Members of the 17 projects and organizations associated with Georgia Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing (Georgia AIM) recently gathered at the Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center in downtown Augusta to plan activities and events celebrating Georgia AIM Week, Sept. 30 to Oct. 4.
Georgia AIM Week intentionally overlaps with National Manufacturing Day on Oct. 4 and highlights educational and workforce opportunities created by advanced manufacturing technologies. Georgia AIM Week events will take place in-person and virtually across Georgia to celebrate the range of Georgia AIM. This includes K-12 education, technical colleges and universities, workforce education, regional partnerships, nonprofits, and support for emerging technologies and manufacturers.
Funded by a $65 million grant from the federal Economic Development Administration, Georgia AIM funds a network of projects across the state that connect the manufacturing community with smart technologies and a ready workforce. This includes all geographies and demographics to bring traditionally underrepresented participants to manufacturing spaces, specifically rural residents, women, people of color, veterans, and those without a college degree.
It’s also an opportunity to celebrate innovations in K-12 classes and new programs in workforce development. The Technology Association of Georgia, which now offers a registered apprenticeship program for employers, is a partner with Georgia AIM.
Planning for Georgia AIM Week addressed these populations by generating ideas for activities that would appeal to innovators, manufacturers, workforce development, and students from kindergarten through college.
“The goal of the brainstorming session was to incorporate strengths from across projects into targeted events highlighting how they work,” said Donna Ennis, co-director of Georgia AIM, which is administered through Georgia Institute of Technology’s Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2).
“Our partners bring a lot of value and expertise to Georgia AIM, and Georgia AIM Week will highlight their success stories,” said Ennis. “We want Georgia AIM Week to be an opportunity to showcase how we are working across the state to connect students, educators, employees, and manufacturers with new technologies that will help transform our workforce for the future.”
Events discussed at the brainstorming session included:
- Manufacturer tours and Q&As with manufacturing industry leaders
- A career fair
- Panel discussions for emerging tech and manufacturers
- Visits by Georgia AIM’s mobile labs
- Hands-on activities for K-12 students
- Hackathons and coding challenges
Betsy McGriff, project manager for the Center for Economic Development Research (CEDR) at Georgia Tech’s EI2, facilitated the meeting and the Georgia AIM Week planning session. She said the meeting was structured to allow projects to learn from each other and build off their collaboration, using that momentum to brainstorm event ideas.
“This gave all 17 projects the opportunity to hear from each other about recent collaborations and activities, work through communications strategies, and, finally, apply all that they had heard in crafting integrative and dynamic plans for Georgia AIM Week,” she said. “Watching the groups work together, seeing those ‘aha’ and light bulb moments, is the hallmark of a great meeting. Each project walked away with a concrete set of to-dos centered on Georgia AIM Week.”
The final list of ideas, which is being honed to represent the integration of Georgia AIM’s projects across the state, will be released later this summer. In the meantime, schools, businesses, nonprofits, and community organizations are welcome to join in the planning. Find more details on Georgia AIM Week and sign up for email updates for future events online.
From Collaboration to Integration
The broader goal of the Georgia AIM all-coalition meeting, said McGriff, was to move the projects from collaboration to integration, a theme that was reflected across all presentations and activities. Georgia AIM projects meet twice a year to reconnect and report on their work.
The meeting began with a large sharing session, during which each Georgia AIM project presented rapid-fire updates on their accomplishments over the last six months. Over nearly two hours, meeting attendees heard success stories and collaborations. For example:
- Danyelle Larkin, program director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing (CEISMC), celebrated the 10-year mark of the InVenture Prize (nicknamed “American Idol for Nerds”), noting that the program has now reached 1000 students.
- Marty Gupta, a senior business advisor at the Georgia MBDA Business Center, spoke about the launch of the quarterly Manufacturing Advancement Knowledge for Executives (MAKE) series.
- Beka Shiver, economic development and transportation planner for the Southwest Georgia Regional Commission (SWGRC), reported on Southwest Georgia Ecosystem Building, which entails not only administering workforce development grants and entrepreneur education, but also providing regional strategic planning and AI infrastructure aid to CEDR.
- Grace Barrett, an associate project manager at CEDR, shared the results of 10 statewide focus groups that delved into issues surrounding workforce, infrastructure, governance/adoption, and education. One survey respondent aptly summed up the mission of Georgia AIM, calling it “an excellent platform to unite programs across the state to help ensure manufacturers in underrepresented communities are exposed to artificial intelligence that will help prepare their workforce and plans for what’s happening now and in the future.”
The second day of the meeting launched with Georgia AIM senior project manager Camille Cowans and community engagement manager Ryan Scott, who each introduced software and tracking tools that allow for greater logistical integration among Georgia AIM projects.
Then, an interactive exercise led by Kristen Morales, Georgia AIM marketing strategist, helped the group map out their story ecosystems and strategize about how best to relay those narratives to their audiences. The group also reverse-engineered a press release written from the perspective of the grant’s culmination celebrating Georgia AIM’s successes and continued sustainability. The process, led by McGriff and Georgia AIM managing director Steven Ferguson, revealed the steps necessary today to meet those goals in 2026, while also positioning Georgia AIM as a go-to resource.
The meeting was hosted by the Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center, a Georgia AIM partner affiliated with Augusta University. The all-coalition meeting included a guided tour of its state-of-the-art facilities, including the cloud computing cyber range and the maker space with 3D printing machinery.
