Angie Carel AI Consulting

06/23/2026

I have a new plan to force myself to examine the structure and setup of my business every year: Buy a new MacBook.

Yesterday, I got my new M5 Pro MacBook. I know. Horrible. 😂

And for the first time, I decided not to use Migration Assistant.

Nothing transferred. No apps, no documents, no passwords, folders... nothing. Blank slate.

At first I thought (and I think I said it out loud) “This is going to be a total cluster-duck.”

But 24 hours later, I had looked closely at the architecture of how I actually work - through the lens of “Today Angie,” not “Yesterday’s Angie” and modified almost every single thing to best serve today’s Angie.

Plus I cancelled, backed up, tidied up, and organized a whole bunch of stuff.

I didn’t hate it. In fact, the ocd in me may have enjoyed it. Like, thoroughly enjoyed it.

That’s when I decided to write this post.

AI is constantly changing the foundation of how we operate. The speed in which everything shifts is wild.

I think every system you currently have deserves a good, hard look.
How you communicate.
How you organize information.
How you make decisions.
How hand-offs work.
How you document knowledge.
How you build, sell, serve, and scale.

This MacBook episode isn’t the first forced-rethink of my business. I’ve re-built my AI Consulting structure three times now.

The first time I didn’t even really understand that’s what I was doing. I just felt this intense need to stop, step back, and rethink everything.

So I did.

I always say, “You have to slow down before you speed up.”

It’s true. But slowing down is not a one-time event. It’s a constant cycle.

And in this pace of change, I’m realizing that consistent forced reinvention might become a discipline.

06/19/2026

The AI divide is quietly making its way through society right now — and I think it’s going to be a much bigger gap than anything we’ve seen before.

Yesterday I stood in front of a room full of teenagers and showed them really awesome things AI is capable of right now, and emphasized the extraordinary opportunity sitting right in front of their generation.

During Q&A, not one question was about the tools or the opportunities.

Every question was some version of “is it bad?”

I left in thought.

Maybe some of them went home to experiment. Others didn’t. And some kids — especially in more privileged situations — have been experimenting for a couple of years already. They’re building with it.

That gap, between those who get exposed to what’s possible and those who don’t, will determine who gets left behind.

We’re going to watch two very different futures take shape.

The defining inequity of this decade won’t just be wealth or access to education. It will be who was exposed to — and energized by — AI earlier than their neighbor.

06/17/2026

Having a full boomerang moment this morning. ↩️

23 years ago, I got my degree from Indiana University — in Education — and never taught (at a school) a single day in my life.

Today, I’m headed to a university to teach a Google AI class.

To be fair, my path to that education degree was anything but straight. I started in Computer Science, wandered through Journalism, took a ton of art classes, dabbled in Civil Engineering and Architecture… and then found out I was pregnant with twins.

I walked into my advisor’s office and said, “What’s the quickest way out of here?” (6 years in but fully ok with being in school forever. I loved it.)

She looked at my transcript and said — “Actually, you have everything you need for an Education degree. You just need student teaching.”

I said “Ok, sign me up!”

So in my 2nd trimester, carrying twins, I did my student teaching and graduated with a degree in Education… and a minor in Mathematics.

Decided immediately that’s not what I wanted to do for work. Heck no.

So right away I took my first job in marketing. 😂

Turns out that winding, “unplanned” path gave me the foundation I needed for today.

The scenic route is often the right one.

But to be clear… I still don’t want to be a teacher. Just jumping in to teach a few AI classes. 🙌

06/15/2026

Some finish lines come with screaming crowds, cowbells, and people cheering you on. 🎉

Others are crossed quietly — just you, and the fear you decided to show up and face.

Yesterday, my husband finished 9th in his age group in a Half Ironman. 🏅 He crushed it.

It made me think about my own race.

For the last 3 years, I’ve been quietly competing — conquering my fear of public speaking.

No medals to showcase. Just a stack of lanyards and name badges to reflect on in silence and in solitude.

My race is never really over. There’s no finish line.

To Bastien Carel — Congratulations. Super proud of your accomplishment. 🙌

And to anyone quietly running their own race right now — I’m cheering for you. You’ve got this.

06/14/2026

Claude has something I’ve been waiting for my entire adult life: “Decide for me.”

This video is what I was doing—duckpin bowling with my son—while Claude was building a digital version of the dice game “Las Vegas.” (Yes, that’s a story for another post.)

Claude made the decisions.

Several of them.

Layout decisions. Design decisions. Logic decisions. UX decisions. Edge-case decisions.

I came home to a completely finished project.

And I had an absolute blast with my son in the meantime. 💕

06/13/2026

As I say in the post... happy to be leading this community but it's the people that show up each month and generously share their learning journey that make it such a huge success. We have a phenomenal AI in Fort Wayne meetup yesterday!

06/12/2026

The technology everyone swears will isolate us... is the thing that’s built some of the most meaningful human connections of my life. I had a photo shoot a couple weeks ago with a handful of them.

Jennifer Hunter is one of the best people I know at guiding organizations through making complex decisions. I met her because of AI and she’s become an incredible friend.

Andrew Applegate, MPA, CFRM is a thinking (and understanding) partner. He listens to deeply hear you, not just to respond. You can feel that when talking with him. He’s become a great friend. Because of AI.

Kai Blakeborough and I have collaborated several times now, and no one I know communicates the impact and reality of AI better than him — and I work with people all over the globe. We met because of AI.

Josh Jeffrey always steps up to make things happen. He thinks big, and truly sees the opportunities ahead for the people who get it. We collaborate on projects because of AI.

And if you’ve chatted with Alfredo Perez even once, you know he’s one of the most genuine, giving, authentic people out there — and deeply in tune with the transformation happening in front of us. We became friends because of AI.

There are so many more. Brilliant friends. A huge community of AI learners. My “local” fans who lift me up every day.

It’s not the AI, it’s the people I found on the other side of it.

Who’s someone you met... maybe even became friends with... because of AI? Maybe give them a tag here.

Photo creds: Bastien Carel

06/08/2026

I used Claude Design for the first time last week to build the slide deck for my Advanced AI Training workshop in Cabo. 70+ slides.

I was skeptical. Here's what I found. 👇

What struck me first was the smoothness of the entire workflow.

I started with a .md file I'd exported from planning the workshop in a Claude project. That shell became a deck in minutes. Then, instead of switching tools, I stayed in Claude Design to refine slides, write and iterate on speaker notes, create all of my supporting assets, and export.

I loved thinking and designing in one single place.

My colors, fonts, spacing, and aesthetic preferences were consistently right on-brand because of the design system I had set up prior.

Then the speaker notes...

Claude wrote a draft for each of my slides — in my voice, informed by the full context of the deck in conjunction with the specific slide - and the planning session notes. It was wayyyyy better than working with Claude without having the design to iterate with. I was shocked at how good this was.

I'd ask things like: "How do I tie my main point from slide 23 back into slide 56?"

And it understood the entire narrative arc to give me suggestions. Or "have I said this too many times?" "How can the layout on slide 60 reiterate the bullets on slide 10 but not say the exact same thing?" Or, "Does this slide add value to my main throughline?"

It felt really empowering, like having a conversation with a smart speech-writing / graphic designer co-worker.

The import/export flexibility surprised me pleasantly. You can start from scratch, but you can also start from a screenshot, a Figma file, or existing code. Export to PowerPoint, Google Slides, PDF, or HTML. When exporting to PPT, it gives you a choice of keeping your branded fonts or a version with universal fonts.

Here was the biggest time-saver (or value adder):

You can create on-brand additional assets and takeaways directly from the slide deck (and notes).

I asked Claude to "read slides 33–48 and create a very detailed step-by-step guide that I could give attendees." It did. Awesomely.

Then I asked for a takeaway PDF of the main message from slides 10–14.

Done.

I ended up building multiple supporting assets — all beautifully on-brand, all pulling from the slide deck and notes.

There's a tweaks panel where you can change things across every slide at once — adding slide numbers, adjusting headline tone (direct vs. abstract), shifting emphasis.

For editing content, you can edit slides directly or just tell Claude "change this" and let it execute. I found myself taking the role of art director, letting Claude do the doing.

Access to the deck and assets are super easy and convenient because it's cloud based.

I've gone from Beautiful.ai to Gamma, to exporting my planning notes into Lovable to generate my slide decks.

Claude Design has more of a co-worker, co-thinker, higher value experience and feel, and I think I'll be turning more towards it in the future. 🤯

06/05/2026

Join us next Friday for the monthly AI community meetup! A fun format - see og post for description.
RSVP here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ai-in-fort-wayne-june-monthly-community-meetup-tickets-1989046575852

The June Fort Wayne AI Meetup is next Friday, June 12th at 10am and we're switching up the format!

I’ll be joined by three community members as we tackle AI questions submitted by attendees.

But this isn’t just a Q&A panel discussion. We’ll be encouraging audience participation, too.

The goal is to tap into the collective knowledge of the community for a dynamic and enlightening session.

RSVP for the in-person meetup is here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1989046575852

RSVP for the virtual meetup is here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1991206523313

Have a question you’d like us to discuss?
Submit it here to help guide the conversation:
https://forms.gle/5p42viryBSHtfv997

06/04/2026

My last two days at the WSI World Conference were a whirlwind… quite a fun one.

A few highlights:

Had an awesome conversation about the future of AI and marketing agency transformation with Neal on the boat cruise… I absolutely did not catch his last name.

Denise was a pure joy to spend time with talking about her AI (and other) ambitions. Also did not catch her last name. 😬

Delivered a half-day AI workshop to a room full of different business owners, and successfully navigated through a live build.

I now have Ryan Kelly’s contact in my phone as “Sexy Ryan” because we accidentally shared contacts instead of AirDropping photos. (He said his wife did that… 🤷‍♀️)

Met my favorite new German friend in person, Andreas Mueller-Schubert.

Also met my new favorite Indian friend… and his moustache. I did not catch his first or last name because I was too distracted by his moustache, and his infectious laugh.

Enjoyed chatting about AI with Gunnar Hood, a LinkedIn connection, for the first time IRL.

Got to decompress for two hours after my talk in near solitude on the beach, except for Martin, who kept walking up to me and saying, “You sure? No tequila?”

Witnessed an AI vs. human music competition with two guys named Mike on the mic 🎤.

Had a lovely dinner last night with Mark Dobson and Valerie Brown-Dufour — and then the volume turned up when Rimma Jaciw came into the night with her comedic skills.

And finally, having a familiar face, the life of the party, the person remembering to take photos, and a gigantic support in Eric Cook made the quick trip an official epic memory.

This morning I got privately escorted in a large black Suburban by Martin (a different Martin) to the airport. He kindly found a Starbucks for me and when he pulled up and opened my door they unlocked and made me a coffee before they were even open. For a brief moment, I felt far more important than I actually am.

AI brought us together.

The humans made it unforgettable.