CONNECTED
INTELLIGENCE
Where People, Practice &
AI Possibilities Converge
MB L&D Network Conference
May 14 & 15, 2026
AGENDA
DAY ONE | THURSDAY, MAY 14, 2026
8:00AM
Registration, Breakfast & Networking
8:45 AM
Welcome & Opening Remarks
9:30 AM
Marilyn Dykstra
Engaging in Education Using Traditional Circles & Talking Sticks
Cree Knowledge Keeper, Marilyn Dykstra, Canadian Museum of Human Rights
With a focus on using talking sticks and Indigenous circles in education, Marilyn will share two Natural-Laws, which come before all other laws while participants create their own talking sticks to use in their practice. Participants will discover and reflect on their own learning and development practices while connecting them to Indigenous ways of being and thinking.
IMPORTANT: Conference attendees are asked to bring a small stick with them. As the landbased component of this session, prior to the conference, please take a walk in nature and pick up a fallen stick that feels good in your hand.
10:30 AM
Educational Spotlight | Rare Leadership
10:45 AM
Break
11:00 AM
Mary Ann Baynton
KEYNOTE:
Why Human Capacity is Still the Competitive Advantage in the World of AI
Mary Ann Baynton, Mary Ann Baynton & Associates
AI can generate learning at extraordinary speed. But are we building real capability or simply accelerating content development? In this provocative keynote, discover why human judgement, psychological safety, and ethical courage are still the true drivers of performance in an AI-enabled workplace. Explore how AI can amplify clarity and growth or quietly increase pressure, bias, and risk.
If you are ready to move beyond developing tools and position L&D as a strategic force shaping culture, governance, and leadership capacity, this session will challenge and equip you to lead differently.
12:00 PM
Lunch
1:00 PM
Educational Spotlight | Neovation
1:30 PM
Breakout Sessions #1
Alberto Caballero
Designing Relevant Adult Learning Experiences with AI: Using COSTAR and NotebookLM
Alberto Caballero, Seven Oaks Immigrant Services & Adult Center
Adults learn best when they understand the relevance of what they're learning. This session explores practical strategies for making lessons meaningful by connecting content to real-world applications. Participants will also learn how to use the COSTAR framework (Context, Objective, Style, Tone, Audience, Response) to design effective AI prompts for lesson planning. Through interactive activities, participants wil practice creating relevance-based learning objectives and AI-assisted lesson plans they can apply immediately.
Loïe Gervais
Building Coaching Capability in Leaders: The Role of L&D
Loïe Gervais, University of Manitoba
Coaching is no longer a “nice to have” but a core leadership skill in today’s fast-changing workplace. This session is designed for L&D professionals who support leadership development and want to strengthen their ability to teach coaching skills to managers. Participants will explore why coaching matters, how it differs from mentoring and consulting, and how it can be integrated into leadership. Through practice and reflection, attendees will experience coaching in action and gain practical tips for designing and facilitating coach training that fits their context.
2:30 PM
Break
2:45 PM
Breakout Sessions #2
Marie Antaya
A New Take on Evaluation: Easy and Practical Ways to Evaluate at All Levels
Marie Antaya, Eclectic Communications
Learning events take time, resources, and organizational energy. Yet many programs are still evaluated only at the “smile sheet” level. This session re-introduces the Kirkpatrick Four Levels of Evaluation in a practical, accessible way that helps L&D professionals meaningfully assess whether their learning initiatives are achieving the results their organizations expect.
We will explore how to answer key questions such as:
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Why are we delivering learning programs in the workplace?
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What should you measure to determine whether a learning experience is successful?
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How can evaluation be done realistically, simply, and consistently?
Facilitating Change: Teaching Your Teams to Lead Transitions
Tracy Lamoureux, Birchwood
This session empowers L&D professionals to facilitate high impact change training within their own organizations. Moving beyond theory, we dedicate 60% of our time to modeling facilitator techniques. You will learn how to guide your teams by employing techniques to proactively identify and constructively address resistance to both change and new initiatives and how to coach others to draft compelling Cases for Change. Leave with facilitator ready templates and strategies to teach Kotter’s first four steps effectively. Be prepared to practice and lead facilitation of these activities for real world scenarios.
Tracy Lamoureux
3:45 PM
Facilitated Round Table
4:40 PM
Debrief & Closing
5:00 PM
Networking Mixer
DAY TWO | FRIDAY, MAY 15, 2026
8:00AM
Registration, Breakfast & Networking
8:30 AM
Welcome & Opening Remarks
8:45 AM
Educational Spotlight | Birchwood
9:00 AM
Break
10:15 AM
Break
9:15 AM
Breakout Sessions #3
Philip Giles
The "Team of One" Upgrade: Cloning Yourself with Practical AI
Philip Giles, Neovation
The promise of AI isn’t just about generating text; it’s about cloning your capacity. In this practical, hands-on session, we will treat AI not as a tool, but as your new "Junior Teammate." We will move beyond basic ChatGPT prompts to demonstrate a live "Workflow Learning" approach—ingesting your raw policy documents into a secure AI environment to automate the repetitive 80% of your workload.
Dr. Shade Kolade
The Art of Difficult Conversations: Designing Training for Performance Management & Accountability
Dr. Shade, Leadership Synergy Institute
Performance management training typically teaches frameworks and scripts, such as "use the SBI model" or "follow these five steps," but often fails to prepare managers for the psychological reality of difficult conversations. Managers typically leave trainings knowing what to say but not how to navigate the emotional complexity, defensiveness, silence, or tears that arise in real performance discussions.
Trevor Hubert
Designing Strengths-Based New Manager Programs
Trevor Hubert, Elevate Strengths
New managers don’t just need skills—they need better conversations. Gallup’s research on engagement and performance consistently points to one thing: people leaders who have frequent, meaningful, strengths-focused conversations with their teams drive better results.
This session is designed for L&D professionals who build or support new manager programs. We’ll explore how to weave strengths-based management into your designs without needing everyone to complete a specific assessment first. You’ll experience a simple “strengths discovery conversation” first-hand, practice it using a set of high-quality questions, and then see how the same structure can become a powerful onboarding icebreaker and cohort-building activity in your next new manager program. We’ll also use AI to expand and tailor the question set for different roles and contexts. You’ll leave with a conversation template, sample prompts, and clear ideas on where to plug this into your own new leader journeys.
10:30 AM
Valerie McInnes
Inclusive Engagement in Action: A Liberating Structures Experience
Valerie McInnes, Rare Leadership
This highly interactive session invites participants into a dynamic, whole-group learning experience using Liberating Structures, a facilitation approach designed to ensure every voice is heard and valued. Through a series of structured activities, participants will reflect on where engagement unintentionally excludes people, explore underlying assumptions and patterns, and identify practical ways to foster more inclusive participation in learning and leadership environments. Rather than listening to a presentation, participants will actively contribute their insights, engage in meaningful dialogue with peers, and leave with concrete ideas they can apply immediately in their own practice. This session models inclusive engagement in real time while generating shared learning across the conference community.
11:30 AM
Educational Spotlight | Padraig Leadership
11:45 AM
Debrief & Closing