Last Updated April 17, 2025

By Tom Elliott

Founder & Community Host

 

WHAT IS PRACTICAL AI COMMUNITY BY NUTUM.AI?

Practical AI Community is a private learning community for small business leaders to explore the near-term, practical opportunities and consequences of leveraging AI in their organizations.

WHAT IS NUTUM.AI?

Nutum.ai is a one-stop destination for small business operators to learn how to best implement AI tools to grow or improve their businesses.

As of April 2025, we offer an AI-powered recommendation chatbot, a private community, and a micro-consulting service.

More tools and services will evolve to meet the needs of SMB operators.

Learn more about Nutum.

WHO IS THIS COMMUNITY FOR?

The primary audience is non-technical founders & leaders of small and mid-size organizations. While most business leaders are welcome to join, the content will be geared to our primary audience.

Prospective members must submit an application that demonstrates that they meet my definition of a founder or operator with actual spending authority.

WHY AN EMPHASIS ON "PRACTICAL" AI?

I find AI-related news, promotion, and pontification overwhelming. The "state of the art" mutates weekly, AI content has a poor signal-to-noise ratio, and navigating this noise is exhausting.

I believe that business leaders need a learning space free of frontier model company hubris, application vendor hype, philosophical manifestos, technical overthink, and policy debates.

Hence "Practical AI."

If you want to ponder AI's societal implications or organize to fight SkyNet, there are plenty of online spaces for that already. (Reddit first among them.)

Practical AI is optimized for busy operators who want to quickly discern real-world use cases that apply to their organizations.

The point is for members to share "small wins" that can be applied in the near-term, which we define as “in the next 12 months.”

WHY A PRIVATE COMMUNITY?

First, AI is a fraught topic. Business leaders need a "safe space" to explore dumb questions and evaluate AI opportunities that might soon impact teams and customers (i.e. layoffs or upsetting strategy shifts.)

Community members need to trust each other to be discrete and thoughtful about sensitive issues resulting from AI adoption.

Second, we need to learn fast without the noise of AI vendor pitch slapping. Pitch slapping is like pornography: you know it because you've seen it.

Here's the best definition I've found (ironically written by a sales consultant):

Pitchslap: the act of pretending to participate in a community in good faith, only to then bombard members with unwanted and aggressive sales messages without explicit consent.

Business leaders are already deluged by interruptive sales & marketing. (AI-infused marketing is making this scourge 100x worse. More on that later.)

Pitchslapping has invaded every community or network we frequent. Spend 20m interacting on LinkedIn, and you'll get 20 irrelevant and low-quality pitches via private message.

Dipping your toes into practical AI could easily open the floodgates to overwhelming inbound spam. If you’re like me, your reaction will be to ignore all the noise- and likely miss some helpful signal.

I believe that a private community of pragmatic members, each and all committed to high-quality private sharing, can provide an invaluable signal-to-noise ratio learning experience.

My theory only works if we all pledge to keep some simple guiding promises:

HOST PROMISES:

As the host of Practical AI, I promise:

1. I will shut down this community before I allow vendor-driven sales/marketers to ruin it with inappropriate and annoying pitchslapping.
2. I will proactively qualify each member request, to ensure that they are truly a founder or operator with spending authority.
3. I will do my very best to prevent software providers, consultants, or other commercially-motivated actors (collectively "AI Vendors" ) from pitchslapping any members.
4. I will never disclose your involvement without first asking for your expressed written consent.
5. I will never share any of your submitted content or contact details without first asking for your expressed written consent.
6. I will swiftly remove any member who violates the Member Promises (below);
7. If you are removed and then object, I will "hear you out" and reconsider your participation after consulting any/all affected members.

MEMBER PROMISES:

As a member of Practical AI, you promise:

1. I will always act (and react) under the premise that each community member intends the best for me, my organization, and the community.
2. I will not share content outside of the community. If I do want to share something, I will seek the author’s expressed written consent first.
3. I will write, speak, and act with professionalism and kindness in all my interactions with other members, in public or private, online or offline.
4. I will not discriminate, harass, participate in hate speech, or otherwise annoy other members.
5. I will never approach another member in a way that could be perceived as selling them a product or service.

If you need clarification on these promises, or have suggestions, please reach out.

HOW DO I PAY FOR THIS COMMUNITY?

Running Practical AI costs money- as much as $200-$300 a month at scale.

As of April 2025, the primary revenue stream is through one-on-one paid micro-consulting. (Learn more about my micro-consulting service.)

However, I want to disclaim that earning revenue from well-qualified AI Vendors committed to limited and respectful engagement is a possible option in the future.

I believe that there is a way for AI Vendors to productively engage with members to increase value and good signal, while avoiding annoying noise.

I’ve seen productive vendor/customer interplay in other community settings, and I may attempt this needle-threading sometime down the road.

However, to repeat Host Promise #1 above:

I will shut down this community before I allow vendor-driven sales/marketers to ruin it with inappropriate and annoying pitchslapping.

Any theoretical Vendor involvement would be "invitation only" and likely require member recommendation.

Vendors would agree to their own set of "Promises" that embody a "here to humbly serve" mentality.

And critically- Host Promise #5 above- I will never release your contact details to any vendor without your expressed written permission.

If a Vendor somehow spams you outside of the community, report them and we’ll handle it immediately.

CAN MEMBERS INVITE OTHERS TO JOIN?

Yes please! If you believe someone qualifies and will agree to our Member Promises, please invite them. I can’t promise to admit them to the community, but I do promise to give them a fair review!

HERE TO SERVE

Contact me with critiques and questions, ideas or concerns.

Your engagement is what fuels a successful community for all.

Thanks for joining!

Tom Elliott

Practical AI Host & Community Founder

Contact Me