Why I Attended Winning AI25: Reflections from a Small Business in Regional Western Australia
Priscilla Clayton - Managing Director, Clayton Consulting WA, highlights the value of using AI for process improvement—particularly review and workflow automation—rather than as a replacement for human creativity and strategic thinking.
Winning AI25: APMP's AI Online Conference ran from 5-6 November 2025.
When APMP announced its Winning AI25 conference, I had mixed feelings about attending. My experience at the first AI Conference a couple of years ago had left me underwhelmed; it felt more like an advertorial showcase, with vendors rushing through demos of their bidding AI programs without much substance due to tight time constraints.
So, why register again?
Living and working in regional Western Australia means limited access to the latest developments in bids and proposals. So, when they're available online, even with challenging time zones, I make the effort.
The conference kicked off at 10 pm AWST on Day 1. After an hour, exhaustion won, and I went to sleep. Day 2 started slightly earlier, but I had the same experience. I'm planning to watch all the recordings over the next week or two.
What I learned
Despite the time zone challenges, the sessions I attended offered valuable insights that went beyond product pitches:
AI-Powered Color Team Recovery: Faster Cycles, Stronger Results, Ready to Implement: Stacy Klarquist. This session was a standout for me. Stacy emphasised using AI for process improvement rather than content generation. She reinforced that writers are creative, but AI isn't. Her agency uses AI for review purposes, not to replace human creativity and strategic thinking. Stacy uses ChatGPT and Claude for their review process, carefully informing the AI with the review purpose, detailed instructions, and expected outcomes. This reframed how I think about AI's role.
From Process to Purpose: Automating Unnecessary Steps in the Proposal Journey: Olivia Hardy from Qorus Doc. While this session was promotional, it showed me how enterprise-level teams are embedding AI throughout their workflow, even drafting emails and developing Bid/No Bid frameworks directly within Quorus Doc. As a small business operator, it was eye-opening to see the scale of integration possible.
Winning with AI in FY26 Federal Contracting: Define, Connect, Win: Brittany Winkler, ex-US Navy on finding government agency budget information reminded me of the wealth of publicly available data. Having worked in government previously, I'm familiar with Western Australian Budget Papers and their details on agency allocations and planned projects, valuable intel that's often underutilised in bid intelligence gathering.
So, what did I take away?
I'm cautiously optimistic about using AI for review purposes in my practice. However, my experience so far suggests that human reviewers are still superior at connecting dots and identifying strategic themes.
Perhaps the key is what Stacy Klarquist said:
“Being highly intentional about how we prompt and instruct AI, treating it as a process improvement tool rather than a replacement for human insight”.
The conference reinforced that the use of AI in bid management is still evolving.
For small businesses like mine in regional Australia, the challenge is finding the right balance, leveraging AI's efficiency without losing the human creativity and strategic thinking.
