Figure 1:GES Learns AI: A Microsoft Copilot & Cowork Master Class · Dr. Ernesto Lee
1GES Learns AI¶
A Microsoft Copilot & Cowork Master Class for Global Experience Specialists By Dr. Ernesto Lee
Every year, GES delivers 4,000+ live experiences in 75+ countries for 150,000+ exhibitors. Show floors go up in days and come down in hours. Freight moves across borders. Labor gets forecast, booked, and reconciled. Designs get built, shipped, installed, and struck — over and over, at a scale most organizations never touch.
That operational reality is exactly why AI matters here more than almost anywhere else.
This is not a general AI overview. Every concept, every exercise, and every example in this master class has been built for the specific realities of the experience industry — show operations, exhibit design and graphics production, freight and material handling, exhibitor services, sales and account management, housing, and corporate functions.
By the time you complete this program, you will not just understand AI. You will be using it — every day, for real work — in ways that measurably improve your performance and the experiences GES delivers.
1.1Why Now¶
Two things changed.
First, GES changed. On December 31, 2024, GES became an independent company for the first time in over five decades. New ownership, new roadmap, new freedom to move. Transformation moments like this don’t come around often — and the organizations that use them well pull away from the ones that don’t.
Second, the technology changed. Microsoft 365 Copilot moved from a helpful assistant to something categorically different. With the general availability of Copilot Cowork in June 2026, you can now delegate complex, multi-step, long-running work — across Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and SharePoint — and get back finished output, not a rough draft.
GES is already on this path. The onPeak AI Smart Suite — AI-powered hotel search, contract reading, and email categorization — is proof that this organization doesn’t wait for permission to modernize.
This master class is how the rest of the company catches up to that standard.
1.2Built on T.R.U.E.¶
This program is deliberately anchored to the GES values, because AI adoption is a culture problem before it is a technology problem.
| Value | What It Means With AI |
|---|---|
| Trust | AI is a tool, not an oracle. Verify what matters. Be honest about what the machine did and what you did. |
| Responsibility | You own every output that carries your name. AI does not transfer accountability. |
| Understanding | People come first. AI takes the toil so you can give clients and colleagues more of your actual attention. |
| Excellence | AI raises the floor. Humans still raise the ceiling. Use it to clear the routine so you can go deeper on the work that matters. |
1.3What You Will Learn¶
The conceptual foundations of AI — explained clearly, without jargon
How Microsoft Copilot actually works, and what it can genuinely do for your role
Copilot Cowork — how to delegate multi-step work end-to-end and review it like a manager, not a typist
Context engineering — the most important skill of the AI era
How to configure your AI persona and become dramatically more effective
Meta-prompting — how to learn anything from an expert AI
How GES data is already connected to your AI, and what that means for security and oversharing
How to build your first AI agent — a synthetic teammate, configured by you
1.4Who This Is For¶
This master class is written for the whole company, not just the desk-bound.
| If you work in… | You’ll learn to… |
|---|---|
| Show & Event Operations | Turn site surveys, punch lists, and move-in/move-out plans into structured, searchable, shareable knowledge |
| Creative & Design | Accelerate concepting, briefs, spec docs, and graphics production handoffs |
| Sales & Account Management | Build sharper proposals, faster RFP responses, and post-show recaps that win renewals |
| Logistics & Freight | Analyze drayage, material handling, and shipment data without waiting on a report |
| Exhibitor Services | Handle order volume, service kit content, and exhibitor questions at scale |
| Corporate Functions | Compress the reporting, drafting, and analysis cycle across finance, people, legal, and marketing |
1.5Available Chapters¶
LLMs, tokens, context engineering, the Flashlight Theory, personas, meta-prompting, tools, and agents — your complete AI foundation.
From Task Doer to AI Orchestrator. The inner work that determines whether everything that follows actually sticks — grounded in T.R.U.E.
Leading and sustaining AI transformation inside GES — Kotter, ADKAR, Champions, the 100-day playbook, and the governance line between protection and paralysis.
From pilot to enterprise. The risk landscape, Microsoft’s compliance architecture, the AI Center of Excellence, and the economics that make the case.
The five prompting techniques — Role-Based, Chain-of-Thought, Few-Shot, Reverse, and Sparring Partner — that separate average Copilot users from power users.
Drafting, summarization, tone adjustment, and the verification discipline — RFP responses, show operations manuals, exhibitor service kits, SOWs, and post-show reports.
Formula generation, natural-language charts, Pivot Tables, trend identification, and outlier detection — applied to labor forecasts, drayage costs, and show P&L.
From working doc to client-ready deck in minutes — organizer pitches, sponsorship proposals, design concept reviews, and post-show recaps.
Meeting intelligence, real-time summaries, and action item extraction for cross-timezone show teams, agency partners, and pre-show to on-site handoffs.
Notes that think with you — site surveys, show walkthroughs, punch lists, and install & dismantle notes turned into structured, reusable knowledge.
Where knowledge lives — and how AI makes it findable. Permission inheritance, the oversharing risk, content governance, and show document libraries done right.
Automation, anomaly detection, and scenario modeling. Building analytical systems for show economics — not just answering one-off questions.
The agentic leap. Delegate complex, multi-step, multi-app work end-to-end and get back finished artifacts — not drafts. Approvals, skills, plugins, credit economics, and the shift from doing the work to reviewing it.
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*Prepared for Global Experience Specialists · Dr. Ernesto Lee*