Flow Media Marketing founder James Hills will speak at Great Lakes AI Week in Toledo, Ohio, on Thursday, November 12, presenting "How I Transformed My Blog Network Into A Publishing Network With AI" at 3:30 PM on the AI Innovation Track stage in the University of Toledo Student Union. Earlier that day, he joins the AI for Marketing and Revenue roundtable, where marketing and sales leaders compare notes on using AI for growth, content, visibility and pipeline.
Where to find James at Great Lakes AI Week.
- Roundtable: AI for Marketing and Revenue, Thursday, November 12, 12:00 to 1:00 PM, Roundtable Room, University of Toledo Student Union, hosted by Melanie Dunn.
- Presentation: How I Transformed My Blog Network Into A Publishing Network With AI, Thursday, November 12, 3:30 to 4:00 PM, AI Innovation Track stage, University of Toledo Student Union.
- Slides and a walkthrough of the talk: flowmediamarketing.com/jameshills.html after the session.
- Great Lakes AI Week runs November 10 to 12 across Bowling Green State University, downtown Toledo and the University of Toledo, produced by the Enterprise Technology Association.
- Workshops count toward AI Certificates through the AI Ready Ohio initiative.
- Tickets and the full agenda are on the Great Lakes AI Week website.
Great Lakes AI Week brings three days of keynotes, trainings, workshops and networking to the Toledo region, with the leadership summit at Bowling Green State University, a community networking day at One SeaGate in downtown Toledo and the final day of programming at the University of Toledo.
What James Will Cover in His Great Lakes AI Week Talk
The 30-minute presentation is a working publisher's account of a year spent rebuilding a network of travel and lifestyle sites, including ManTripping.com and CruiseWestCoast.com, around AI agents and custom tools. It isn't a pitch for a product. It's what worked, what broke and what he would do differently.
Why AI-Only Content Failed, and What Replaced It
James followed the industry into AI-generated volume and found its limit. "No matter how good your prompting was, AI writing is always going to be soulless since it has nothing original," he says. The talk covers how his sites shifted to original content gathered from interviews, surveys and roundups, and why "most small publishers fail not because they don't have something good to say, it's that nobody knows they even exist."
Turning a UGREEN NAS Into a Dev Server for Vibe Coding
How a UGREEN DXP4800 Plus became a dedicated dev server for vibe coding with Claude Code. Staging sites locally, sandboxing AI agents, and why you don't need another machine.
How I'm Transforming My Blogging Strategy To Develop, Currate and Publish Original High-Quality Content
How FlowContent replaced AI slop with interviews, surveys and roundups, and how any small publisher can start gathering original, expert-sourced content this week.
Building Checks That Can't Fail: Why You Need To Direct Your AI Agents To Test, Debug And Fail Loudly
Why AI-built software needs checks that can fail, processes that stop on bad input and synthetic users walking the app before a human reviews it.
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Running an AI Agent Team With Defined Roles
Behind the sites is a team of 13 named AI agents, each with its own role card: infrastructure, security, design, editorial, research, cruise data, games, and a business advisor, coordinated by an orchestrator that runs each project. "It's essential that you as a human stay core to the process, but this means managing your team, not just delegating," James says. He'll explain how the team runs and what running it on his own hardware taught him.
Tools Over One-Off Prompts
The biggest change came from building tools around the models. A 20-product holiday gift guide that once took days can now be produced in a couple of hours or less. "AI isn't 'Claude, go fix this,'" he says. The subject matter expert has to describe what's needed.
Games, Tools and Quizzes Instead of Just Promoting Deals
On CruiseWestCoast.com, the customer journey isn't built on promoting deals or repeating cruise news. It runs on games and tools that spark curiosity: WakeWord, a daily cruise word game with a daily email, Chair Hogs, a quick round to compare scores, and Guess On Deck, designed to be played on the ship itself. James will walk through the five layers of a site people come back to: an engaging template, good content, interactive content, a sticky site and promotable content.
Beware the Yes-Man
An AI that answers every plan with "that's a great idea" is dangerous. James will show how he built an advisor whose job is to push back, and how he uses several models from different providers to check plans and facts against each other.
Writing About "You" in a Post-Search World
After 20 years of chasing search traffic, James is building for what he calls a post-search world, where experts and community carry the brand. That approach drove the shift from writing about others to writing about you.
Who Should Attend the Session
The talk is built for marketers, publishers, small business owners, and tourism professionals who are past the "should we use AI" question and want to see what a sustained, practical rollout looks like from the inside, including the costs and the mistakes.
Connecting With James During & After Great Lakes AI Week To Talk About Blogging, AI, and Marketing ...
After the session, the full slide deck and a walkthrough of the key points will be at flowmediamarketing.com/jameshills.html. Attendees who want to continue the conversation about AI tooling, original content strategy or agent teams for small businesses can reach James at
About James Hills: James Hills is the founder of FlowMediaMarketing.com and runs a network of travel and lifestyle publications including ManTripping.com and CruiseWestCoast.com, built and maintained with a team of AI agents and custom publishing tools. For media inquiries about Great Lakes AI Week or AI in publishing, contact James at