Halfway through October’s Uplift programme, Deanne made a breakthrough while working with Excel documents.
“I’m making Claude work for me. It’s incredible what it’s done for me since then…it’s done about a week’s work in an hour!”
This is just one example of what can happen when people have the time, support and practical guidance to explore AI using their own business challenges.
Uplift is a four-week AI adoption programme for business owners and senior leaders, delivered as part of the Tokenizer AI programme at Peregian Digital Hub. Owned and operated by Noosa Council at Peregian Beach, the Hub helps people and businesses across Noosa and the wider Sunshine Coast use AI to build capability, solve problems and create new value, bringing local economic value to life through AI innovation.
A diverse group with real work to tackle
Held in October 2026, Cohort 3 brought together 56 senior leaders from 29 businesses, representing 13 industries, including tourism, manufacturing, healthcare, marketing, construction and more.
A partnership with Tourism Noosa helped more local tourism businesses take part.
People arrived with different levels of AI experience and different business priorities. There were more than a few wide eyes around the room as Uplift took off! AI can do a LOT, and connecting those possibilities to your own business takes some digesting. Some participants left sessions quietly considering what might be possible, then returned with experiments and discoveries to share.
The message throughout Uplift is simple: you don’t need to overhaul your whole operation at once. Start with one useful task—a recurring piece of administration, a slow workflow, scattered business knowledge or an idea you want to test. Give the AI good context, try it, check the result and improve from there.
Four practical learning themes
Rather than treating AI as an abstract technology topic, Uplift focused on four areas businesses could connect to their everyday work:
- Understanding AI: learning how the technology actually works, making sense of its capabilities and useful business applications.
- Making business knowledge useful: using an organisation’s own information and instructions to produce more relevant results.
- Putting AI to work: exploring agents and tools that can support everyday tasks and open up new possibilities.
- Moving ideas into action: choosing worthwhile projects, adopting AI responsibly and trying vibe coding—building apps by describing what you want AI to create.
Participants explored ways AI might help reclaim time, improve workflows, make better use of business knowledge and investigate new services. Hands-on exercises were supported by mentors and Hub members, ready to help folks get going on the tools and work through ideas.
The learning continued after each session over a barbecue, where participants could ask questions, meet Hub members and compare experiences. Even torrential rain didn’t keep the cohort away!
A Hub community effort
Uplift was led by Steve Telburn of Secret Sauce, Tokenizer Uplift Stream Lead, with Hub Director Chris Boden, technical lead Ian Hansel of Verge Labs, and technical mentor Ryan Smith of Navigator Technology.
Guest contributions came from fellow Hub members and AI specialists, Roman Olivera (Orban Labs), Paul Rowsthorn (HubMind) and Ian Hansel (Verge Labs). Darcy Smith also delivered two additional online sessions covering ChatGPT Work and Claude Cowork.
Our thanks go to every contributor, partner and participant who brought their experience, curiosity and practical questions to the programme.
The innovation journey continues
As we wrapped up Uplift with our final bbq, it was fantastic to hear the plans people had for bringing AI into their business. Many have applied for our subsidised 1:1 commercial mentoring (through an EOI process), and proof-of-concept support may also follow for selected businesses. We’ll continue to follow these stories and we hope many will share their journey at our end-of-year Uplift alumni celebration.
AI has made technical innovation accessible for all businesses – no longer exclusive to the tech industry. The Hub is here to help local SMEs with big ideas learn about AI and how to make it work for them, so they can become an innovation-driven enterprise.
Interested in joining future Uplift Cohorts? Join the waitlist.
Uplift is delivered by Peregian Digital Hub, an initiative of Noosa Council, as part of its Tokenizer AI programme. We thank the Queensland Government for its support through Advance Queensland’s Regional Enablers Program, and Regional Development Australia Moreton Bay and Sunshine Coast Inc. for its support of Uplift.
