Tuesday, July 21 | Closing General Session
Devlin Liles
AI is Everywhere
Closing General Session
AI is everywhere in the headlines — but what does it actually means for an independent auto dealer running a real business with real margins? In this closing general session, Devlin Liles cuts through the noise and delivers a practical, ROI-focused framework for putting AI to work in your dealership today. Drawing on experience leading over $250M in AI implementations across industries that has generated $4.4B in returns,
Devlin shares what's working, what's wasting money, and what you can start doing Monday morning with the tools you already own. This isn't a technology talk. It's a business talk — about the economics of attention, the compounding value of automating the right tasks, and the trust required to let software handle work you've always done yourself.
You'll leave with a clear maturity model for your operation, a method for identifying your highest-value automation targets, and the confidence to move forward without betting the business on a science experiment.
ABOUT DEVLIN LILES:
Devlin Liles, Chief AI Officer and Chief Consulting Officer, is a business leader with a deep technical background. His passion and expertise are around leveraging technology to solve the problems facing business. Devlin has an entrepreneurial mindset and has been a core contributor to growth and success of Improving since 2010. Since 2007, he has been presenting and teaching classes on business practices, building company culture, software development, and deep technical topics for large and small audiences around the world, including user groups, conferences, and community events. Devlin’s technical career gained him recognition from some of the top technology companies in the world and was awarded the prestigious Microsoft MVP Award for 6 consecutive years. The MVP award is only awarded to 3,000 technologists’ annually.
In addition, he is the co-author, along with his good friend and fellow Improver Tim Rayburn of Entity Framework 4.1 Experts Cookbook. After shifting to a business-centric focus, Devlin has been awarded multiple awards, including the Vistage Leadership Award, finalist for the CEO Impact award, and one of the Most Admired CEOs in Houston in 2019. His organization has won over 100 best places to work awards across North America and been #1 in Houston 4 years consecutively.
When he is not in front of a crowd, at his company, or behind a computer Devlin is an avid soccer player and hobbyist gamer.