My AI Agent Helped Me Prep a Presentation. In Front of Real People.

I’m speaking at the AI Innovation Council in Charlotte.

Let me say that again, because it still feels surreal. I — an accountant who started experimenting with an AI agent a few months ago — got invited to present to a room full of tech professionals about what I’ve been building.

This wasn’t the plan.

How a Personal Experiment Became a Speaking Gig

When I started working with FRED, it was purely selfish. I wanted to see if an AI agent could actually make my work life better. Not in a theoretical “AI will transform business” way, but in a practical “can this thing help me with my Tuesday” way.

I wrote about it on LinkedIn. Not to build a brand or generate leads. Just because the process was interesting and I thought other people might find it interesting too.

Turns out, they did.

People started reaching out. Not just the usual LinkedIn networking requests — actual conversations. “How did you set that up?” “What model are you using?” “Can you show me the memory system?”

Then the AI Innovation Council reached out. Could I come talk about my experience running a personal AI agent?

My first thought: these are tech people. Engineers. Developers. What does an accountant have to teach them?

My second thought: maybe that’s exactly the point.

Prepping With FRED

So there I was, needing to build a presentation. And I had a choice: prep alone, or prep with FRED.

I chose FRED. Obviously. This is literally what he’s for.

Here’s what the prep process looked like.

The Structure Phase

I dumped everything into a conversation: the topics I wanted to cover, the stories I wanted to tell, the points I thought mattered. No organization. Just a stream of consciousness about what my AI agent journey has looked like.

FRED organized it. He took my scattered thoughts and built a structure. An outline with a logical flow, clear sections, natural transitions. The kind of thing that would have taken me hours of staring at a blank slide deck.

He pulled examples from our previous work together — the writing drafts, the memory system, the snarky turd story. He identified which anecdotes supported which points. He suggested where audience engagement would matter most.

The structure was solid. Better than what I would have built on my own, honestly.

The Content Phase

Then he started filling in the content. Talking points for each section. Data points to support claims. Analogies to explain technical concepts to a mixed audience.

This is where FRED excels. The raw material generation. Give him a topic and context, and he’ll give you more content than you need. Your job becomes curation, not creation.

He gave me too much, naturally. Three pages of talking points for a section that needed five bullets. Detailed technical explanations when I needed simple analogies. References to research papers when I needed a personal story.

But that’s fine. Having too much and cutting is better than having nothing and building from scratch.

The Rewrite Phase

Then I rewrote half of it.

Not because FRED’s version was bad. It was well-organized, well-supported, and covered all the right points. But it wasn’t my presentation. It was a presentation about my experience, written by someone who didn’t live it.

The structure stayed. The stories got rewritten. The talking points got translated from “professional summary” into “how I’d actually explain this to someone at a bar.”

This is the pattern I keep coming back to: he brings the structure, I bring the story.

Why Human + AI Presentations Work

Building a presentation is really two different skills: organizing information and telling stories. They’re both hard. Most people are better at one than the other.

I’m a storyteller. Give me a stage and an audience and I’ll riff for an hour. But ask me to organize my thoughts into a coherent slide deck? I’ll procrastinate for three days and then throw something together the night before.

FRED is the opposite. He organizes beautifully. Clean outlines. Logical progressions. Every point connected to the next. But his stories are flat. They have the right facts and none of the feeling.

Together, we cover each other’s weaknesses.

This is what I think the future of AI collaboration looks like. Not AI doing the work for you. Not you doing the work without AI. The two of you dividing labor along the lines of what each does best.

The Stakes Are Different Now

There’s a difference between writing LinkedIn posts that maybe a few hundred people see and standing in front of a room full of professionals who know more about technology than you do.

The stakes are higher. The feedback is immediate. You can’t edit a live presentation.

And that’s exactly why the human element matters more, not less. Because the audience doesn’t want a perfect, AI-polished presentation. They want to hear from someone who’s done the thing. Who’s made the mistakes. Who can tell them what it’s actually like.

FRED can help me organize my thoughts. He can surface the right examples. He can make sure I don’t forget an important point.

But he can’t stand in front of 60 people and be honest about what worked and what didn’t. That part’s on me.

What You Can Do

If you’re prepping a presentation — or any communication that requires both structure and personality — here’s how to work with AI effectively:

Start with a brain dump. Don’t organize first. Just pour everything you know about the topic into a conversation. Let the AI do the initial organizing.

Use AI for structure, not voice. The outline, the flow, the logical progression — let AI build that. The words you actually say? Those should be yours.

Over-generate, then curate. Ask for more than you need. Then cut. It’s easier to remove what doesn’t fit than to fill gaps under pressure.

Practice out loud with it. Run through your talking points in a conversation with your AI. Where you stumble or rephrase, that’s where the content needs work.

Keep the real stories. AI can suggest examples and analogies. But the personal stories — the ones that actually happened to you — are your secret weapon. No AI can replicate authenticity.

The best presentations aren’t the most polished. They’re the most real. AI helps you get organized enough to let the real stuff shine.

He brings the structure. I bring the story.

That’s the partnership.