AI Agents for Productivity – Membership Clubs Course

I’m running an AI Agents for Productivity course in Sydney in June: it’s for membership clubs (and hospitality) but anyone can join. Create an AI Agent for Productivity keeping in mind:

Course Outline of AI Agents for Productivity – Sydney June 2026

The “AI Agents for Productivity” course is a practical one-day workshop designed for membership clubs, hospitality venues, and RSL environments that want to understand what AI agents actually are – beyond the buzzwords. The session focuses on how emerging AI systems can assist with operational productivity, workflows, communication, and day-to-day business support, while still keeping humans firmly responsible for judgement, escalation, and oversight.

Rather than diving into heavy coding or technical complexity, the course explores the thinking behind AI agents: how they use context, follow instructions, connect to business systems, and operate within boundaries. Participants will be introduced to the difference between simple chatbots and action-oriented AI workflows that can interact with tools, systems, and operational processes.

The workshop also introduces important real-world considerations including governance, escalation paths, risk management, and “human in the loop” accountability. For clubs and hospitality organisations, this means understanding not just what AI can automate, but where people still need to step in – especially around members, compliance, reputation, and operational decision-making.

Attendees will see examples of how AI agents may connect with systems such as rostering, CRM platforms, email, calendars, documentation, and operational workflows, while discussing where these tools are genuinely useful versus where caution is required. The course is designed to help organisations explore the opportunities thoughtfully, without overpromising or jumping blindly into automation.

This is an introductory course aimed at managers, operational staff, innovation teams, and business leaders who want an informed, grounded understanding of where AI agents are heading and what they may mean for clubs and hospitality over the next few years. Attendees do not need a technical background – just curiosity about how work itself is beginning to change.

Laurel Papworth is teaching a course on AI Agents for Productivity for Membership Clubs

Transcript of Invitation to AI Agents for Productivity course (Sydney)

Hello, my name is Laurel Papworth, and in June I’m running a 1-day course on how to build AI agents for productivity. You’ll actually be building some agents. It’s a little bit more technical than I usually prefer to teach to businesses like membership clubs and hospitality, but we’ll hold each other’s hand and walk timidly into the future together. It’s not super technical, but there are a couple of things we need to get our heads around. [00:00:33.18]

Uh, what, what’s going to be covered in the course? It’s not just the physical setting up of the agents, but we’re going to look at CONTEXT. So context is all the past history that you need to give the agents so it can make the right decisions moving forward. And it could be your loyalty tiers, membership patterns, events and event history, rostering patterns. So anything that’s like pattern making, history making gets popped into the agent. That’s number 1, it’s context. [00:01:06.25]

Then number 2 is DECISION RULES. How should it behave? Because it has real-world implications, agents work in the real world. They’re not just chatbots. We need to make sure that it’s on its best behaviour. So we look at instructions, workflows, and boundaries. If a VIP member complains. Escalate it through this route. If there’s questionable behaviours, gambling behaviours happening, how to escalate that. And a lot of it’s around where should the human in the loop be with an agent so that you don’t end up in a crisis comms position around brand reputation or regulatory or something like that. We need to put all those boundaries in place. [00:01:49.10]

Number 3 is HUMAN OVERSIGHT, obviously. So how do you put in decision hierarchies? That’s the AI term for something like escalation charts or escalation rules. So where does the human step in? It’s an accountability layer. If confidence is low, if risk is high, if money’s involved, then the agent has to go and call a grownup, I guess. We’ll be covering that as well. [00:02:20.19]

Number 4 is tools and connexions, which is the part a lot of people are interested in. This is the CLAW aspect. How to do systems integration, how to make your agent have access to the CRM, leads generation, a document management system that has all the regulations in it. Do you want your agent to have access to point of sale or your credit card? How about scheduling and rosters and email and calendars? And there could be quite a lot involved at an operations level. So we need to think through those things. So we’ll be looking at that in point 4, which is the tools and connexions layer. [00:03:03.11]

And lastly, ACTIONS and OUTCOMES, which I’m gonna add on AUDITS because you need to set up the guardrails beforehand and then cheque that it’s working afterwards. But actions and outcomes. Agents have a real-world implication. This isn’t just chatting about what you should do. This is actually, it says, let me, let me, and runs off and does it for you. So we need to talk through those actions and outcomes. What’s realistic? What’s not. And when you’re setting up your agent, you’ll get a very quick sense of how it thinks or doesn’t think. The fact that it doesn’t prioritise, you know, something like save the company money or don’t spend money versus we like blue in our logos. Like it doesn’t have a priority system unless you give it to it. [00:03:50.16]

There’s a whole range of things like that that we’ll go through. I think the course is a good one-day introduction. It’s a little early in the sense that while developers and geeks are playing with OpenClaw and a whole lot of integrations with agents, I think businesses are rightfully exploring. So yes, you’ll be setting up some agents. No, I’m not going to ask for access or it’s not going to ask for access to anything that’s too business critical. But I think it’s a really good time for you to, even if you’re just setting up a weather agent, if it’s raining, then do this. That would be fun. I don’t know. We’ll see. [00:04:30.02]

Anyway, I’ll see you in June for the AI Agents for Productivity course, one-day course for membership clubs and hospitality. And I’ll put the link wherever it’s, it’s necessary and shout out to The Drop for sponsoring the course. Thank you.

TICKETS to AI Agents for Productivity in Sydney CBD June 2026

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