Why attend
One day of building beats a year of reading about it.
Build An Agent Day runs on a simple promise: you walk in with a workflow you hate — you walk out with an agent that does it for you. Below is the case for business pros, government leaders, and educators to block off the day: the ROI math, what alumni say, and the framework (Mark's S.M.A.R.T.) we use to teach it.
Photo: a workshop attendee focused on their laptop, building an AI agent, with peers working alongside them.
The stakes
You're reading about agents while the hours bleed.
Every week, the same report, the same intake, the same triage — hours you'll never get back, on work an agent could already be doing. The headlines keep promising what agents will be able to do. Meanwhile the recurring task on your plate next Friday looks exactly like the one from last Friday.
Stop reading the brochure. Build the thing.
Six reasons
What makes this day different from every other AI event.
You leave with a working agent — not a slide deck
Most AI events hand you ideas. This one hands you something that runs in your job. By the time you walk out, you have an agent automating a real workflow for you.
Three stacks, one day
Build the same workflow with Claude Cowork, ChatGPT Agents, and Manus. Pick the stack that fits your environment instead of the one that fits a vendor's slide.
Designed for non-developers
Business pros, government leaders, educators. If you can write a clear how-to email, you can build an agent. No coding background required.
Wired into the tools you already use
We connect your agent to Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 during the workshop. Monday morning, the agent runs against the inbox, calendar, drive, and CRM you already pay for.
Govern what you actually understand
Knowing how agents work is the only way to govern them. Public-sector and regulated-industry attendees leave with the vocabulary and patterns to write the right policy and audit the right controls.
Plug into three communities, not just one day
Every attendee gets full access to the All Things Open, All Things AI, and AIE Network communities — free live meetups, virtual events, and a year of continuous learning beyond Build An Agent Day.
The ROI
What $297 early bird buys you.
We're not here to sell you a "transformation." We're here to give you back hours every week starting Monday. The math is small; the compounding is not.
From All Things AI participants who shipped one agent for a recurring task.
You build it in the room. We don't send you home with a reading list.
All-inclusive: meals, materials, instruction, and the agent you take with you.
Most workflows clear ticket cost in the first week. Everything after is compounding.
Worked example
One agent. Eight hours back per week.
An ops manager attends Build An Agent Day. She codifies her weekly stakeholder report — the one that takes 8 hours every Friday — as a Claude Cowork skill. The agent now drafts the report from her connected sources in under 10 minutes; she reviews and ships in 30.
8 hrs → 30 min, every week, forever. That's ~390 hours in year one — at $75/hr fully-loaded, $29,250 of recovered capacity from a single $297 early bird ticket.
Public-sector example
Same math. Better outcome.
A state-agency analyst codifies their FOIA-triage workflow as an agent. The agent classifies, suggests a route, and stages a draft response; the human approves.
Faster constituent response — and a paper trail an auditor can read. The capacity you recover is the same; the public good compounds on top of it.
Real workflows · real time saved
What past attendees automated — and what it bought back.
These are composites drawn from Mark's prior workshops and the AIE Network's reader case studies. Names are anonymized; the workflows and time-savings are not.
Claude Cowork
Weekly stakeholder report
An ops manager codifies her Friday status report as a Cowork skill. The agent pulls from connected drives and drafts it; she edits and ships in 30 minutes.
8 HRS → 30 MIN · WEEKLY
Board memo first draft
A nonprofit director points the agent at the last six board packets and gets a structured first draft of next month's memo before she opens her laptop.
1 DAY → 1 HOUR · MONTHLY
ChatGPT Agents
Inbound RFP triage
A sales engineer wires up an agent that opens each new RFP, scores it against win-rate criteria, and writes a Slack note with the verdict.
~6 HRS/WEEK RECLAIMED
Constituent intake routing
A state-agency analyst codifies their FOIA-triage flow. The agent classifies, suggests a route, and stages a draft response; the human approves.
FASTER RESPONSE · AUDIT TRAIL
Manus
Account research dossier
A BDR briefs Manus on a target list. It returns 25 dossiers — recent news, exec moves, tech stack hints, conversation hooks — by morning.
~3 HRS PER ACCOUNT · 25× A WEEK
Competitive landscape refresh
A product marketer asks Manus for a quarterly refresh on five named competitors and gets a structured doc with pricing, new features, and positioning shifts.
1 WEEK → OVERNIGHT · QUARTERLY
Outcomes by role
What you ship — by the role you walk in with.
Business
An agent that drafts your weekly report, triages your inbox, or runs the customer-research outreach you don't have time for.
Government
An agent that triages constituent intake, summarizes public-comment dockets, or pre-screens RFP responses against scoring criteria.
Education
An agent that drafts rubrics, gives first-pass feedback on student work, or builds personalized study plans from a syllabus.
What people say after a day with us
224 reviews
Rated by attendees of Mark Hinkle's AI workshops across The AIE Network — the same instructor and curriculum behind Build An Agent Day.
"This is the best day I've spent on learning in a long time. As a complete non-techie, I've already started building my first app using Manus. This event gave me the confidence I needed to get started, even with zero coding experience."
Sr. Manager, Curation to Execution · Mayo Clinic
"The Business Professionals Workshop was a standout — learning how to build a website in under 15 minutes using AI was truly eye-opening. I'm already looking forward to attending again."
Product Manager · U.S. Bank
"Mark Hinkle is a trusted guide who gives a straightforward understanding of AI tools, plus some frameworks to think with and lively stories to keep it interesting."
Director of AI & Automation Projects · Duke University
Still on the fence?
The honest answers to what's stopping you.
"I'm not technical enough."
The day is built for non-developers. If you can write a clear how-to email, you can build an agent — and an instructor walks every table while you do it. Our alumni include "complete non-techies" who left having shipped their first app the same day.
"I can just watch a YouTube tutorial."
Tutorials give you concepts. You leave Build An Agent Day with a working agent wired to your real tools — not a bookmark you'll never reopen. The difference is "agents will be able to" versus "this is how you make an agent," built in the room.
"Which AI tool will I be locked into?"
None. You build the same workflow on Claude Cowork, ChatGPT Agents, and Manus, then pick the stack that fits your environment — not the one that fits a vendor's slide.
"Can I expense it?"
Most employers reimburse Build An Agent Day under professional-development or continuing-education budgets. At $297 early bird with a ~7-hour payback, the worked example clears $29,250 of recovered capacity in year one — we provide an expense-ready receipt on request.
Save your seat. Skip the wait.
Walk in with the workflow. Walk out with the agent.
Pick your city and reserve your seat. Early bird from $297, all-inclusive — first 100 tickets per city.