Melbourne · In person · Bring your laptop
Small Business, Meet AI
Freshwater Futures

Saturday 5 September 2026

Make AI earn its keep in a business your size.

Three practical hours with your friendly hosts, Zoe and Ben. Bring one real challenge, leave with a way through it.

Tickets via MLAI on Luma. $129 early bird ends Sunday 23 August, then $159.

Friendly white-and-gold robot mascot working on a laptop, for Small Business, Meet AI
Your friendly workshop companion
Date
Saturday 5 September
2026
Location
Stone & Chalk
121 King Street, Melbourne VIC
Format
Three hours, in person
2pm to 5pm · arrive from 1.45pm
Early-bird
$129 AUD
Ends 23 August · then $159
01
In the room

Three hours. Real work.

This is for people who have heard plenty about AI and still haven’t had the time to make it useful.

Start with a win

Ten minutes in, you’ll have run something real against your own business and watched it work. Arrive from 1.45pm and we’ll have you set up before we start, so nothing eats into the good bit.

Learn the useful bits

A quick, plain-English tour of what it’s genuinely good at, and one prompt pattern you can reuse for anything. Then you try it on your own work.

Build one thing you’d actually use

A long, hands-on stretch on the challenge you brought. Two of us and a host are circulating the whole time, so nobody quietly gets stuck.

Connect it to your real work

We hook up the parts that reach your email, files and notes, then show a couple of workflows worth stealing, like turning a pile of customer messages into a ranked list of what they actually want.

Make it repeatable

The last stretch is yours: turn what you’ve built into a template or checklist you can run again next week. We finish with a few people showing what they made.

Bring

Your laptop and one real challenge you keep avoiding. The website copy you’ve meant to fix since March, a month of captions, the way you onboard a new client, a pile of customer emails you’ve never made sense of, or the offer you can’t quite word.

02
The take-home

Leave ready for Monday.

You’ll leave with something finished and a simple way to keep going on your own.

Your AI setup, sorted

Useful preferences in place, with the right tools connected for the way you work.

One real challenge, worked through

Not a pretend exercise. Something from your own business, and a way through it you can use again.

A practical cheat sheet

Prompts and resources you can reach for when you sit down again next week.

Confidence to keep using it

A clearer sense of what AI is good for, where to be careful and what to try next.

03
Your hosts

Two humans, zero jargon.

Zoe brings the creative and small-business angle. Ben brings the technical depth. Both of us stay in the room with you.

Zoe, your creative and small-business guide
Your creative and small-biz guide

Zoe

Runs Snuggle Studio alongside the workshops. Knows what it’s like to juggle a business, a client list, a messy hard drive and a life. Translates the technical stuff into “what does this actually mean for my Tuesday?”

Ben, your technical translator
Your technical translator

Ben

Runs Freshwater Futures. Spends the week helping bigger companies adopt AI, then brings the best bits down to the size of your business. Makes the complex stuff make sense without making it boring.

“Such a relief to learn some simple steps to tackle tasks I’ve been avoiding and save heaps of time in the process.”
From our first Friends Edition workshop · April 2026
04
Before you book

Reasonable questions.

The details that matter before you hand over your Saturday.

Where and when is it?

Saturday 5 September 2026, 2pm to 5pm, at Stone & Chalk, 121 King Street, Melbourne VIC. Arrive from 1.45pm so we can start on time.

Do I need AI experience?

No. If you can send an email and use a browser, you’re ready. We’ll help with setup and keep the language plain.

Do I need to pay for an AI subscription?

We recommend it, but it isn’t required. A paid plan like ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro is where the genuinely useful features live. If the subscription is a problem, email us before the workshop and we’ll work around it.

What should I bring?

Your laptop, its charger and one real business challenge you want to move forward. We’ll send a short setup note before the workshop.

What happens after I pay?

Luma will confirm your booking and payment. We’ll then email you the venue details, the timings, and the small amount of pre-work.

Can I ask a question first?

Yes. Email hello@freshwaterfutures.com and tell us what you’re unsure about.

Saturday 5 September 2026

Ready to stop meaning to learn AI?

Bring the work. We’ll bring the room, the prompts and enough patient humans to get you unstuck.