The Model

The Next Era of the Creator Economy: What’s changing, where the opportunities are, and what to build next.

Kicking off San Antonio Startup + Tech Week with a keynote on The Next Era of the Creator Economy: What’s changing, where the opportunities are, and what to build next. Excited to share where I believe the creator economy is headed and what it means for creators, brands, and the businesses building around them.

• Justin JohnsonCulture & Marketing Leader
• Maria Consuelo GonimaModerator

Beyond the Cloud: Building Offline AI Pipelines for High-Traffic Physical Spaces

Cloud APIs promise simplicity, but live event floors demand zero latency, zero internet dependency, and rock-solid reliability. In this talk, we’ll break down how to design, optimize, and deploy a 100% local, edge-computed AI production pipeline that handles non-stop traffic without missing a beat. We’ll walk through the architecture behind a live convention photo booth that transforms attendee photos into collectible, big-head vinyl-toy figures rendered and printed in under 90 seconds. You’ll learn how open-source image-editing models preserve guest identity and skin tone, how to train custom LoRAs to lock in specific physical aesthetics, and how to orchestrate tethered hardware, ComfyUI, and coin printers into a high-throughput system. From trade show deployments in Las Vegas and Denver to zero-crash edge infrastructure, discover what it takes to bring open-source diffusion models into the physical world.

• AJ RoseFounder & Creative Director · United by Design
• Diego ChavezMultidisciplinary Artist · A.M. Architect

Let the Machines Win: Embracing Game Engines and AI to Accelerate Development and Content Creation

Game engines and generative tools are no longer just for game studios—they have become the most powerful real-time creation engines across entertainment, education, simulation, and enterprise design. What once required million-dollar budgets and massive specialized teams is now accessible for free to any developer or creator willing to rethink their workflow. Drawing from years of experience in cinematic design, VR development, and building interactive client experiences across diverse industries, this talk explores how combining modern game engines with emerging AI tools drastically lowers the barrier to entry. We’ll look at how to leverage these open, rapid-prototyping technologies to build high-impact content faster, cut production overhead, and reimagine what’s possible for your industry—without starting from scratch.

• Jonathan PerryCEO · Ractive

Ship the Story, Not Just the Product

A brilliant product without a story becomes invisible. Teams build the product, then scramble for the narrative the week before launch. That's a gift to competitors. This session makes the case for treating narrative as part of the build, not a final step, and why leading with AI can backfire when audiences are already skeptical. With 15+ years in tech and entertainment PR and 5+ years in AI, from a sports/esports video company's acquisition to SAG-AFTRA's first voice-AI agreement, and launching a major filmmaker's AI production studio, Maria Consuelo Gonima shares what earns attention, what to avoid, and how to keep the focus on the outcome instead of the technology. What you'll hear: - Why narrative storytelling belongs in the build, not the launch plan - The AI backlash: how "look at the time you save" wins over "look at our algorithm" - How to make the tech disappear so its value is vividly clear - A framework for shipping product and story together

• Maria Consuelo GonimaFounder · Big Smile Co

Beyond the Prompt: Directing in the Age of AI

The prompt might be the least interesting part of making a film with AI. Generative tools now make it possible for small teams and individual creators to produce images that once required entire production pipelines. But the idea, references, storyboarding, performance, shot design, continuity, editing, sound and countless creative decisions still have to come from somewhere. Writer-director Cynthia Bahati Gentry takes a practical look at what directing with AI actually looks like: the tools she uses, what happens between an idea and a finished sequence, where the technology still falls apart, and the lessons she has learned trying to make work that feels like cinema rather than a demonstration of what a model can do.

• Cynthia GentryPresident · Gentry Media

Putting Grok Bot and Agents to Work in a Real Business

Discover how to put Grok Bot and AI agents to work inside real business operations—automating research, outbound campaigns, reporting, and GTM workflows that used to eat entire workweeks. In 20 minutes, this session opens the hood on active production setups, showing how they’re wired up and where the line sits between a task an agent excels at and one it quietly ruins. You’ll see the jobs that work, the ones that still demand a human, and how to frame problems so your bots actually solve them instead of guessing.

• Leon HitchensCOO & Co-Founder · Ruskin Consulting

Alamo City AI

AlamoCityAI is a community-driven initiative for those who prefer building over broadcasting. We aren't a high-priced consulting group or a hype-cycle marketing firm. We are a collection of builders, researchers, founders, and local leaders who believe that the AI frontier belongs to those who show up, collaborate, and experiment.

What happens when creative storytelling collides with startup strategy?

Sunday Theory co-founders Daniel Gallegos and Serena Hernandez explore the journey from craft to company, and how storytelling, positioning, go-to-market thinking, and emerging technology can turn creative skills and ideas into something people recognize, trust, and believe in. Because the future doesn’t belong to creativity or strategy alone. The interesting part is what happens when those worlds collide.

• Serena HernandezCo-Founder · Sunday Theory
• Daniel GallegosCo-Founder · Sunday Theory