The Small Room
(written April 11, 2026)
Today, I sat through an AI webinar titled AI Leadership. Tomorrow, I head into one of the largest technology and education convenings of the year.
Both are about AI. Both are full of people who care about the future. And yet I find myself thinking less about what gets said on the big stages and more about what tends to happen in the small rooms. Not because the stages don’t matter. They do. But because something else happens when the audience shrinks.
The webinar today followed a familiar pattern. The problem they named was real: AI adoption fails not because of technology, but because of human resistance. Fear. Identity threat. Cultural inertia. I found myself nodding, because that’s true, and it matters.
Then came the pivot. The solution was a credentialing package. A certification pathway. A way to monetize the very anxiety they’d spent forty minutes carefully describing.
I don’t say this to dismiss the people presenting. They know their material. But I’ve attended enough of these to notice the difference between something designed to inform and something designed to sell. I’ve also attended others, including one early on, that were genuinely useful and left me with real tools and frameworks worth considering.
Tomorrow will be different. The convenings I value most are the ones that bring serious people into the same room, and this provides that opportunity, both in and outside of the event. The energy on the big stage can be generative. The ideas circulating in hallways and breakout sessions often are.
What I’m looking forward to most are the small group conversations. The ones where someone leans in and says the thing they wouldn’t say from a microphone.
The question most people are actually carrying
Because here’s what I’ve noticed, in hallways, in coaching sessions, in the quiet aside after a meeting: the AI question most people are actually carrying isn’t about tools or strategy or ROI.
It’s something closer to: Am I going to be okay?
A faculty member wondering quietly whether her expertise still matters. A small business owner who has started exploring what AI could do for her business but is struggling with where to find the time and how to think about weaving it in more intentionally. A job seeker asking, genuinely, whether there’s any point in applying for certain roles anymore.
None of them need a certification. None of them need a framework for becoming an AI consultant.
They need space to ask the question without embarrassment. They need someone to take it seriously without trying to sell them something in the same breath.
What I’ve seen, over and over, is that people begin to shift simply by having that space. Not just from a course or credential, but from a conversation where the question was treated as legitimate and the uncertainty was allowed to breathe.
What I want to say to anyone feeling behind
So, if you’re heading into a convening this week, or sitting through a webinar, or scrolling past another breathless LinkedIn post about the future of AI, and you feel something between overwhelmed and left behind:
Feeling overwhelmed in this moment doesn’t mean you’re falling behind. It might mean you’re paying closer attention than most. That discomfort is a sign you’re taking this seriously, not that you’ve missed something.
You don’t have to master every tool. You don’t have to become an AI consultant or build a new income stream from your confusion. You don’t have to arrive at the answer before you’ve had a chance to sit with the question.
Curiosity is still the most underrated form of AI literacy.
And the most important conversations about AI aren’t always happening on the biggest stages.
Sometimes they’re happening in the small rooms, and in the honest moments when someone finally says what they’ve actually been thinking.
What’s the AI question you’ve been sitting with but haven’t quite found the right place to ask? I’d genuinely like to hear it.
Onward —
Dr. Michelle Fischthal · Fischthal Coaching & Consulting · Curiosity · Clarity · Action.
*This newsletter was created with the support of AI for clarity and structure