Overview & Introduction: Why This Moment Matters

1Overview & Introduction: Why This Moment Matters¶

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” — Alvin Toffler

There are rare moments in history when a new technology doesn’t just improve how we work — it fundamentally redefines what work means. The steam engine ended the era of manual labor as the primary source of economic power. The shipping container rewrote global logistics and made the modern trade show possible. The internet collapsed the cost of information to near zero. Artificial intelligence, and specifically the large language model revolution we are living through right now, is doing something arguably more profound: it is democratizing cognitive leverage.

For the first time in history, every professional at every level of an organization has access to something that used to be reserved for the most elite: an infinitely patient, extraordinarily well-read thinking partner available around the clock, at zero marginal cost, with expertise spanning logistics, design, contracts, finance, communication, data analysis, and virtually every other domain of human knowledge. That thinking partner is already sitting inside your Microsoft 365 account. It is called Copilot.

And as of June 16, 2026, it has a second gear. Microsoft released Copilot Cowork into general availability — a layer that doesn’t just answer your question, it does the work. More on that in a moment.

This book is your master class for understanding it, using it, and — most importantly — thinking with it.

1.1A Message from be hmn¶

This master class was built for GES by be hmn (behmn.com) — a firm founded on a single idea, which is also its tagline: be hmn, adapt faster.

We describe our work as the glue that binds AI capabilities with human adaptability. That phrase is doing more work than it might appear. The bottleneck in enterprise AI has almost never been the technology. Models improve on a schedule measured in months. Organizations absorb change on a schedule measured in years. The gap between those two curves is where transformation budgets go to die — not because the tools failed, but because the humans were handed a capability without being handed a way to adapt to it.

Closing that gap is the entire purpose of this book.

The curriculum, examples, and exercises in this book were developed by Dr. Ernesto Lee, Chief Data Officer and Co-founder of be hmn, working from GES operational context — show operations, exhibit design and graphics production, freight and material handling, exhibitor services, event technology, and the corporate functions behind all of it.

1.2Why GES? Why Now?¶

GES is not just a service contractor. It is a story of longevity, reinvention, and operational excellence that very few companies in any industry can match. What started in 1939 as a small sign and exhibit shop called Manncraft has become Global Experience Specialists — a company that now produces 4,000+ live experiences every year, serves 150,000+ exhibitors annually, operates in 75+ countries, runs 24 global warehouse and production facilities, and employs roughly 2,600+ people from its headquarters on Lindell Road in Las Vegas.

Think about the sheer operational surface area in those numbers. Every one of those 4,000 events has a floor plan, a labor forecast, a freight schedule, a set of freight targets, an advance warehouse window, a marshaling yard sequence, a move-in and a move-out. Every one of those 150,000 exhibitors has an order in the portal, a booth to install and dismantle, a service kit to decode, and a question they need answered today, not next week. Every one of those 75 countries has its own union jurisdictions or labor customs, its own customs paperwork and carnet requirements, its own venue rules.

That is not a company with an AI opportunity. That is a company where AI compounds.

And GES is doing this at a genuinely pivotal moment. On December 31, 2024, GES completed its separation from Viad Corp and became an independent company under Truelink Capital — the first time in 55 years that GES has controlled its own strategy, its own capital allocation, and its own technology roadmap. That is not a footnote. That is the whole context for this book. For five decades, the roadmap was set somewhere else. Now it is set here.

The GES Collective already reflects that ambition: GES Exhibitions as the General Service Contractor backbone, Spiro as the global experiential agency and Exhibitor Appointed Contractor, onPeak for event accommodations, SHOWTECH for power and lighting, and Visit by GES for registration, lead capture, and event technology. Five brands, one operating system, one set of values.

And GES is not theorizing about AI. In 2026, onPeak launched the AI Smart Suite — AI-powered hotel search, an AI contract reader, and automated email categorization — building on the AI-driven onPeak Compass accommodation platform. Visit by GES shipped next-generation NFC Touchpoints. GES EMEA built a data-led emissions reporting program to support the Roadmap to Net Zero. The AI work has already started. The question is how fast it spreads to the rest of the organization.

The question is not whether AI will reshape the exhibitions and experiential marketing industry. It already has. The question is whether the professionals inside GES will shape how that transformation happens, or whether they will watch from the sidelines while the opportunity passes them by.

This master class says: you will not watch. You will lead.

1.3Anchored in T.R.U.E.¶

Everything in this book sits on top of the four values GES already lives by. AI does not replace them. It tests them.

If you remember nothing else from this introduction, remember that framing. AI raises the floor. You raise the ceiling.

1.4What This Book Is¶

Think of this as a TED talk you can read. We are not going to burden you with academic jargon or lengthy technical treatises. We are going to answer the questions that actually matter to you, as an exhibitions and experiential professional:

• What exactly is AI? Not the science fiction version. The real version. And what can it actually do?

• What is Microsoft Copilot and how does it work inside your daily tools?

• What is Copilot Cowork, and when should you delegate an entire task instead of asking a question?

• How do I use it to become measurably better at my job — whether that job is on the show floor, in the warehouse, in the design studio, or at a client’s table?

• What are the rules, risks, and responsibilities that a professional like you needs to understand?

• How do I move from simply using AI to genuinely thinking with AI?

This book won’t just give you knowledge. It will give you a new relationship with thinking itself.

1.5Copilot, and Now Cowork¶

Most people meet AI as a conversation. You ask, it answers. You refine, it revises. That is Microsoft 365 Copilot, and it is genuinely useful: summarize a 60-page exhibitor service kit, draft a reply to an organizer, build a first-pass deck, explain a formula in a labor reconciliation workbook.

Copilot Cowork, generally available since June 16, 2026, is a different mode of working. Instead of a conversation, it is a delegation.

Cowork executes complex, long-running, multi-step tasks end to end across Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and SharePoint — and returns completed results, not drafts you still have to assemble. A few things make it meaningfully different from the chat experience you may already know:

• It runs in the cloud. Tasks keep running when your laptop is closed and you are walking the show floor, sitting in a marshaling yard, or on a flight to Dubai. You hand off the work, then you collect it.

• It is grounded in Work IQ. It understands your organizational context — your files, your threads, your meetings, your people — rather than working from a blank page.

• It stays inside the Microsoft 365 trust boundary. Your data stays governed by the same enterprise controls that already protect your email and your SharePoint libraries.

• It is multi-model. Cowork runs on Anthropic’s frontier models — Claude Opus 4.8 and Claude Sonnet 4.6 — alongside Microsoft’s other model options, chosen for the depth of reasoning that long-horizon, multi-tool work requires.

• It is billed by usage. Cowork consumes Copilot Credits on top of a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. That matters operationally: delegation is a resource, and like labor hours or freight weight, you should spend it where the return is highest.

Here is the practical distinction, in GES terms:

Throughout this book, when a workflow is big enough to be worth handing off rather than steering turn by turn, we will flag it. Learning when to delegate is a skill in itself — the same judgment you already apply when deciding what to keep in house and what to hand to a trusted partner on site.

1.6The Arvin Ash Principle¶

There is a science communicator on YouTube named Arvin Ash whose channel has captivated millions of people with a seemingly simple approach: take the most complex ideas in physics, mathematics, and technology, and explain them using nothing but analogies and curiosity. No unnecessary jargon. No condescension. No hand-waving. Just the real concept, explained so clearly that you can share it with someone at dinner that same night.

That is the operating principle of this book.

Every concept we cover — from Large Language Models to context windows to AI agents — will be explained the way Arvin would explain it: starting with something you already know, building a bridge to the new idea, and then revealing the implications that should genuinely surprise you. Because they should. The implications of what you are about to learn are genuinely astonishing.

And because this is GES, the bridge we build will start from things you already live with: a freight target, a floor plan revision, an aisle carpet order that changed at 11 p.m., a labor call that has to be right the first time.

1.7Who This Book Is For¶

GES is not a company of desk-bound knowledge workers, and this book does not pretend otherwise. The examples in these chapters are written for the whole organization:

• Show and event operations — floor managers, labor coordinators, venue leads. Mobile-first, deadline-driven, on site. AI that works on a phone between hall walks.

• Creative and design — exhibit designers, environmental designers, graphics production. Concept narratives, spec documents, client-facing design rationale.

• Sales and account management — exhibition sales, organizer relationships, agency accounts. RFP responses, QBRs, renewal decks, pipeline hygiene.

• Logistics and freight — advance warehouse, material handling, marshaling yard sequencing, customs and carnets, international shipping.

• Corporate functions — finance, People & Culture, legal, marketing, IT. The engine room behind 4,000 events a year.

• Technology product teams — onPeak, Visit by GES. Already building AI; here to sharpen how they use it day to day.

If you recognize your job in that list, you are the audience. If you recognize someone else’s job in that list, even better — a lot of the value in this book comes from the handoffs between those groups.

1.8How to Use This Book¶

This is a hands-on master class. Every chapter includes “Try This” exercises that take you directly into your Microsoft 365 environment and have you interact with Copilot in real time. The exercises are not optional homework. They are the actual learning. Reading about a bicycle and riding a bicycle are entirely different experiences.

You will need:

• A Microsoft 365 account with Copilot enabled (check with your IT administrator)

• Access to m365.cloud.microsoft — this is your front door to Enterprise Copilot

• Copilot Cowork access, if your license includes it, for the delegation exercises (your IT administrator can confirm whether Copilot Credits are enabled for your team)

• About 15 minutes of focused time per chapter for the exercises

No prior technical knowledge is required. If you can write an email, you can learn to use AI. If you can brief a crew on a move-in sequence, you can already write a good prompt — you just haven’t been told that’s what it is.

1.9A Note on Voice¶

This book will speak to you directly. We will use “you” throughout because this transformation is personal. What AI does for your career, your productivity, and your value inside GES is determined by what you choose to do with it. The tools are neutral. The results are up to you.

One more thing before we begin. There is a quiet revolution happening in how people interact with AI that we want to put in front of you early. Tools like Wispr Flow and Super Whisper allow you to speak to your computer — to your AI — the same way you would speak to a colleague. Instead of typing out your prompts, you simply talk. Your words are transcribed and sent to Copilot in real time. People who adopt voice-first AI interaction report that their outputs are dramatically better: more natural, more nuanced, more complete. The reason is simple — we speak far faster than we type, and we explain things more naturally in speech than in writing.

For a workforce that spends a lot of its life standing on a show floor with a radio in one hand and a floor plan in the other, that is not a novelty. That is the difference between capturing a punch list while you’re walking it and trying to remember it three hours later.

Before this program is over, we want you to try it. You may never go back.

1.10What’s Ahead¶

In Chapter 1: The Essentials, we build your complete conceptual foundation. You will understand what a Large Language Model actually is, how tokens work, what context engineering means and why it is the most valuable skill in the AI era, how to set your AI’s persona, how to communicate with AI like an expert (meta-prompting), how your data is already connected to Copilot, and what an AI agent is and how to build your first one.

From there, the book moves through the mindset shift, change management, and adoption — the human side of this, which is the part that actually determines whether a technology sticks — and then into hands-on work in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, OneNote, and SharePoint, using show operations manuals, labor forecasts, post-show recaps, cross-timezone show teams, site survey notes, and venue knowledge bases as the material.

By the time you finish Chapter 1, you will not just know about AI. You will have used it in ways that are directly relevant to your work at GES. You will have seen it respond to your email, your calendar, your show data. You will have built something.

Let’s get started. The hall is open. The floor is waiting.