Mark Hirst leads the Worldwide Workstation Solutions practice for Remote Graphics and Hybrid Cloud at Lenovo, helping customers connect modern workflows with high‑performance hardware and software across distributed environments. His background spans sales, marketing, business development, and product management across AV, software, HPC, end‑user computing, and workstations. Mark works closely with AECO firms on collaboration, AI development, and secure access to workstation‑class performance. Prior to his technology career, Mark was a professional football coach and, despite decades of suffering, remains an overly optimistic England football fan.
As the FIFA World Cup approaches, fans are caught between optimism and anxiety about what lies ahead. AEC firms find themselves in a similar moment with AI. This session explores how AECO organizations are building AI from the ground up, starting close to their data, teams, and tools. Instead of moving straight to cloud‑only models, leading firms are using workstations as the on‑ramp and sandbox for AI development, experimentation, and local inference. Framed through a football analogy, the workstation becomes the training ground where skills are developed and confidence is built before scaling to larger environments. Attendees will gain a practical view of how local AI is shaping innovation in AECO today and how, with the right tactics and tools, firms can deliver a world‑class performance.
