A Tuesday morning in Grieskirchen, building an AI agent step by step

Early on Tuesday 22 September we were in Grieskirchen, at the district office of WKO Grieskirchen on Manglburg, in time for the get-together at eight. A tall screen in the bright hall read "KI PRAXIS TAG" and "Herzlich Willkommen", and red-and-grey WKO lecterns stood at the front. This was a KI-Praxistag, an AI practice day, and a stop on this year's KI-Tour of WKO Upper Austria. Its full title, "KI Praxistag. KI erleben. Ausprobieren. Anwenden." (experience AI, try it, apply it), says what the format is for. WKO Upper Austria calls these practice days the centrepiece of the tour. They are free for members, open to businesses of every sector and size, and built to work without jargon.

Our hosts were Ing. Günther Baschinger, Bezirksstellenobmann (chair) of WKO Grieskirchen, and Hans Moser, its Bezirksstellenleiter (head). DI (FH) Wolfgang Pastl, project manager in the innovation management of WKO Upper Austria, organised the day with them. After the get-together we listened to a short talk from each presenter. All of it ran under the tour's slogan, "KI verstehen. Anwenden. Weiterkommen." (understand AI, apply it, get ahead). Then the room split into parallel workshops for the rest of the morning, each participant choosing a single workshop from the programme. Andreas Maringer of eventfoto.at photographed the morning, and meinbezirk.at reported on it the following week.

Alessa Prochaska and Melanie Lindorfer of zflys, a communications consultancy, ran the session on bringing a brand to life with AI and making it measurable. Philipp Baldauf, co-founder and CEO of Ahoi Kapptn, brought quick new AI hacks for daily work. Matthias Strafinger of deine KI Agentur offered "Erstelle deinen eigenen KI Agenten für dein Business" (build your own AI agent for your business).

We chose the agent. Strafinger's workshop was hands-on, and we built an agent for a small business step by step.

That is close to our own work. We advise on and deliver water, power and controls infrastructure, and our software practice builds websites and operating software, the internal tools, for the firms we advise. A named partner leads every engagement from our desks in Vienna and Lagos. AI-assisted development has changed how fast a first version of such a tool takes shape, and our rule for it is plain. Nothing leaves the business without a person signing it off. We left Grieskirchen with an agent built.

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