Applying AI: Lessons from the Madrid Meetup

Earlier this month, I attended an AI meetup in Madrid organized by Mindstone in collaboration with gbo. It was refreshing to be in a new city and mingle with professionals behind AI innovation in Spain. The event featured two great talks and an interactive demo that explored both the practical and strategic sides of using AI in business.

The first speaker, Jose Luque Leon, from Deloitte’s AI Innovation team, shared practical ways to integrate AI into daily work and life. The demonstration highlighted ChatGPT’s advanced features, including Agent Mode, Deep Research, Task Automation, and Custom Prompting, as well as tools like NanoBanana and Lovable. The talk focused on how AI can enhance productivity in real, hands-on ways.

The next speaker, Gary Bongiorni, who is the lead from American Express Global Business Travel’s AI Marketing team, shared a practical playbook for introducing AI into any organization. Rather than offering a one-size-fits-all strategy, he presented an operational approach that companies can adapt to their needs. His philosophy centered on using AI to augment teams, not replace them, freeing people from repetitive work to focus on creativity and growth. He outlined a clear framework: set strong privacy and security foundations, identify and test AI use cases, and validate results before scaling. Startups, he noted, can find quick AI wins by crowdsourcing pain points from their teams, saving valuable time and resources in lean environments. He emphasized that culture and education matter more than tools, noting that culture - the focus of our September newsletter - remains a critical foundation for AI success. The greatest ROI, he shared, comes from empowering people to understand and use these technologies with confidence.

What stood out to me most were the conversations during and after the event. There seemed to be an even split between those already comfortable with AI tools and those just beginning to explore them, or who had never used them at all. Speaking with people from both sides, from technical experts to industry leaders, highlighted how universal the challenge of AI adoption really is. Many were eager to learn how to bring skeptical staff on board and turn experimentation into real business impact.

Combined with the speakers’ emphasis on AI education, these discussions reinforced why the work we do at PANTA matters so much: helping teams at every level build AI literacy, learn and grow with confidence through our upskilling programs, and unlocking the value of these tools in their everyday workflows.