"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition"
Monty Python, 1970
That describes the arrival of ChatGPT in 2023 – or 2022, if you were in the beta. We started working with it intensively in late 2023 and realised it would change everything.
The GPTs have blown out of the water the way tech consulting, in fact, any form of consulting, is delivered to our niche of independent media and events businesses, or to any business.
We also realised that to help and advise on the use and adoption of this technology, we could not just arrive with theory and ideas, but with tactics and strategies which had some evidential backing at the very least. Considering that this is a novel technology, how could we achieve this?
So Digitising Events was born. It is both a methodology and a live experiment. We're documenting what happens when you systematically wrap a person in AI tooling to create a highly productive, independent media and events intelligence business.
The one unique thing we can bring to the party as people who have run and launched independent businesses is firsthand knowledge of how they work and the constraints they operate under, which you don't know until you have done it yourself. We aim to bring that pragmatism to all the AI hype.
We explore how AI transforms business operations through the Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) methodology, not just in theory, but through real-world applications. Every piece of content we publish, every tool we test, and every process we refine is part of this ongoing experiment.
We're not consultants selling frameworks. We're practitioners running a live business laboratory where:
How do you orchestrate AI tools around an individual to amplify their output? We're discovering which operational changes actually work when one person attempts to do the work of many and sharing the learnings.
How do we design AI-augmented workflows? Where humans add irreplaceable value. The new operational reality is that AI will increasingly handle execution whilst humans provide judgment, creativity, and strategic direction.
We do not know what new business models AI will provide. What we do know is that many existing models and practices will become obsolete or redundant. By pushing boundaries, testing, and experimenting in public, we aim to provide valuable information.
Whilst our foundation is based on the intelligent orchestration of Information, Audience, Experience, and Knowledge exchange in events, we're now demonstrating how these principles apply across all business operations:
Information Exchange (I)
Transforming data into actionable intelligence
Audience Engagement (A)
Building community through authentic experimentation
Experience Enhancement (E)
Creating value through personalised, AI-augmented interactions
Knowledge Capture (K)
Systematically learning and sharing what actually works
Not feature lists, but experience-based evaluations. When we test a tool, we document whether it solves real problems we've faced for decades, or whether it just adds complexity and cost.
Weekly retrospectives, mini-learnings, and documented experiments that show the methodology emerging through practice, not predetermined theory.
We're building the infrastructure for an AI-augmented content business, from semantic content clustering to performance analysis, sharing the blueprints as we go, as these will have transferable value for any business.
Every independent organisation in any industry, like the events and media industry, in which we cut our teeth, needs to answer the big question. How to harness AI's potential whilst maintaining human value?
We do not believe the answer lies in choosing between human and artificial intelligence, but rather in designing intelligent collaboration between them.
The Human in the Loop isn't just about oversight; it's about amplification, where human expertise directs AI capabilities toward meaningful outcomes.
It is not about following a predetermined path. We're learning, discovering and sharing one experiment at a time. Whether you're an independent operator or business leader curious about AI's practical applications, you'll find:
While Digitising Events started as a methodology for enhancing information and knowledge exchange at events through data science and AI. It's evolving into something larger: a proving ground for how independent operators can leverage AI to compete at any scale.
Every article, video, and tool review contributes to a growing body of evidence about what the future of work actually looks like when humans and AI collaborate effectively.
Follow our weekly retrospectives for real-time methodology development
Explore our Platform Tools & Tech evaluations through the HITL lens
Join the conversation about practical AI implementation
