AI Fireside Chat
What's Hype, What's Real, What's Next
Session 1 · The Goldberg / Hellawell Fireside Chat Series
AI for Parents of Teens
A 90-minute conversation about where AI actually is, where it’s going, and how to help your teenager — and yourself — get out ahead of it.
A conversation, not a workshop
AI is moving faster than the institutions around it — schools, employers, courts, regulators are all playing catch-up. That’s not a criticism. It’s just what being early in a wave looks like. And it means parents and teenagers are figuring this out in real time, mostly without a roadmap.
This evening is a tech-and-history conversation between technology financier Alan Hellawell and AI educator Kevin Goldberg. Plain English. Real data. Honest about what these tools do well, where they fail, and how this moment compares to past shifts like electricity, the calculator, word processing, and YouTube.
We’re not here to tell you how to parent or how to teach. We’re here to give you and your teenager a clear picture of the technology and the moment — so you can both start building the intuition that’s going to matter most over the next three to five years.
What you’ll leave with
Three concrete things, plus the conversation itself.
A working mental model
What a Large Language Model actually is, why it hallucinates, how memory and projects have changed in the last year, and why “the AI you tried last year” is a different product from the one available today.
A read on what the data actually says
Which jobs are most exposed (it’s not who you’d guess), where the 22-to-25-year-old hiring slowdown is showing up, and how electricity, the calculator, and YouTube can help us tell signal from panic.
Concrete next steps — for you and your teen
Three tiers of practical moves depending on where you and your teenager are starting from, plus the single highest-leverage thing a parent can do that almost nobody is doing yet.
What’s on the table
A 60-minute, 17-question conversation, followed by 20–30 minutes of audience Q&A.
- What “AI” actually means in 2026 — and why it’s a toolkit, not a single thing
- Why AI hallucinates, and the rule of thumb for catching it
- How memory, projects, and skills have rewritten the user experience this year
- Why electricity — not the internet — is the closest historical comparison
- What the calculator, word processing, and YouTube taught us about technology shifts
- The four-tier hierarchy of “AI companies” — and the red flags in tier four
- Where AI is genuinely strong today: pattern recognition, transformation, iteration
- “Vibe coding” and what 45% of AI-generated code actually contains
- Where AI agents really are versus the hype — and what’s one to three years out
- What Anthropic’s labor-market data shows about which jobs are most exposed
- The 22-to-25 hiring slowdown — and what it means for the kids in your house
- How AI changes what it takes to start a business — at 35 or 15
- The single highest-leverage move a parent of a teenager can make right now
- Three tiers of next steps depending on where you’re starting from
Who this is for
Parents of teens
Your teenager is using AI right now, whether you’ve talked about it or not. Come get a clear read on the technology, the actual data on jobs and skills, and a much better question to ask your kid than “are you using AI on your homework?”
Educators & Administrators
Teachers, principals, counselors, and policy folks. We won’t tell you how AI should show up in your classroom or district — that’s your call. We will give you a working understanding of what your students are using and where the technology is heading.
Teens (14+) welcome with a parent
This conversation is for you too. The data on which skills age best over the next decade is in here, the historical comparisons are worth your time, and the three concrete next steps at the end are written for someone with sixty years of this ahead of them.
Your hosts
Kevin Goldberg
Kevin is a Bend-based AI educator who works with business leaders, parents, and educators across Central Oregon to translate fast-moving AI developments into practical, honest guidance. He’s spent his career building and advising technology companies, and now focuses on making AI legible to people who don’t have time to keep up with it full-time.
Alan Hellawell
[Bio placeholder — awaiting from Alan.]
The details
| Date | Monday, June 1, 2026 |
|---|---|
| Doors | 5:30 PM |
| Event | 6:00–8:00 PM |
| Format | Fireside chat (45–60 min) + Q&A (20–30 min) |
| Venue | Central Oregon Community College — Bend Campus |
| Room | Auditorium (TBD) |
| Address | 2600 NW College Way, Bend, OR 97703 |
| Parking | Free on-campus parking |
| Accessibility | Venue is ADA-accessible. Contact us if you need accommodations. |
Tickets
Capacity is limited. We expect this session to fill.
Advance
- Reserved seat
- Recording sent afterward
- First access to upcoming sessions in the series
At the door
- Available only if seats remain on event night
- Cash or card accepted
- We recommend reserving in advance
No advance commitment required.
All sales are final. No refunds. Tickets are transferable.
This is just the first conversation
AI for Parents of Teens kicks off a quarterly series of fireside chats hosted by Kevin Goldberg and Alan Hellawell. Future sessions will tackle AI for finance professionals, AI for business leaders, and more. Sign up below to hear about Session 2 first.
A real conversation, not a slide deck
The session is built as seventeen questions Alan asks Kevin — conversational, plain-English, no PowerPoint. The format is built to keep the audience engaged for 90 minutes the way a good interview does, then open the floor for the questions you and your teen walked in with.
Stay in the loop
One email when the next session is announced. No spam, no newsletter, no resale.
We’ll only email you about future Goldberg / Hellawell Fireside Chat sessions.