AI made simple – Empowering women to take their first steps with AI at Techweek25
- Diane Sieger
- May 20
- 4 min read
We had the absolute pleasure of hosting our Techweek 2025 AI starter workshop for women – and what a session it was! The energy, curiosity, and sense of community made it truly special.
We originally planned for a small, cosy group, but demand quickly exceeded expectations. After just one LinkedIn post and the launch of the Techweek programme, tickets sold out in days and the waitlist kept growing. To ensure more women could join, we opened up extra spots and tweaked the agenda for a larger group.
Designed for those curious about AI but unsure where to start, this one-hour interactive session brought together women from across Aotearoa to learn, experiment, and grow their confidence with AI tools.
Breaking down barriers to AI
Our aim was simple: to make AI accessible, practical, and relevant. In a supportive and welcoming space, we covered:
What AI really is (and isn’t)
Why AI matters in our everyday lives and work
How to interact effectively with AI tools like Perplexity, ChatGPT, or Gemini
How to spot risks like bias and misinformation
But this wasn’t just theory. We included live demonstrations and hands-on activities to show the practical side of AI. Attendees tried real prompts, explored AI outputs, and reflected on the value and limitations of AI for their own contexts.
What participants said
We were thrilled with the level of engagement and the energy in the (virtual) room. Participants told us they appreciated:
the balance of theory, demos, and practice
the clear and accessible explanations
the interesting and insightful content
the practical tips they could apply straight away
Most importantly, they left feeling more confident, empowered, and ready to continue their AI learning journey.
Resources to continue your learning
We believe in open learning, so we’re sharing the presentation slides from the workshop here:
We’re also excited to share the Paadia Prompt Companion – a practical guide we developed to help you craft better AI prompts and get more meaningful results.
What’s next?
This session was just the beginning. We’re already planning future learning opportunities to continue supporting women and underrepresented groups to build digital confidence and AI literacy.
If you'd like to stay in the loop about future events or explore how we can bring a similar session to your organisation, get in touch – we’d love to hear from you.
Further resources
One of the questions at the workshop was about the tools we use, and if we could provide an overview of everything currently on the market. That’s a tricky one, since things are moving so fast in the AI space and the number of available tools is growing daily.
What’s helpful to you will depend a lot on your specific needs and use case.
So instead of giving you an overwhelming list of every AI tool out there, here are some of our beginner-friendly favourites at Paadia as of May 2025. Just remember, this list could look different tomorrow, depending on what comes out next!
Generative AI assistants (chat-based generalists)
ChatGPT – conversational assistant, text, code, and image support
Perplexity – research-focused AI with source citations
Gemini – multimodal AI integrated with Google Workspace
Claude – conversational assistant known for its “safer” design philosophy
We often switch between these based on what we’re working on. And we always recommend double-checking one model’s output with another to fact-check and reduce the risk of hallucinations.
Design and content creation
Canva Magic Studio – easy-to-use design tool with AI-powered writing, image, and video helpers
Gamma.app – turns prompts into polished presentations, documents, and web pages to help you communicate clearly without design experience
Research and academic support
Scispace – explains research papers in plain language, perfect for students, researchers, or anyone navigating academic content
Connected Papers – builds visual maps of related research to help you explore new ideas and previous work
Google NotebookLM – helps you work with your own documents. You can upload reference materials like PDFs, notes, or Google Docs, and ask the AI questions about the content. It can summarise, highlight connections, and even suggest new directions to explore. A useful audio overview feature lets you listen to a summary of your notes - perfect for learning on the go.
Agentic AI
Agentic AI refers to tools that can act on your behalf, automating more complex workflows. We're really excited about Autohive, which launches in June. We’ve been lucky to get early access, and we’re genuinely impressed with what’s coming. Autohive is designed to transform how teams collaborate with AI. It supports real workflows with features you won’t find elsewhere, like multi-user collaboration spaces, specialised AI agents for different tasks, and seamless integration with the tools you already love. We can’t wait use Autohive to help our clients build custom workflows that connect their teams and processes in ways that really matter.
We hope this post, inspired by a truly energising Techweek session, serves as a great starting point for your AI journey.
If you’d like to stay connected or bring a similar workshop to your organisation, please get in touch, we’d love to support you and your team in building digital confidence and AI skills. Let’s keep the momentum going together!
Komentarze