AWS Chicago User Group

AWS Real-World AI: From Disaster Recovery to Innovation

## Event Description

Join us for an evening exploring how AWS and AI are solving real-world problems—without the hype.
We'll hear from two practitioners who've put AI to work in meaningful ways: disaster recovery and healthcare innovation.

### Featured Talks

Talk 1: "Kiro and the Storm"
Dave Stauffacher, Chief Platform Engineer, UTurn Data + AWS Hero
In August 2025, a severe storm caused widespread flooding in Milwaukee. Amongst the casualties was a large portion of a local library's collection. Thousands of titles had to be discarded and replaced.
In this talk, Dave will show how Kiro was used to help evaluate the losses, get replacement values for insurance claims, and prepare the library to restock their shelves. A practical case study in using AI for good.

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Talk 2: "Let's Review Your AI Roadmap—From Eye Rolls to Execution"
Bob Lee III, Co-founder & CTO, CareCareConnect
AI hype is everywhere—and for engineers, it often earns an eye roll. But ignoring it isn't an option. This talk shares how our healthtech startup pushed past the noise, resisted building "AI for AI's sake," and ultimately found meaningful ways to put it to work. Learn how to cut through the hype and build an AI roadmap that actually matters.

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## Agenda

5:00 PM — Doors open, networking
5:15 PM — Welcome & introductions
5:25 PM — Dave Stauffacher: "Kiro and the Storm"
6:00 PM — Bob Lee III: "Let's Review Your AI Roadmap"
6:40 PM — Q&A & open discussion
7:00 PM — Networking & wrap-up

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## About the Speakers

Dave Stauffacher
Chief Platform Engineer at UTurn Data | AWS Hero
Dave brings deep expertise in AWS and has been recognized as an AWS Hero for his contributions to the community. He's passionate about solving real-world problems with cloud technology.
Bob Lee III
Co-founder & CTO, CareCareConnect
Bob is building healthtech solutions that leverage AI responsibly. He's focused on practical, meaningful applications of machine learning in healthcare—not AI for its own sake.

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## Date & Time

### Featured Talk

Aashana Shanu - Sr. Software Engineer at Elastic
This talk explores how Amazon Web Services and Elasticsearch can be combined to build real-time, intelligent systems.
Using Elastic Agent for continuous data ingestion and AWS Lambda as an MCP (Model Context Protocol) tool, the architecture enables AI agents to interact directly with live data and decision logic. Paired with AWS’s event-driven stack, this creates a system where actions are triggered, evaluated, and executed in near real time.
The innovation is in turning search into a decision engine and serverless functions into AI-integrated tools, enabling adaptive, context-aware workflows instead of static automation.

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## Agenda

5:00 PM — Doors open, networking
5:30 PM — Welcome & introductions
6:00 PM — Talk 1
7:00 PM — Networking & wrap-up

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## About the Speakers

Join us for the 8th annual Community Day | Midwest!
The 2026 event will take place in Indianapolis, Indiana at the Hyatt Regency Downtown Indianapolis.