Cleveland’s Next Act Is Taking Shape: AI Is at the Center
Lead photo: Brandon Tidd. CLE AI & Data Mega Meetup, Cleveland Museum of Natural History, September 28, 2026.
Three Events. One City.
A growing sense that Cleveland’s next chapter is being built right in front of us.
Over the past two weeks, I’ve watched the AI conversation move from a packed auditorium at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History to a breakfast where leaders in banking, education, government, and technology tackled what adoption actually takes. This week, it arrives downtown as MAICON brings marketing and business leaders together to explore how AI is changing their work and what they can build next.
Each gathering reveals a different part of Cleveland’s transformation into a tech hub: a community eager to experiment, institutions preparing people for change, and a conference connecting local ambition with global expertise. Together, they show a city developing the talent, relationships, and practical know-how to help shape AI’s future.
The People Helping Cleveland Build What Comes Next
At the September 28 CLE AI & Data Mega Meetup, the speakers gave Cleveland’s growing AI community something valuable: a way to think about the change, and encouragement to participate in it.
The setting offered an irresistible juxtaposition: natural history surrounding a conversation about what comes next. But the community behind the gathering has a history of its own. CLE AI & Data traces its roots to a Hadoop user group founded in 2010. Cleveland AI formed in 2017, and the groups merged in 2024. Today, the community lists more than 4,200 members and 183 events.
Those years of gathering are an asset. They give the current surge of AI interest somewhere to go, with people to learn from when it gets there.
Jason Tabeling: Build for the Hurricane
Jason Tabeling, head of solutions at Further, supplied the weather forecast.
The metaphor gave the room a memorable way to distinguish lasting preparation from the latest distraction. Tools will change. A strong foundation gives an organization the ability to change with them.
Tabeling brought that argument down to earth with Behr’s ChatHUE, an AI-powered assistant that helps people choose paint colors. His slides connected the customer experience to the technology underneath it and highlighted Further’s role alongside Behr and Google. Here was AI applied to a wonderfully ordinary human problem: standing in front of a wall of paint samples and wondering which one you can live with.
That ability to connect technical capability with customer needs makes him a useful voice for Cleveland’s next chapter. A region becomes stronger at AI when its businesses can identify where the technology will make a meaningful difference, then build the foundations to deliver it. Follow Jason on LinkedIn.
Morgan Willis: Go Forth and Build
Morgan Willis from AWS brought the invitation to get building. Her closing slide made the message explicit:
Go Forth and Build Agents (Safely)
The parenthetical deserved its place. Her presentation included diagrams showing how an AI agent could connect with business resources and tools. Alongside the possibilities was attention to the systems needed to put them into practice.
Willis has built a career helping people make that transition from curiosity to capability. An AWS developer advocate and University of Akron graduate, she creates educational material and practical examples that help developers work with cloud technology and AI. Her public work also leaves room for play: she recently documented putting a voice agent into a Big Mouth Billy Bass, the talking novelty fish.
That combination of technical depth, teaching, and a willingness to make something delightfully strange feels particularly at home in AI Salon. Follow Morgan’s work and you encounter someone making the technology approachable enough to try, with enough substance to keep learning.
Chris Hallacy: A Look Inside His Own AI Practice
Chris Hallacy, a member of the technical staff at OpenAI, made the conversation personal. His presentation was titled How I use AI*. The asterisk dated the advice, acknowledging how quickly even an experienced practitioner’s habits can evolve.
His slides offered a look at his own approach, including an actual prompt for splitting a large task into smaller pieces. That is a generous contribution: showing people a method they can adapt to their own work.
Hallacy’s experience gives that practical perspective weight. His public speaker spotlight credits him with helping launch CLIP, ChatGPT, and DALL·E. Yet the useful takeaway for the room was accessible: approach a problem, break it down, and explore what you can accomplish with the tools available. Connect with Chris on LinkedIn.
Together, these speakers helped make the frontier feel within reach. The spirit I took from the evening was simple: you can build something, and there are people willing to help you learn how.
For Cleveland, that matters. A tech hub grows through people who share their expertise, demonstrate their methods, and give others the confidence to begin. On this evening, national experience met local ambition in a museum auditorium, and Cleveland left with more to build on.
Over Coffee, Cleveland Got Down to the Work
Nine days later, the conversation moved to Park Place Technologies for OhioX’s State of AI breakfast, presented by Big Kitty Labs.
Aud Jucaitis, SVP and director of data and digital banking at First Mutual Holding Company, moderated a panel featuring Liz Crowe, Cleveland’s chief innovation and technology officer; Nathan Harper, director of AI engineering at Park Place; and Standish Stewart, CIO of Cuyahoga Community College.
The setting itself said something about Cleveland’s role in the technology economy. Park Place’s work includes supporting the GPU servers powering AI and exploring liquid cooling solutions. Attendees were offered a tour of its liquid cooling lab after the discussion.
AI has a physical footprint. It needs equipment, maintenance, and people who understand how to keep complex systems running. Cleveland’s experience with that work gives its tech ambitions a practical foundation.
Inside the panel discussion, the questions were equally concrete: How do organizations experiment? How do employees learn? What does success look like when the people affected are students, residents, or customers?
Crowe described the challenge of bringing AI into municipal government, where accountability, public records, and a diverse workforce shape every decision.
But until we’re clear on what success is, I don’t think we’re going to land at a good spot.
Liz Crowe, City of Cleveland
Her point reached beyond City Hall. A department needs to understand the outcome it wants before choosing the technology meant to deliver it. Whether the work involves public safety or collecting trash, the starting question remains the same: What are we trying to accomplish?
Harper described the value of giving people space to test ideas and build confidence through experience.
Give people a little bit of breathing room to go and explore.
Nathan Harper, Park Place Technologies
That breathing room is where a useful experiment can begin. A short trial gives a team something concrete to evaluate: Did it solve the problem? Did people use it? What should change next?
At Tri-C, Stewart connected AI adoption to the region’s future workforce. Students need skills that prepare them for local employers, alongside the judgment to question what a tool produces.
It’s not the answer for everything.
Standish Stewart, Cuyahoga Community College
She described an AI governance council involving more than 50 colleagues, with rotating participation and attention to whether tools improve the experience for students, faculty, and staff.
The conversation revealed a region learning to combine experimentation with responsibility. Businesses, government, and education have different constraints, but they are working through them together.
That collaboration is part of what makes a tech hub durable. Ideas can move between institutions. Employers can explain what they need. Educators can help prepare people to meet those needs. Public leaders can keep the wider community’s interests in view.
This Week, Cleveland Welcomes the Wider AI World
The next gathering brings that regional momentum onto an international stage. MAICON, the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Conference from Marketing AI Institute and SmarterX, returns to the Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland October 13–15, 2026. The main conference takes place October 14–15.
Its program connects practical adoption with the larger questions changing work and society. Paul Roetzer, Andrew Yang, Kevin Roose, and Karen Hao are among the featured speakers, bringing perspectives on AI agents, the economy, technological change, and the concentration of power.
For Cleveland, hosting that conversation matters. It brings people into the city to exchange ideas, build relationships, and consider what comes next. It also gives local practitioners a place to participate in a discussion with global reach.
Last year, my MAICON coverage for AI Salon focused on the people and ideas I encountered between sessions as much as the presentations themselves. This year, Rick McCawley and I will be there for AI Salon, bringing you conversations, discoveries, and hands-on impressions direct from the Expo floor.
We’ll be looking for the ideas worth trying, the people worth meeting, and the questions that deserve more than a polished demo.
There’s still time to join us in Cleveland. Choose your in-person pass on the MAICON registration page, or explore the on-demand bundle to watch selected sessions after the conference.
Wherever you’re following from, join the free AI Salon community to catch our coverage and join the conversation. Bring your curiosity, tell us what you want to see, and follow along as we explore what’s happening on the ground.
Cleveland is building its next act. Come meet the people making it happen.