Owner prep art for FIU AI 305 on Oct. 2, 2026, at the Graham Center, with workshop, economy panel and ticket cards.
Events & Deadlines

FIU Business AI 305 Conference 2026: Owner Prep Map

FIU Business’s AI 305 Conference was set for Friday, Oct. 2, 2026, at the Graham Center. Owner-prep notes from that week: the ticket range as published Sept. 14, the schedule, and the rooms for South Florida operators.

By Brian D'Antoni 12 min read

Updated Oct. 4, 2026

As of Sunday, Oct. 4, the map below is kept as a record. The FIU Calendar lists FIU Business’s AI 305 Conference under Past Events (Friday, Oct. 2, 2026, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. ET), and the Eventbrite page shows “Event ended” and “Sales ended.” It does not report what happened at the conference. Next steps for owners are listed near the end.

Friday, October 2, 2026 was FIU Business’s AI 305 Conference at the Graham Center on the Modesto A. Maidique Campus: a full day of panels, hands-on workshops, vendor engagement, and a late Sip and Sync reception, aimed at people who run organizations, not people who collect badge selfies. It was not a Miami tech party you “swing by” if the calendar was empty.

What follows is an owner-prep map written on Sept. 14 for Broward and Palm Beach operators who planned to drive south for one focused day. It is not a conference recap. It does not invent a single ticket price beyond what Eventbrite’s public offer showed. It told you which rooms earned a seat for a shop that already has payroll, customers, and a messy tool stack, and which rooms you could skip without FOMO.

Primary sources (checked Sept. 14, 2026): the official FIU Business AI 305 page, the FIU Calendar listing, and the Eventbrite registration, which listed on_sale / InStock that day. ai305.fiu.edu redirected to the FIU Business page. On Oct. 4 the FIU Calendar lists the event as a Past Event and Eventbrite shows “Event ended.”

Why Broward and Palm Beach owners should care about a Miami Graham Center day

South Florida’s AI literacy map is already stacking for small operators: free public rungs in Broward (Library labs, SCORE webinars, CareerSource paths), chamber breakfasts in Delray, incubator apply maps in Boca and Fort Lauderdale. Those are the weekly habit rooms: literacy, accountability questions, and “where does this earn a place in my shop?”

AI 305 sits above that ladder for one day. The published program mixes big-room panels (economy, infrastructure, healthcare, hospitality, responsible systems) with hands-on workshops that name tools owners actually hear about on Slack, Claude automation, Meta AI for business, plus a Florida SBDC at FIU footprint on the private Meta luncheon. If your Broward or Palm Beach shop already did the free literacy hours and still needs a denser peer room, a scholarship-supporting day at FIU, and a chance to hear Memorial Healthcare System’s CMIO on the same campus as Meta and Visa speakers, this is the escalation day, not a replacement for the free ladder.

If you have never sat through a basic AI literacy session, do that first. A Graham Center badge will not fix a shop that has no written rule about pasting customer data into a consumer chatbot. Use the Broward Library and SCORE ladder map as the free baseline; Oct. 2 was positioned as the paid intensifier for owners who already knew which process they would test.

What AI 305 is, and what it is not

FIU Business frames the day around profit, performance, and societal impact. The public copy promises connection with tech leaders, industry experts, and FIU AI faculty, while supporting student scholarships. Theme tracks published on the page include AI in business and South Florida’s economy, healthcare, hospitality and entertainment, the future of work, cybersecurity, and unlocking ROI.

Clock (as published):

  • Date: Friday, October 2, 2026
  • Registration / breakfast / vendors: 8:00 to 9:00 a.m., Graham Center Main Lobby
  • Program block: roughly 9:00 a.m. through late afternoon panels and workshops
  • Sip and Sync networking reception: 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., Graham Center Main Ballroom and Faculty Club (hosted by the FIU ATOM Think Tank)
  • Eventbrite window (Sept. 14): start 9:00 a.m., end 7:30 p.m. Eastern

Venue as published: Graham Center / Graham University Center, FIU MMC. The business page lists 10955 SW 15th Terrace, Miami, FL 33199; the calendar card uses the campus address at 11200 SW 8th Street. Owners were told to put the Graham Center in their maps app the morning they left Broward or Palm Beach and to follow day-of FIU signage for parking and ballroom entry; the Gazette had no lot number to publish.

What this day is not: a free SBDC consulting engagement, a guaranteed buyer matchmaker, an invite-only executive retreat for the whole building, or a “we’ll automate your company by Monday” clinic. The Conversations with Meta AI Private Luncheon is explicitly by invitation only and sponsored by Florida SBDC at FIU: see that section below. Public registration is through Eventbrite for the conference ticket, not through a private portal.

Ticket and registration path as published Sept. 14

Registration path that worked on the Sept. 14 pull (registration is now closed):

  1. Open business.fiu.edu/biz/ai305/ or follow the redirect from ai305.fiu.edu.
  2. Use the navbar Register control that points to Eventbrite: AI 305 Conference tickets.
  3. Complete checkout on Eventbrite. Screenshot the confirmation. A calendar hold is not a ticket.

Sales status (Eventbrite, Sept. 14, 2026 pull): event status: live; salesStatus: on_sale; schema.org AggregateOffer with availability: InStock; sales window from July 31, 2026 through October 1, 2026. As of Oct. 4, 2026, the Eventbrite page shows “Event ended” and “Sales ended.”

Public price path (do not invent tiers): Eventbrite’s public AggregateOffer lists lowPrice $136.12 and highPrice $524.74 USD. Those figures were the published offer range on the Eventbrite ticket page on Sept. 14. This Gazette will not invent a “general admission” dollar, a student rate, an early-bird delta, or a group total that is not printed as a named tier on a page we can quote. Confirm the exact line item and fees at checkout before you budget.

Caveats owners should treat as real:

  • The FIU Business page still shows an “EARLY BIRD DISCOUNT: Register by February 15” banner when we checked on Sept. 14. For an October 2, 2026 event, that February date is stale or mismatched copy. Do not plan a budget around a February discount the Eventbrite offer does not separately show. Trust checkout, not the banner.
  • At least one on-page Register button uses a dead href="#" while the menu Register correctly opens Eventbrite. Use the Eventbrite URL above if a button goes nowhere.
  • The FIU Calendar card for 2026 does not reprint a single dollar cost the way the 2025 calendar card printed $149. Do not recycle 2025 pricing as 2026 fact.
  • Contact for organizers (questions only, not a substitute for Eventbrite): atom@fiu.edu · 305-348-2830.

Registration for the 2026 conference is closed. For questions about a future AI 305 date, the organizer contact FIU published is atom@fiu.edu or 305-348-2830. Check the FIU Business AI 305 page for announcements; no future date is stated here.

Who should buy a seat, and who should stay on the free ladder

Strong fits:

  • Broward or Palm Beach owners / operators with a real payroll who already tried free literacy hours and need denser peer signal in one day.
  • Shops weighing workflow automation (intake, quoting, follow-up, in-house knowledge) and ready to sit in a named Claude workshop with a notebook of their processes.
  • Operators who want Meta’s business-facing AI conversation in a workshop room, not a consumer tip thread.
  • Healthcare-adjacent practices and vendors who need to hear how a major Broward system’s CMIO frames agentic tools: Memorial Healthcare System is on the published speaker slate.
  • Owners who want the South Florida economy panel for policy and community context, then the SBDC relationship for what happens after the conference.

Skip or send a deputy:

  • Solo operators who still need a free first literacy night: start with the public ladder, not a multi-hundred-dollar range ticket.
  • Teams hunting only capital intros or incubator admit: use FAU Runway / Levan apply maps; AI 305 is not those programs.
  • Anyone expecting the Meta private luncheon as part of a public ticket: it is invitation-only.

If you go, go as a decision-maker or send the person who owns the process you might change. Sending an intern to “collect AI notes” wastes the badge.

Owner schedule: three rooms that earn the drive

The published agenda has hard conflicts. You cannot be in the main ballroom and Graham Center 140 at the same minute. Build your day around one morning choice, one afternoon workshop, and one late panel or fireside, then protect Sip and Sync for people, not slides.

1) Automate Your Business With Claude (hands-on), or the economy panel

When: 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
Workshop: Hands-On Workshop, Automate Your Business With Claude, Powered by CloudHesive, Graham Center 140
Conflict: Same hour as Panel 3, Powering South Florida’s Economy: How AI Is Transforming Business, Government, and Communities (Main Ballroom; sponsored by the Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy) and a separate ground-robotics workshop in the Game Room.

Owner rule: If your shop’s bottleneck is repetitive text-and-tool work (proposals, SOPs, inbox triage, knowledge base drafts), take Claude in 140 with three of your real workflows written down. If your bottleneck is understanding how agencies, big employers, and community systems are framing AI in the region, take Panel 3 and catch tool practice another week on the free ladder. Do not try to “half-hear” both from the hallway.

Walk into the Claude room with: (a) one process you would automate this quarter, (b) one process you would not automate this year, (c) a one-line data rule (what may never leave the building). Leave with a test plan, not a logo sticker.

2) Powering South Florida’s Economy panel: when context beats a tool demo

Same 11:30 to 12:30 window, Main Ballroom. Published framing: how AI is transforming business, government, and communities. For Broward and Palm Beach owners who sell into Miami-Dade, bid public work, or sit downstream of county and city tech decisions, this is the context hour. Pair it with afternoon Meta workshop time if you still need hands-on.

Listen for: who owns data in public and private pilots, where small vendors actually get invited, and what “ROI” means when the speaker is a government or hospital system versus a 12-person shop. Translate every applause line into a Monday task for your company.

3) Meta AI for Business Workshop: afternoon hands-on

When: 4:00 to 4:55 p.m.
Where: Graham Center 243
Conflict: Same hour as hospitality/entertainment panel (140) and critical-industries ROI panel (150).

Owner rule: If Meta apps, WhatsApp business threads, ads, or on-platform customer contact already touch your revenue, take 243. Bring one customer-facing workflow and one in-house workflow. Ask, out loud if the format allows, what stays on-platform, what trains whose model, and what a small shop can turn off. This Gazette names Meta as a published workshop host/sponsor presence on the page; it does not endorse a product.

Earlier the same afternoon (3:00 to 3:55), owners in regulated or care-adjacent work should weigh Panel 5B, From Passive Scribes to Agentic Partners: Transforming Healthcare for the Future (Graham Center 243) against the responsible-systems panel in 140. You cannot do both; pick the risk profile that matches your shop.

Memorial Healthcare System on the slate: why Broward ears should perk up

The published speaker list includes Jennifer Goldman, VP and Chief Medical Information Officer, Memorial Healthcare System: a Broward-rooted system name on a Miami campus stage. For owners in medical practices, health vendors, benefits, facilities, and care-adjacent services, that ID matters more than another generic “AI in healthcare” headline.

Use her sessions and any healthcare panel time to listen for: human-in-the-loop expectations, documentation risk, and how a large system defines “agentic” without handing the badge to a vendor. Do not treat a conference appearance as a Memorial endorsement of any tool you buy the next week. Take notes you can show your compliance person.

Other published names on the page (factual IDs, not endorsements) include keynote Fred Voccola (Simpro Group / Kaseya; FIU Trustee), Visa’s Maribel R. Diz, Coral Gables innovation lead Raimundo Rodulfo, and Meta’s Kara Sutton Riney among a longer roster. That is the roster as published Sept. 14; FIU may have added or moved people after that date.

Florida SBDC at FIU angle and the private Meta luncheon

Per the schedule: Conversations with Meta AI Private Luncheon, 1:00 to 2:00 p.m., Graham Center 316, marked By invitation only | Sponsored by Florida SBDC at FIU. The sponsors section also labels Florida SBDC at FIU as the Conversation with Meta Private Lunch Sponsor.

Owner rule: A public Eventbrite ticket does not, on the published page, equal a luncheon invite. Do not plan your afternoon around GC 316 unless you have a written invitation. For SBDC relationship value, the idea was to meet Florida SBDC at FIU people in public spaces at the conference, then follow up on client registration and longer consulting paths after Oct. 2, including the separate AI Student Teams / capstone consulting track for eligible firms (that program has its own eligibility floors; it is not the conference ticket). Our FAU and FIU SBDC guide explains how to request a no-cost advisor at the center.

Same lunch window also runs Panel 4: Powering What’s Next: AI, Infrastructure and Business in the Main Ballroom and general lunch/vendor engagement. Most SMB owners should eat, walk vendors with a short question list, and skip mourning the invite-only room.

How to build an owner day (sample paths)

Path A: Automation operator (recommended default for 5 to 50 shops):
Breakfast/vendors → opening remarks → one early big-tech or robotics panel if useful → Claude workshop 11:30 → lunch/vendors with three written asks → skip invite-only luncheon → keynote → healthcare or responsible AI at 3:00 based on your risk → Meta AI workshop 4:00 → optional short fireside → Sip and Sync.

Path B: Policy / market-context owner:
Breakfast → opening → Panel 3 Powering South Florida’s Economy at 11:30 → lunch/vendors → keynote → responsible AI or healthcare → hospitality or critical industries → Sip and Sync. Schedule a separate hands-on week on the free ladder.

Path C: Care-adjacent Broward shop:
Breakfast → light morning panel → Claude or economy panel (pick one) → lunch → keynote → healthcare panel 3:00 → Meta workshop or critical industries → Sip and Sync. Bring your compliance questions on paper.

Whichever path you pick, block drive time from Broward or Palm Beach, parking buffer, and a hard stop if you have Friday close-of-business duties. The reception runs to 7:30 p.m., only stay if you have two named people to meet.

Prep kit: what to bring on paper or phone

  1. One-page tool inventory: every AI or “smart” app staff already use, including free consumer apps on personal phones.
  2. Two workflows: one you would test this quarter; one you will not automate this year, with a sentence why.
  3. Data rule draft: what customer or employee data may never be pasted into an external model.
  4. Three vendor questions: ownership of prompts/outputs, export if the login dies, human review before customer-facing use.
  5. Budget note: Eventbrite line item you actually paid (range on Sept. 14: $136.12 to $524.74), plus parking/food/drive cost, so Monday’s ROI conversation is honest.
  6. Follow-up list: SBDC contact ask; one FIU ATOM / faculty question; one peer owner to meet at Sip and Sync.

Where this sits on the South Florida owner stack

Oct. 2 was positioned as the paid intensifier above the free and low-friction rungs mapped in the Gazette. Those rungs remain the places to keep going:

Those guides are linked here for reference and are not rewritten here.

Next steps for owners who missed Oct. 2 or want a lower-cost rung:

After Oct. 2: what “done” looks like on Monday

A useful AI 305 day ends with four artifacts, not a tote bag:

  1. A written pilot (process, owner name, 30-day metric, kill criteria).
  2. An updated data rule your managers can enforce.
  3. One SBDC or FIU follow-up email drafted before you leave the Turnpike.
  4. A clear sentence on whether you need another literacy hour, another workshop, or a semester-length consulting engagement, and which.

If you cannot write those four lines in the car, the badge was tourism.

Registration checklist as published Sept. 14

  • Eventbrite: on Sept. 14 it showed on_sale / InStock; on Oct. 4 it shows “Event ended”
  • Read the exact ticket name and total at checkout (public offer range on Sept. 14: $136.12 to $524.74 USD)
  • Ignore stale “February 15 early bird” banner unless checkout shows a matching discount
  • Screenshot confirmation PDF
  • Map Graham Center; leave Broward/PBC with parking buffer
  • Circle one 11:30 room and one 4:00 room, no hallway double-booking
  • Do not assume Meta private luncheon access without a written invite
  • Pack the prep kit above
  • Optional: atom@fiu.edu / 305-348-2830 for organizer questions

Pages move. This map reports what the FIU Business site, FIU Calendar, and Eventbrite showed on a Sept. 14, 2026 pull, with the Oct. 4 status noted above. For anything after Oct. 2, check the FIU Business AI 305 page directly.

Related hub: AI Events for South Florida Owners, Fall 2026

Key Facts for Owners and Search

Is FIU Business AI 305 over, and has a 2027 date been set?

Yes, it is over, and no 2027 date is posted. FIU Business held AI 305 on Friday, Oct. 2, 2026, at the Graham Center Ballrooms, 10955 SW 15th Terrace, Miami. As checked Oct. 9, the FIU Calendar lists it under “Past Events” (9 a.m. to 7 p.m.), and Eventbrite reads “Event ended” and “Sales ended.”

Who opened the conference, and who was on the speaker list?

FIU’s posted schedule lists conference co-chairs Karlene Cousins and Carrie Sanchez of FIU Business for the 9 a.m. opening remarks, then welcome remarks from FIU Business Dean William Hardin and FIU CIO Robert Grillo. The speaker list names Fred Voccola, Anthony Abrahao, Maribel R. Diz, Jennifer Goldman, Tony Montes de Oca, David Rawaf and Raimundo Rodulfo.

Which topics did the published program cover?

Panel topics on FIU’s page include AI robotics, “Powering South Florida’s Economy,” big tech lessons, AI infrastructure, responsible AI systems, healthcare and hospitality. The page also lists three fireside chats: “AI and the Law: Navigating Risk, Regulation, and Responsibility,” “The Human Edge: Rethinking Work and Careers in the Age of AI” and “From Student to AI-Ready Professional.”

What did attending cost, and which offers have expired?

Eventbrite’s public offer on Sept. 14 ranged from $136.12 to $524.74, and sales have ended. FIU’s page also listed hotel group rates at Aloft Miami Doral ($159 a night) and Element Miami Doral ($169), with a last booking day of Sept. 1, 2026. A stale “Register by February 15” early bird banner still appears on the page.

Where can owners turn now that the day has passed?

For questions about a future AI 305, FIU lists its ATOM Think Tank at atom@fiu.edu and 305.348.2830, and its page points to event recaps on FIU Business’s YouTube channel. For lower cost next steps, the Broward Library and SCORE AI literacy ladder is free, and the Florida SBDC at FIU offers advising at no cost to eligible businesses.

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