Waco is set to host its first-ever AI conference, the YOU × AI Summit, on September 12, 2026, with BrainTrust Partners as the founding title sponsor. The event, held at the Performing Arts & Community Center in downtown Waco, aims to equip business owners with practical AI strategies, emphasizing the role of proprietary data and secure AI deployment.
Tim Hayden, CEO of BrainTrust Partners, will deliver a keynote titled "Your Data, Your AI, and Your Future" at 9:50 a.m. He plans to guide attendees on evaluating their current operations to identify AI use cases before making any purchases, cautioning against relying solely on public AI models like ChatGPT or Claude. "There's no reason why you have to look at ChatGPT or Claude to run everything," Hayden said, advocating for open-weight models that can be trained on a company's own data, run privately, and cost a fraction of enterprise subscriptions.
Hayden founded BrainTrust in 2016 to help companies structure and make sense of their data for personalization and improved analytics. He notes that even a decade later, most companies have not fully unified and labeled their data, which is critical for AI to work effectively. "You have intelligence sitting somewhere within the pipes of your business," he said. "That's your brand. It is your brand DNA that can shape AI in your brand voice."
The summit features a lineup of 23 speakers across four tracks: Build, Get Found, Sound Like You, and AI Safety. Opening the day at 8:20 a.m. is Bryan Eisenberg, a Wall Street Journal and New York Times bestselling author who helped coin the term conversion rate optimization. His keynote, "Before the Algorithm, There Was Your Story. That Hasn't Changed," underscores the enduring power of storytelling in marketing. Dr. Hope Koch, who holds the Godfrey Sullivan Endowed Chair of Information Systems and Business Analytics at Baylor University's Hankamer School of Business, will close the conference at 4:05 p.m. with a session titled "HOPE" (Human Opportunity and a Period of Exponential Change), designed for non-technical attendees to turn their business knowledge into working AI tools.
Other sessions include Joseph Scaramucci on "AI, Crime & Community: What You Need to Know," and Sara Lohse of Branded Media presenting "Unpromptable: Using Your Story to Stand Out and Connect." Several hands-on workshops will allow attendees to build AI assistants or other tools during the event, with a laptop recommended.
The summit's name, with its multiplication sign, reflects its core message: AI is not an equalizer but a multiplier. "Most people think AI is the great equalizer," said Fernando Labastida, co-organizer and founder of the Viral Genius Institute. "It's a multiplier, and multipliers widen gaps. A business with nothing to say brings a 1, and AI takes it to 2. The competitor with a real point of view brings a 10, and the same AI takes them to 20. Same tools. Bigger gap."
This event is particularly significant as it brings AI education to a regional business community, emphasizing that success in the AI era depends not on the tools themselves but on the data and human creativity businesses bring to them. As Dr. Koch's message suggests, "AI plus humans is better than AI alone," and the summit aims to provide practical guidance for leveraging AI while maintaining a human-centric approach.
