When Being There Matters
September 4, 2025 | Written by Merilee Teylan
Real Connection in an AI Age
Artificial intelligence (AI), generative AI, agentic AI, explainable AI, edge AI … the list of AI buzzwords goes on and on. It’s dizzying, really. Every time I think I've grasped the latest advancements in AI, I’m hearing about something even newer and more capable of making smarter decisions, enhancing innovation, improving efficiency and scalability, and I’m told will make our lives easier. The volume of information is coming fast, and the expectation to adapt and deploy these tools to be able to work at inhumane speeds feels urgent. While I continue to hold skepticism and curiosity hand-in-hand when it comes to AI, I wonder …
How do we make sure the human remains at the center of all this intelligence? And when is it important to slow things down, back to a reasonable human pace, to truly make progress?
When I think about what drives and inspires me in the work that I do, it always comes back to people. Even as Kinetic West grows and adapts in this AI-driven era, it’s increasingly clear to us that human connection, like being in the same room, matters.
Don’t get me wrong. I love working in the quiet of my home office. The pandemic accelerated innovation to make this kind of work possible, opening options for accessibility (and helping me spend more time with my dogs), but there’s something irreplaceable about being in the room with someone. Ideas move differently when they’re shared face-to-face. Trust builds in ways that would otherwise take longer through a screen. You notice the pauses, the energy, the unspoken cues that shape understanding and collaboration.
As AI tools grow smarter and help us work more efficiently, I remind myself that progress still depends on people being able to connect, challenge one another, and co-create in real time. Technology can augment our work, like notetaking in meetings to allow everyone to participate fully, but it can’t substitute for the spark that happens when people are truly present together.
When the conditions are intentionally set, we listen more deeply, speak more openly, and leave with a stronger sense of commitment to one another and the work ahead.
In a moment when Kinetic West is reconfirming our commitment and love for in-person meetings, we recently carved out two hours to come together in-person to ignite creative ideas on meeting facilitation. We reflected on well-facilitated gatherings that we participated in and worked to understand the root of what made that experience stand out. We drew from experiences at Kinetic West, like facilitating a retreat that led to the creation of the Montana Work-based Learning Collaborative, or workgroups that developed investment recommendations for the Future of the Seattle Economy. When it comes to driving systems change, especially through cross-sector partnerships like these, that kind of trust and alignment is essential.
Convening people from different sectors, with different priorities and perspectives, requires more than just coordination. It requires connection. Shared understanding, mutual respect, and collective momentum are possible over screens, but they’re far more powerful when we’re in the same room, working side by side toward a common purpose. I don’t see this as rejecting AI. Instead, I see this as a way of embracing its strengths while remembering our own. AI may help us move faster, but it’s people who help us move forward together.
