Running AI Locally
Details
Local AI: What It Is, Why It Matters, and When to Consider It
Most conversations about "open-source AI" get stuck on licensing — but that's not the question that actually matters for marketers and GTM practitioners. The more useful question is: who controls each layer of the stack your AI runs on, and what does that mean for your data, your cost, and your risk?
Korey Mercier's session cuts through the noise to explain what "running a model locally" actually means, how it differs from tools like ChatGPT, and what it would take to do it yourself — on hardware you may already own. We'll cover the real privacy and cost benefits, the honest tradeoffs (including who's responsible for guardrails when there's no vendor in the loop), and how to think about model provenance and the "calling home" question with technical precision rather than fear or hand-waving.
The session closes with a live demonstration on a MacBook Pro — including a practical, marketing-relevant task using local document analysis — no cloud, no API key, no data leaving the room.
About Korey Mercier - Herding Wolves
Korey Mercier, founder of Herding Wolves, is brought in when something feels off inside a growing company and nobody inside can see it clearly or say it out loud. He works with founder-led, tech-forward businesses and leaders negotiating the hard middle ground between traction and scale, typically at the intersection of technical strategy, organizational alignment, and risk. With nearly 30 years of technology, security, and operations leadership — including a stint as Chief Systems Architect at Rackspace — he holds a BS in Computer Science and an MBA from Virginia Tech, an ISO 27001 Lead Auditor certification, and serves as a SAGE Advisor at Innosphere Ventures and Negotiations Learning Committee Chair at 88 Owls. Korey is a Corporate Sponsor of RMAIIG and is based in Longmont, Colorado.
We hope to see you on Thursday, July 9 at 8:00 AM at Founder Central by Sweater in Boulder.
Please use the entrance with the mural, on the parking lot side of the building.