Events

Speaker: Arun Lakshmanan

Biography:

Arun Lakshmanan is a Senior Specialist Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services, where he specializes in OpenSearch, observability, and AI/ML technologies, including semantic search and large language models. He regularly speaks at technology conferences on search relevancy, vector databases, and practical AI applications.

With over two decades of experience spanning software engineering, architecture, and team leadership, Arun has helped organizations across retail, media, and enterprise sectors implement search and analytics solutions at scale. He brings a practitioner's perspective to AI—focused less on hype and more on what actually works when the tools meet real-world workflows.

Presentation Title: The AI-Ready PM: Prompt & Context Engineering for Project Professionals

Description:

AI won't replace project managers—but PMs who understand AI will outperform those who don't. This session cuts through the hype to deliver practical skills you can use immediately.

Learn why AI is a predictive engine (not a calculator), how to ask questions that get useful answers, and how to structure information so AI becomes a reliable team member rather than a frustrating guessing game. You'll also see how to bring data from the tools you already use—Jira, Confluence, spreadsheets, and other PM platforms—into AI conversations to analyze project health, prepare for stakeholder meetings, and surface insights that would take a considerable amount of time to compile.

Through live demonstrations, you'll learn to automate repetitive tasks, uncover patterns in project data, and accelerate your learning in new domains. 

Learning Objectives

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

 *    Explain why AI "hallucinates" and apply techniques to minimize unreliable outputs.

*     Apply core prompt engineering techniques to get consistent, actionable results.

*      Structure context effectively to improve AI accuracy on real project tasks

*      Bring project data from existing tools into AI workflows to streamline reporting and meeting preparation.

*      Identify opportunities to automate repetitive PM workflows and surface patterns in project data.

****Registration is closed for this event.****

Agenda:

      Registration & Networking: 5:30 to 6:00 PM CT

      Dinner: 6:00 to 6:30 PM CT

      Announcements: 6:30 to 6:45 PM CT

      Presentation and Q&A: 6:45 to 7:45 PM CT

      Raffles and Close Out 7:45 to 8:00 PM CT

PDUs: 1.5 Power Skills