From the Comments Section to the Chair
You've been reading about speakers. You've been reading about sessions. You've been reading about AI agents and content factories and answer optimization and all the things we're packing into June 18th and 19th at NCAT.
This week, we're doing something a little different.
This week, we're pulling back the curtain.
On the latest episode of So THIS Happened — the podcast hosted by Digital Wichita Vice Chair Jen Cole and co-host Rachel Chappelle— Jen sat down with Digital Wichita Chair Krissy Buck at the very venue where Digital Day 2026 is going to take place. They recorded right there at WSU Tech's NCAT campus, which felt fitting, because a lot of this conversation was about how far things have come — and how much has been built, together, over time.
If you've ever wondered who's actually behind this event and why they care so much about getting AI tools into the hands of Wichita marketers, this one's for you.
How We Got Here: The Origin Story Nobody Talks About
Digital Wichita has been building this community for eleven years. Back in 2015, when this whole thing was called Social Media Day Wichita, the big question in every marketing meeting was "okay but what do we DO with Facebook?" The conference existed because a scrappy group of digital nerds wanted to figure it out together — out loud, in public, in Wichita.
A lot has changed since then. The tools. The platforms. The vocabulary. The scale of what's possible.
What hasn't changed is the part that actually matters: people finding their way in, showing up, and building something they didn't know they were capable of building.
Krissy Buck is one of the best examples of that story in action. She came into the Digital Wichita orbit the way a lot of the best things happen in a community like this — she was a stay-at-home mom teaching herself photography, web design, and digital marketing. She had a DIY blog and approximately zero connections in the Wichita digital marketing world. She started watching Instagram lives from local marketers who were figuring things out in real time, asked a question in the comments one day, and got an answer.
She introduced herself at One Million Cups not long after — shaking the whole time, by her own account. A few months later she was sharing a hotel room at Social Media Marketing World in San Diego with Jen, someone she'd met just months before.
That's the kind of friendship that moves fast. That's the kind of community Digital Wichita builds.
Krissy went from attendee to sponsor to volunteer to board member to Chair. Along the way, she also built ShockStarter — a student-led, paid marketing agency at WSU Tech where real students work with real clients using real tools, including a growing roster of AI-powered ones. It launched in 2022 and has become one of the most exciting applied learning programs in the city.
She joined the organizing team in 2021. And now she and Jen are steering this ship together — which, if you've ever watched them interact, feels less like an org chart and more like two people who have been finishing each other's sentences for almost a decade.
Why "Entering In" Is the Only Way to Describe This Moment
At some point during the episode, the phrase "AI is entering in" came up — and it stuck. Because that's exactly what it's doing. It's not knocking. It's not waiting for permission. It's entering in — to workflows, to marketing strategies, to quilt groups on Facebook, to grocery shopping, to the opening sequence of Digital Day's event video.
Krissy put it plainly: "It's not a trend, it's not going away, and it's not just for tech people."
And that framing is the entire philosophy behind Digital Day 2026.
This year's event isn't about convincing you that AI matters. That ship has sailed. This year is about what you actually do with it on Monday morning when you get back to your desk — the concrete, actionable, implement-this-week stuff that our speaker lineup was specifically built to deliver.
No fluff. No theory. Just tools, systems, and a hackathon in the afternoon where teams will build something with AI on the spot.
What You're Actually Walking Into
Day 1 — Liftoff Summit
Thursday, June 18 | WSU Tech NCAT Campus | 8:30 AM – 5:00 PM
Doors open at 8:00 AM to morning networking, coffee, a light breakfast, a photo booth, temporary tattoos (yes, really), and patches from Happy Camper Hat Company. Then the day kicks off — here's how it runs:
8:40 AM — Luis Rodriguez sets the stage. Two decades of AI, automation, and data analytics experience, a founding voice in Kansas' tech movement, and — per Krissy — genuinely hilarious. He'll talk about how innovation and strategy are transforming Kansas' economy and why the future belongs to people who can blend cutting-edge technology with practical leadership. Strong opening energy.
9:20 AM — Angie Callen on the Sea of Sameness. When everyone has access to the same AI tools, technology alone won't differentiate you. Intentionality will. Angie's session is about finding your unique human differentiators, strengthening your brand voice, and building a business that actually connects in an age of never-ending automation.
10:15 AM — Mike Allton on building what he calls a Proprietary Brain for your business. If your team has AI tools but is still buried in spreadsheets, this is the session. Mike helps organizations build governed, practical AI workflows where agents handle the research and admin — so humans can focus on relationships.
10:50 AM — Brian Piper on AEO, GEO, and Answer Optimization. Your customers may never visit your website, but they'll ask an AI agent to find the answer. Brian helps brands prepare for that shift — building long-form, human-first content structured for machine retrieval so your expertise shows up in the responses that matter.
11:25 AM — Dennis Yu previews the Content Factory. One interview. Dozens of assets. Articles, videos, posts, knowledge signals — and AI agents doing the heavy lifting. This is a taste of what's coming in the Day 2 workshop.
12:00 PM — Lunch & Table Talks in the courtyard or lecture hall, with each table featuring a different topic-focused conversation. Good food. Good people. Actual conversations.
1:25 PM — Jeff Sieh on AI-powered image creation. Jeff's "Visual Improv" framework helps creators generate unique, professional visuals in minutes. Live demos, real examples, and practical techniques for building a distinctive visual style without a designer or a big budget.
2:00 PM — Scott Simson on the Netflix Strategy. Five-part documentary-style YouTube series. Trust-building journey. Viewers becoming clients. Scott has built channels with hundreds of thousands of subscribers using this framework, and he'll walk you out with a mapped-out process for your own business — plus the AI tools to build it faster.
2:45 PM — Mandy McEwen on turning posts into pipeline. Most people are posting, getting likes, and seeing zero revenue. Mandy flips the script — real problems your buyers care about, content that attracts the right people, and AI that sharpens and scales what's already working. No generic output. Actual pipeline.
3:20 PM — Hackathon. Teams. A challenge. Real AI tools. A winner. Details still being finalized, but the short version is: you won't just be watching AI work this afternoon. You'll be using it.
4:10 PM — Michael King closes the day with Staying Human. After a full day of systems, agents, and automation, Michael brings it back to identity-driven leadership — the practical framework for leveraging who you actually are as a strategic advantage. He's an executive coach, a leadership strategist, and reportedly bringing a saxophone. We support this completely.
Day 2 — AI Agent Workshop
Friday, June 19 | Groover Labs | Starts 8:00 AM
This is the one with the waiting list energy.
Dennis Yu and his team spend the morning at Groover Labs walking you through the Content Factory — not as a concept to admire, but as a system you'll actually build. You'll walk out knowing how to use AI agents to run your marketing, generate content at scale, and get back hours of your week.
The Digital Wichita team is already beta testing it. The early verdict: mind-expanding and immediately useful.
This workshop is capped at 100 seats. If you're a freelancer, a small business owner, a nonprofit running on fumes, or a one-person marketing team trying to punch above your weight class — this is the session that was built for you.
One More Thing: It's Always Been a Community Story
Here's something that didn't make it into the official event description but absolutely belongs here.
Jovana Vu — of Vu Events, and also Digital Wichita's Event Logistics Chair — has been woven into this community for years. She's part of the board. She's helped bring Digital Day to life in ways that go well beyond logistics. She also recently became the very first sponsor of So THIS Happened.
And in the episode, it came out that Krissy was a bridesmaid at Jen's wedding, Rachel was the maid of honor, and Jovana was the wedding planner.
Nobody planned that overlap. Nobody engineered it. It's just what happens when you show up for the same community, year after year, and the professional and the personal start to blur in the best possible way.
That's what eleven years of building something looks like. The people running Digital Day 2026 are the same people who have been showing up for each other — at networking events, at conferences, at the big moments — for close to a decade. We'd love for you to be a part of this next chapter.
🎟️ Grab your tickets at digitalwichita.com — and if the AI Agent Workshop is calling your name, don't wait. 100 seats goes faster than you'd think.
🎙️ Want to hear the full conversation with Krissy? Episode 44 of So THIS Happened is out now — find it on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Next week in the Dispatch: We're sitting down with Jeff Sieh to talk AI image generation — how to create professional, scroll-stopping visuals in minutes without a designer or a big budget. You're not going to want to miss this one.
Digital Wichita has been building Wichita's digital marketing community for eleven years. We exist to get emerging tools and strategies into the hands of local marketers — because being in the middle of the country doesn't mean you can't compete at a global level.
