a forum about the part of the work that cannot be delegated.

AI can produce content. Communicators create meaning.
AI can accelerate production. Communicators protect trust.
AI can generate options. Communicators make choices.

What the day looks like

Opening keynote. Sree Sreenivasan on what actually changes for communicators when the production bottleneck disappears — and what doesn't.

Two concurrent breakout sessions. Practitioner conversations built for two different vantage points: what employers are already expecting from candidates and early-career staff, and how communications leaders are building AI-ready teams without breaking what works.

A working session, not a demo. Sree Sreenivasan will lead a hands-on workshop with the full room. Bring a laptop. You will leave with things you can use Monday.

Lunch, with the room mixed on purpose. Students at tables with professionals. Conversation prompts on the tables. This is the part attendees tend to remember.

Closing conversation. Sree Sreenivasan and Erich Sommerfeldt, Academic Director, Master's in Strategic Communication program, close the day by pulling the threads together — and naming what the profession owes the people it communicates with.

Who this is for:

• Communications professionals — agency and in-house, early to mid-career, who are making real AI decisions and want a candid conversation with peers rather than a vendor pitch.
• Strategic communication students, undergraduate and graduate — entering a job market where AI fluency is assumed and judgment is the differentiator.
• Faculty and staff — across journalism, strategic communication, advertising, and public relations.