On Clematis Street in downtown West Palm Beach, the Mandel Public Library does what a serious public building should do when the workweek gets noisier than the tools owners actually own: it puts skill on the calendar. This fall the library’s Career and Technology Programs office was stacking three same-building sessions owners can treat as one ladder (bookkeeping daylight, a weeknight AI tools lab, then a Thursday-morning Intro to AI in Small Business intensive) instead of three disconnected “maybe later” links.
The Oct. 22 workshop was scheduled for Thu., Oct. 22, 2026, and the guide below ran before it. What’s next for owners: the Claude SMB Workshop in Coconut Grove on Nov. 10, for owners of 5 to 50 person South Florida firms.
Updated Sept. 28, 2026:
The Mandel Public Library listed Intro to AI in Small Business as 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, October 22, 2026, not the 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. window it showed when this story first ran on Sept. 21. The session was still scheduled for the Clematis Room, then listed on the 3rd floor, and lunch was still listed as provided, though the description still called it a “full-day intensive.” Registration, which was set to open Sept. 22, was open on the library’s event page at that update: the registration form listed open seats on Monday morning, Sept. 28, with one attendee per registration.
The listing did not state a price. The library’s Career and Technology Programs office at (561) 868-7760 was the number for cost and end-time questions. For owners weighing Oct. 22 between this workshop and Quantum Beach 2026 at the Palm Beach County Convention Center, our guide to choosing between the two laid out who each one was for.
The centerpiece was Thursday, October 22, 2026, 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern, in the Clematis Room (3rd floor) at 411 Clematis Street, West Palm Beach, FL 33401. According to the live WhoFi event page, Melanie Roger of Zeus Financial & Consulting Services was scheduled to present what the listing called a “full-day intensive,” framed for small-business owners who want to understand how to scale with and without artificial intelligence. Registration was required. Lunch was listed as provided. The listing’s category was Adult Job Help; the audience line was Adults; the format was in person.
When this story first ran on Monday, September 21, 2026, the news was the registration clock on that same page: registration was set to open Tuesday, September 22, 2026, at 9:30 a.m. By the Sept. 28 update, registration was open on the event page. This story is the Palm Beach / SoFla companion to the already-live Broward Library/SCORE AI literacy ladder: different county, different building, same owner problem (public AI literacy that is calendar-real, not vendor theater).
Why registering early mattered more than October’s brochure
October 22 was roughly four weeks out when this story first ran, and it was 24 days away at the Sept. 28 update. That was enough runway for an owner to clear a Thursday morning, rearrange coverage, and decide whether the October 22 session is the right rung, or whether the earlier ladder steps on October 15 and October 19 should come first. It is not enough runway if you put registration off and then discover the seats went while you were on a job site.
The Intro to AI listing is explicit: registration is required. It was set to open Tuesday, September 22, 2026, 9:30 a.m., and the Register form is now live, with a seat counter and a limit of one attendee per registration. Open the Intro to AI in Small Business event page, complete the fields WhoFi asks for, and screenshot the confirmation. A calendar hold on your phone is not a registration.
Career and Technology Programs organizes the listing. The published phone is (561) 868-7760. Use it for questions the page does not answer, including cost language if you need a spoken confirmation, capacity questions after the open, accessibility, or whether a library card is expected. This Gazette will not invent a fee table, a remaining-seat count, or a walk-up promise the WhoFi page does not print.
The same-building ladder: three Mandel dates, one Clematis address
Treat the next three weeks as one Career and Technology path at Mandel, not three separate articles fighting for attention. All three land at the Mandel Public Library of West Palm Beach, 411 Clematis Street, under the same organizer line, Career and Technology Programs at (561) 868-7760, and all three appear on the library’s upcoming WhoFi calendar in the September 21 to November 30 window checked for this story.
Rung one: Small Business Accounting Basics. Thursday, October 15, 2026, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Eastern, Clematis Room, Adult Job Help, Adults, in person. Event page: event 344192. Registration was open before the event; the page showed 11 seats available on September 28, with a maximum of 1 attendee per registration. The listing carried its own description: Zar Roger of Zeus Financial & Consulting Services was scheduled to present a full-day intensive workshop to help small business owners “energize, analyze, and strategize their business ideas, marketing, and financial plans.” Lunch is provided. Call (561) 868-7760 if you need more detail on the curriculum.
Rung two: AI in Action: Tools That Work for You, Version 2.0. Monday, October 19, 2026, 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern, Computer Lab, Adult Computers & Technology, Adults, in person. Event page: event 341884. The WhoFi copy frames the evening as learning about different AI programs and how to make them work for you. Intermediate computer skills and registration are required. The description also states that registration begins two weeks before the event; when this story first ran on September 21, the Register form was already open and showed 12 seats available, maximum of 1 attendee per registration. This is the weeknight tools rung: shorter than the Thursday intensives, lab-based, with the library’s own intermediate-computer-skills requirement.
Rung three: Intro to AI in Small Business (centerpiece). Thursday, October 22, 2026, 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern, Clematis Room (3rd floor), Adult Job Help, Adults, in person. Event page: event 344194. Described on the listing as a “full-day intensive.” Melanie Roger, Zeus Financial & Consulting Services. Scale with and without AI, as published. Lunch provided. Registration required. Registration, set to open Tuesday, September 22, 2026, 9:30 a.m. Eastern, is now open.
Same address. Same organizer phone. Different rooms for the weeknight lab versus the Clematis Room Thursdays. Different clocks. One owner decision tree: do you need the October 15 full day, the October 19 lab, the October 22 intensive, or a stack of two or three if your calendar and the live seat counters allow it.
What the October 22 intensive is, and is not, on the published page
Melanie Roger is credited on the Intro listing as presenting from Zeus Financial & Consulting Services. The page’s own sentence is the safest owner brief: a full-day intensive workshop to help small business owners understand how to scale their businesses both with and without artificial intelligence. That “with and without” clause matters. It is not a promise that every process must be automated by Friday. It is literacy about judgment: where AI compresses work, and where human systems still carry the business.
Lunch is provided. Registration is required. The session is in person in the Clematis Room. Eastern Time is printed on the page. Those facts are printed on the listing. What the page does not publish, and what this story therefore will not invent, includes a minute-by-minute agenda, a vendor tool list, a guaranteed ROI, and an explicit “Free” / price line on the event description. If cost confirmation matters to your P&L before you clear the morning, call Career and Technology Programs at (561) 868-7760 and ask in one sentence. Do not treat a blank fee line as a published fee table.
For owners who already sat through Broward’s library/SCORE fork, the Mandel intensive is the Palm Beach daylight version of the same literacy problem: stop collecting tip screenshots and put a real Thursday on the calendar inside a public building that already exists on Clematis. For owners who have never touched a library career program, the advice was to start with this workshop, not with a shopping list of chatbot brands.
Who should claim a seat, and who should send a deputy
Strong fits: West Palm Beach and Palm Beach County small-business owners, solo operators, franchisees running a local P&L, creators who sell as a business rather than as a hobby, and managers who can clear a Thursday without collapsing coverage. Owners who know AI is already in their customers’ hands but have not built a shop-level rule for what gets automated, what gets reviewed, and what never leaves a staffer’s hands. Teams that want the October 19 Computer Lab tools night as a warm-up and the October 22 intensive as the decision day. Accounting-curious operators who can use October 15 as the financial-hygiene rung before the AI week.
Send a deputy or skip: Anyone expecting a vendor demo day that ends in a software contract. Anyone who needs a private consulting engagement disguised as a library workshop. Founders hunting incubator admit or capital intros: use other Gazette apply maps for those programs; Mandel’s Career and Technology listings are skill and job-help programming, not pitch night. Operators who cannot attend in person at 411 Clematis Street should not burn a registration if the page’s mode stays Offline / in person.
Prep before you walk in (paper or phone): legal business name and the DBA customers actually use; three workflows that eat hours every week; one line for data you will not paste into a consumer AI tool; questions for Melanie Roger’s “with and without” frame (where would AI help Monday, and where would it create risk); and, for the October 19 lab, honest confirmation that your intermediate computer skills match the listing’s requirement.
How this stacks with Broward and other SoFla AI programs
Mandel’s Clematis ladder is Palm Beach’s public-building path. Broward already has a reported Gazette map for the Library/SCORE AI literacy ladder. Those are companion programs, not substitutes. A Fort Lauderdale lab night does not register you for West Palm. A West Palm intensive does not replace a Broward SCORE recording policy.
If you are stacking October across counties, keep the products separate: FIU Business AI 305 owner-prep for the denser Miami-day product, and Delray Chamber Chasing AI Session 1 (Oct. 16) for the Palm Beach Chamber conversation rung. Honest stack for this season: Broward Library/SCORE = questions and fork literacy. FIU AI 305 = one dense campus day. Delray Chamber = membership-room conversation. Mandel Clematis = West Palm Career and Technology ladder with a Thursday-morning Oct. 22 centerpiece. Pick the program that matches the job this month. Do not paste one program’s promises onto another’s registration form.
Owner act path, as published before the sessions
- Bookmark the three WhoFi event pages: Accounting Basics (Oct. 15), AI in Action v2.0 (Oct. 19), Intro to AI in Small Business (Oct. 22).
- Decide your stack: Oct. 15 only, Oct. 19 only, Oct. 22 only, or two/three if your calendar and the live seat lines allow.
- Registration for the Oct. 15 and Oct. 19 sessions was already open when this story first ran.
- Registration for Intro to AI ran on event 344194. The form was open on Monday, September 28, with one attendee per registration.
- Call (561) 868-7760 for anything the page leaves blank: cost confirmation, card requirements, accessibility, or curriculum clarity on Accounting Basics.
- WhoFi pages move, so check the library calendar before any future session.
At the Sept. 28 update, October 22 was 24 days away. The scarce resource then was not motivation. It was the seat counter on the library’s own page.
Sources for this story (checked Sept. 21 and Sept. 28, 2026 ET): Intro to AI in Small Business; Small Business Accounting Basics; AI in Action: Tools That Work for You, Version 2.0; Mandel upcoming calendar; organizer phone Career and Technology Programs (561) 868-7760. Companion Gazette story: Broward Library/SCORE AI literacy ladder. Pages move. Verify before you clear a Thursday.
Key Facts for Owners and Search
Was registration open for Intro to AI in Small Business?
Yes, before the Oct. 22 session. Registration was set to open Tuesday, September 22, 2026, at 9:30 a.m. Eastern, and the WhoFi page for event 344194 listed the form as open on Monday, September 28, with one attendee per registration.
What time was the October 22 workshop?
It was listed for 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026, per the library’s event page. The description also called it a “full-day intensive.” Registration was required, and the Intro to AI page said lunch was provided.
Where was the workshop, and who presented it?
Mandel Public Library of West Palm Beach, 411 Clematis Street, West Palm Beach, FL 33401, in the Clematis Room for the October 22 intensive (and for October 15 Accounting Basics). The library event page credited Melanie Roger of Zeus Financial & Consulting Services as the presenter.
What else was on the same-building ladder?
Small Business Accounting Basics on Thursday, October 15, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Eastern, and AI in Action: Tools That Work for You, Version 2.0 on Monday, October 19, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Eastern. Both were at the same Clematis Street address under Career and Technology Programs.
Who should owners call with questions?
Career and Technology Programs at (561) 868-7760, the organizer office listed on the library event pages for this series. The pages did not state a price, so that number was the place to confirm cost, card requirements, accessibility or curriculum details before any session.
