CREW Multifamily Council · April 14, 2026 · Denver

Built for This Room

Connor Johnson · connorjohnson.ai
01 — Who's Here

10 Lenses on AI

  • 5 operators
  • 5 capital and lending
  • 3 lawyers
  • 3 developers
  • 2 architects
  • Engineering, insurance, tax, research
02 — What You Asked For

What You Care About

  • State of AI in the industry
  • Day-to-day use
  • Internal advocacy
  • Security and privacy
  • Spotting vendor snake oil
  • Build vs buy
03 — State of Play
92%
Piloting AI
5%
Have Results
52%
Know Little or Nothing
04 — A Quick Primer

Before I Go Further

  • Model — the underlying AI
  • Token — the unit it reads and writes
  • Context — how much it holds at once
  • Prompt — what you tell it
  • Agent — AI that takes actions
  • Tools — what agents can use
  • MCP — how agents connect to tools

Stop me if I blur too far.

05 — Background

Me

  • Civil engineering, SMU
  • U.S. Army, Fort Carson
  • PM, Majestic Realty (Shamrock Foods)
  • Power Automate → code → AI
  • Optimization & AI Manager, Prologis
06 — Prologis
$205B
AUM
3%
Of World GDP
3,825
Buildings
07 — Origin

Starts With Lean

  • 7 years ago: can we build faster?
  • Pull planning on every development
  • In the field, not the office
  • Largest industrial schedule dataset on the planet
08 — The Turning Point

Post-Project Reviews

64
Markets
215
Developments
~6,000
Insights
1,750
External Surveys

Every development. All text.

09 — AI Enters

We didn't go looking for AI. We had a data problem.

AI turned out to be the answer
10 — The Real Barrier

It costs more to have the meeting than to build the thing.

Shipping is cheaper than deciding to ship

Part Two

See It In Action

11 — Steal These

Micro Workflows

  • Travel prep
  • Expense reports
  • Team coordination

$20 and 30 minutes.

12 — Real Workflows

Professional

  • 60-second meeting prep
  • Document intelligence
  • Deal research
  • Cost intelligence
  • Building an app (this site)
13 — Red Flags

5 Signals You're Being Sold Snake Oil

  • "Proprietary AI" (tech isn't the moat)
  • Outsiders with no domain
  • "We'll replace X headcount"
  • "Give us your data"
  • Polished rehearsed demo

Ask: can smart people solve my problem?

14 — Caveats

Enterprise Reality

  • Most companies don't build in-house
  • Your Slack team isn't shipping Claude Code
  • Change management, security, vendor review
  • Decide up front: buy or build
15 — Two Rules

Security & Build vs Buy

  • Never paste what you wouldn't email a stranger
  • Ask IT what they need to say yes

You don't need to build. You need to know what's buildable.

16 — Constraints

What If You Can't Use the Best Tools?

  • That's most enterprises
  • Leverage what you have
  • ChatGPT Enterprise unlocks a lot
  • Grow the toolkit over time

Work with what you've got.

17 — Champions

Start Small

  • One curious person
  • Thirty days
  • A real problem

Peer adoption beats mandates.

Part Three

Important Concepts

18 — Concept One

Self-Annealing Systems

  • Build a workflow once
  • Every run, 1% better
  • Over time: probabilistic → deterministic
  • Compounding advantage nobody talks about
19 — Concept Two

Workspace Engineering

  • L0 — Anonymous chat
  • L1 — Logged in, personalized
  • L2 — Pasted prompts
  • L3 — Projects (persistent context)
  • L4 — Custom GPTs (shareable agents)
  • L5 — Claude Code (your files as workspace)
  • L6 — Autonomous AI (its own computer)

Most people are at L0. Top 1% are at L5+.

20 — Concept Three

Tokens Per Minute

  • The new throughput metric
  • 0% — can't use the tools
  • 1% — can direct one AI well
  • 0.001% — orchestrates four or five in parallel

Not IQ. Throughput.

21 — Concept Four

Auto-Research

  • Systems that design their own experiments
  • Run them, update, run again
  • 0.1% better per run × 30 days = 30% better
  • Compounds quietly. Then visibly.

Part Four

Your Story

22 — Reflection

The AI you build is a reflection of you.

Your words. Your judgment. Your domain.
23 — What You Bring

You Can Tell Your Story

  • Everyone here has domain expertise
  • Everyone has a way of thinking
  • The tools are common. The judgment isn't.

The story is yours to tell.

24 — Start Today

The first step is the whole thing.

One workflow. Thirty minutes. $20.
25 — Takeaway

Remember

  • Curiosity beats credentials
  • The gap is visible
  • It's about to get wider

Be on the right side of it.

Thank You

Let's Talk

connorjohnson.ai · connorajohnson@outlook.com