Twin Cities Global AI Bootcamp Showed What Real-World AI Adoption Looks Like

In April 2025, GrowthIQ and the Twin Cities leadership team hosted the Twin Cities Global AI Bootcamp. The event brought together 149 attendees for a highly engaging experience focused on moving AI from theory into practice. Professionals from a wide range of companies, industries, and roles came together to explore how organizations can plan for and apply Enterprise AI, GenAI, RAG, and Responsible AI in practical, real-world ways.

The event welcomed participants from companies of all sizes and across a wide range of industries, including organizations such as Microsoft, Target, Accenture, and Tradition Wealth Management. From executives and product leaders to educators, consultants, technologists, and business operators, the room reflected what makes the Twin Cities AI community so valuable: people with different backgrounds coming together to learn, share, and build.

The focus of the day was practical AI adoption.

Sessions explored what it really takes to move from AI curiosity to execution, including how organizations are planning for Enterprise AI, getting started with GenAI, applying RAG, and thinking more intentionally about Responsible AI. The conversation was grounded in real business needs: aligning leadership, improving data readiness, identifying high-value use cases, and helping teams adopt AI in ways that are useful, safe, and scalable.

What stood out most to me was the mix of momentum and opportunity. Interactive polling throughout the event showed that 51% of attendees are just getting started with AI, while 64% of organizations are already underway with broader AI adoption. That combination tells an important story: many individuals are still early in their personal AI journey, even as their organizations are beginning to invest, experiment, and build. It’s exactly why gatherings like this matter.

The polling also reinforced how broad AI’s business impact has become. Attendees identified Customer Support & Success, IT & Data & Applications, Sales & Marketing, and Product & Business Development as some of the top functions already being affected by AI use cases. At the same time, many organizations are still in the “experimentation without strategy” stage, highlighting the need for stronger frameworks, better alignment, and more community learning.

Responsible AI was another major theme.

Among the five areas of Responsible AI, attendees said human-centeredness was the hardest to apply in business, followed by accountability, safety, and transparency. That insight is a reminder that AI adoption is not only a technology challenge. It is also a leadership, governance, and change-management challenge.

One of the best parts of the event was the level of participation. The community contributed more than 600 poll responses, giving us a meaningful snapshot of where organizations currently stand and what support they need next. That input will help shape future programming, resources, and conversations across the Twin Cities AI community.

We’re learning and advancing AI together.

If you want to explore the event materials, the Twin Cities Global AI LinkedIn page includes:

• Slides from all 5 sessions plus poll results

• A polling insights and AI recommendations report

• Access to Ellie, our TC AI Community Digital Assistant

• Future meeting topic ideas, an AI glossary, and event photos

You can find everything here: https://lnkd.in/gWq_bw-w

Big thanks to the Twin Cities AI Community Leadership Team for making the AI Bootcamp a success! Joe Kaju, Thibaud Cholat, Patty McDonald, Matt Genelin, Aaron Ploetz, Kathy Bodnar, Wesley Kisting, Christian Murphy Brian Lambert, PhD