PEI I.T. Alliance

10/16/2026

This week at AI Together, Kody Verhulp presented on OpenAI's Dots. A regular at The Foundry, he created a study dashboard which consolidates assignments and reading for his studies at Holland College.
Link to all our events : https://peiitalliance.com/events

10/08/2026

Dylan Cooper is one of the regulars at The Foundry: presenter for AI Together, and recent winner of Spark Tank 5.0! We appreciate his ambition and cheer him on his journey.

For UPEI MBA in Global Leadership graduate Dylan Cooper, learning about disruptive technologies in the classroom has become a springboard for building a business at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and construction.

10/08/2026

Thanks to John Steinsky for leading a nuanced discussion at AI Together, weighing the promise vs risks of AI.
IT processes to consider in an AI world: auditing, change management, data access, identity management, monitoring, and more.

10/06/2026

Congrats to Dylan Cooper, winner of Spark Tank 5.0, with Lightning Quote!
Many thanks to our judges and all participants: thoughtful pitches, polished visuals, and tremendous energy. The innovation and ambition are palpable here on PEI.

09/21/2026

"You do not have to be technical to begin building with AI tools. You need curiosity and a willingness to experiment." – Vivian B**r

Meet Vivian B**r: Manager, HR Strategy at the Prince Edward Island BioAlliance, founder of Merdock, vocalist and composer.

She's a regular at AI Together, which has shaped her AI journey, including the apps she's built as a non-developer: both for her HR role, and for her irrepressibly creative side.

An interview that is part of a series of profiles showcasing Prince Edward Island's IT professionals

09/10/2026

Yesterday's AI Together included an organic discussion on best-practices for prompts. Insights:
* The trifecta: (a) reference material (b) definition of "done" (c) self-audit.
* Pipelines: use an auxiliary LLM to craft a prompt for the target LLM.
* Hype-check: If it's working, keep doing it. Beware of AI content-creators with the latest trends.

Link to all our events (and newsletter!) - https://peiitalliance.com/events

09/09/2026

👏 Please join us in welcoming Yosef Tedla Mekonnen to the PEI IT Alliance!

Yosef is coming aboard as our Co-op — AI First Developer, working out of The Foundry.

Yosef will be building and shipping real AI-powered projects for the Alliance and our community.

Yosef, we’re thrilled to have you. Bring the wild ideas.

👋 Say hi to him at The Foundry, or catch him Wednesdays at AI Together or Tuesday/Thursday for our Night Shift program!

09/03/2026

Yesterday's AI Together event was another dandy!
Terry Smith opened with a Fable-fuelled digital signage app.
Dr. Stevan Springer (UPEI Biology dept) presented a riveting, thoughtful talk on evolutionary innovation and AI's impact on research & education.
See link in comments for all our events.

08/31/2026

🎉“Most of what I’ve shipped since graduating was built in that room.”

That room is The Foundry, and we could not be prouder of Bassam Kamal. Bassam is a 2026 UPEI Computer Science graduate who spotted a ten-year-old barrier in adaptive gaming and decided to just... fix it. 🕹️

The QuadStick is a mouth-operated controller that lets people with quadriplegia play video games, work remotely, paint, 3D model and edit video. But setting it up meant hand-editing complex spreadsheet files for every single game, and one misformatted line could take the whole device offline until someone with full hand function came to fix it.

Bassam’s QuadStick Configuration Manager replaces all of that with a visual interface so users can set up their own controller without assistance needed.

It is already being picked up by occupational therapists, hospital clinics and adaptive gaming programs across North America — presented to the ReSpawn Foundation’s National Adapted Gaming Group, and set to be featured in national presentations by Dr. Drew Redepenning of UPMC.

And a lot of it was built at The Foundry, our space in downtown Charlottetown. 🏗️

In Bassam’s words: “The IT Alliance is a great, supportive developer community for people at all skill levels. Nobody there checks how far along you are before they help you.”

That is exactly the room we are trying to build 🙌, and we’re so glad to see amazing projects built from our space!

Congratulations Bassam! ❤️

Read the full story from UPEI: https://www.upei.ca/communications/news/2026/08/upei-computer-science-graduate-s-technology-empowers-gamers

08/27/2026

Yesterday at AI Together, Vivian B**r presented two projects:

(a) dashboard to view historical records and
(b) a deeply creative app that converts ECG data into music (!).

Her journey travelled a familiar arc: initial, uncertain prompts; growing confidence and amazement; and then flow state with token maxing and multiple AI providers. "I thought the presentation was done, but I kept adding features and had to update the slides".