Recalibrate Your Edge for the AI Age: 3 All-Canadian Talks

When the flood comes, you don't build a taller wall. You move to higher ground. AI is flooding the skills that used to define tech careers: coding, dashboarding, project management. The practitioners who stay dangerous aren't fighting the current. They're redirecting it (the way aikido uses an attacker's own momentum against them) toward the skills that actually compound: knowing what to build, knowing when humans matter, knowing where value moves next. Three Canadian practitioners. Three ways to recalibrate. One lunch hour:

1. Yulia Kosarenko, BA Consultant/Author/Coach - WHY: "Why Are We Building It: Clear Requirements in the Age of AI" AI can draft your user stories. It can't tell you if you're solving the wrong problem. Yulia trains hundreds of professionals in the discipline of questioning before building. At her recent DAMA Toronto talk, she asked the audience whether a hotel should replace its doorman with an automatic door. Most said yes. She proved them wrong.
2. Zayyan Ahmed, Alkemi Founder & Product Leader - HOW: "The Centaur Approach: How Experts and AI Agents Work Together" AI can automate the workflow. It can't make the judgment call no training data covers. Zayyan is building an open-source framework that doesn't remove human experts from AI loops but makes their decisions faster and less fatiguing. The future isn't full automation. It's knowing exactly where human expertise plugs in.
3. Mark Kashef, Prompt Advisers & Early AI-dopters Founder - WHERE: "The Development Crunch: Where AI Value Is Actually Moving" AI can write the code. If development is your only offering, you're standing on a burning platform. Mark brings data from his Early AI-dopters Skool community and a global AI conference showing the market has shifted: buyers no longer want someone to "just build it." They want a guide. If you're wondering which skills to double down on, this is your compass.

Agenda
12:00 - 12:10 PM: Welcome and 8th birthday moment
12:10 - 12:30 PM: Yulia Kosarenko (WHY)
12:30 - 12:50 PM: Zayyan Ahmed (HOW)
12:50 - 1:10 PM: Mark Kashef (WHERE)
1:10 - 1:25 PM: Q&A panel
1:25 - 1:30 PM: Manning Publications birthday raffle (8 100%-off coupons for turning 8)

Who Should Attend: Anyone in tech feeling the ground shift who wants to recalibrate rather than scramble.

Format: Virtual lunch and learn, 12:00-1:30 PM ET, Friday February 27. Grab your lunch and join us.

Speaker Links:
Yulia: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yulia-kosarenko/ | https://why-change.com/
Zayyan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/qahmed1/ | https://github.com/zayyanx/psyai
Mark: https://www.youtube.com/@Mark_Kashef | https://www.skool.com/earlyaidopters