Day 1 – Breakout Session 1 – 9:45-10:15 AM
Room: Affectiv
You Don’t Need a Degree. You Need to Start Building.
James Zolman · RizeCon 2026 · Pocatello
James Zolman describes himself as a shade tree mechanic. He starts projects the same way he approaches a classic vehicle that’s been sitting for fifteen years — by spraying it down with a power washer and seeing what happens. That’s also, he argues, exactly how most people first use AI: sloppy, fun, wet everywhere. And then, over time, you learn to prompt, refine, and build something worth driving.
James runs staffing for marketing agencies — not a tech company, not a SaaS firm — and spends his spare time running East Idaho AI, a free community meetup out of Rigby where local residents come to learn how to build with AI. People have driven from Brigham City and down from Montana just to learn how to use the tools. At RizeCon, he brought the community’s work to the main stage.
What he covered
The shade tree mechanic analogy. James opened by showing before-and-after photos of a vintage truck he restored. First thing he did when he got the truck: power-washed the interior. It made a mess but got things moving. He uses this as the frame for AI adoption — the early phase is sloppy and exuberant, with copy-pasted outputs, emojis in LinkedIn posts, and AI sprayed everywhere. Eventually, you learn what you’re doing. The truck eventually looks like a truck. But there are still details missing — door handles, visors, instruments — and AI still has those frustrations. You work through them.
Prompting principle: tell it what you want to accomplish. James’s preferred approach, coming from a software development background, is to tell AI the outcome he wants rather than the steps to get there. He shared a simple framework: write a story that describes what you’re trying to build and what it should do when it works. Then add one instruction to every prompt — ask me questions. James calls AI “10-second Tom” from 50 First Dates. It knows everything but forgets constantly. Having it interview you before it builds closes the gaps that a one-shot prompt would leave open.
Live build on Replit. James used Replit — his favorite tool for building apps without deep coding knowledge — to construct a QR code networking tool live on stage during the session. Attendees enter their contact information, generate a QR code, and anyone who scans it gets a complete contact added to their phone automatically. No awkward iPhone-touching required. He prompted it using plain English, answered a few clarifying questions from the AI agents Replit spun up (architect, developer, designer), and published the app before he ran out of time. The URL — riseqr.replit.app — was shared with the room so everyone could create their contact card on the spot.
The East Idaho AI community builders. The most memorable part of the session was showcasing apps built by attendees of James’s free Friday workshop series — about 30 to 40 people who showed up over five weeks with printed workbooks and built real products.
Snoozetales — a bedtime story app built by Bella Adams, age 11. Bella’s father pulled her out of school to attend the workshops. She filled out every blank space in the workbook, typed every prompt herself, worked through every setback when AI didn’t build the right thing, and got the app all the way to a mobile app submission for the Apple App Store and Android. The app generates unique, personalized bedtime stories — different every time — based on the child’s age group, chosen hero, theme, and story style. It was in final App Store approval at the time of RizeCon and available at snooz-tales.com. When James brought Bella to the stage, he said: this is exactly why I do this.
Cinder Sauna — a lead-generation quiz app built by Tyler Price, a high-end sauna salesman. Tyler came into the workshop with no technical background and built a quiz that walks customers through their preferences — use case, location, frequency, values — and recommends a specific sauna model from his product line. His models are named after Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the Bible, because they survived the fire. The app ends with a button: “Talk with Tyler about your sauna.”
Ski Plan — a multi-mountain ski planning app built by John Parker, who bought a Mountain Collective pass and wanted a tool to tell him where to go on any given day based on powder, grooming, drive time, and temperature. John is the techie of the group and took the project off Replit entirely to build a fuller version. The app pulls real resort data, shows snowfall by day, temperature ranges, and drive times, and lets users favorite resorts and sort by what matters most. Live at skiplan.xyz.
Trikara — an AI-enhanced time-tracking and invoicing tool for consultants, built by a Rigby-based enterprise consultant who found Clockify and similar tools didn’t fit how consulting work actually flows. Trikara lets consultants log time by client and project, describe what they worked on in plain language, and lets AI infer the detailed line items for the invoice automatically.
Tools James recommends. For building apps: Replit (has a free trial, about $5 to start, AI agents that function as a whole development team). For voice AI: 11 Labs, which can set up a virtual assistant to answer calls, qualify leads, and book directly to your calendar — recommended especially for anyone who’s at a conference and not available by phone. Also mentioned: Claude in Chrome.
What attendees got
James published the RiseQR networking tool live during the session and shared the URL so every attendee could create their own contact QR code on the spot. He also invited everyone to join the East Idaho AI Community Facebook group (accessible through eastidaho.ai) for ongoing tools, demos, and resources.
One moment that landed
An 11-year-old girl walked onto the main stage at a regional business conference to show the app she built. Bella Adams attended every Friday of a five-week workshop, filled in every blank in every workbook, typed every prompt herself, debugged every failure, and got all the way to a mobile app submission — with her dad’s help at the end. James had to ask the room to give her a round of applause because the lights were bright and she was standing at a podium that clearly wasn’t built for someone her height. He said it simply: this is exactly why I do this.
“I call AI ’10-second Tom’ from 50 First Dates. It has a hard time paying attention for longer than about 10 seconds — so I always have it ask me questions, because it can fill in the gaps I can’t give it.” — James Zolman
“Once you learn how to prompt, once you learn how to use AI, it starts to look nice. It’s not sloppy — but AI still has some misses, like a truck with no door handle. Eventually you get there.” — James Zolman
About the speaker
James Zolman works in staffing for marketing agencies and runs East Idaho AI, a free community meetup and learning group based in Rigby, Idaho. He is not a developer, not a consultant, and does not sell AI services. He describes himself as an AI explorer and evangelist who learns by building and shares what he learns with whoever shows up. The East Idaho AI Community Facebook group and eastidaho.ai are his primary platforms. His measure of success: an 11-year-old building a mobile app.