2nd Annual
Digitalization and AI in Energy
Appalachia Conference
November 4 - 5, 2026 | Pittsburgh, PA
Move From Pilots to Standard Practice in Appalachia.
An implementation-focused conference for leaders across the Appalachian energy ecosystem focused on scaling AI, accelerating digital transformation, and translating innovation into operational results.
In 2026, the question is not whether AI and digital tools can create value. The question is whether you can deploy them repeatedly across assets, keep them running, and earn adoption from operations and plant teams without adding risk or burden.
This conference is built for that reality. It brings together leaders responsible for turning digital efforts into repeatable programs, including operating model, governance, data readiness, cybersecurity alignment, and the deployment patterns that keep solutions working after the initial launch.
Across the program, you will learn what is being standardized, what is being retired, and what is being scaled across pads, gathering systems, compression, processing, and pipelines. Expect honest implementation lessons on where teams get stuck, what unblocks delivery, and how value is tracked without turning digital into a reporting exercise.
Who Should Attend
- Operations and asset leadership across upstream, gathering, compression, and pipelines
- Plant leadership, reliability, maintenance, and turnaround teams
- Control room leaders and SCADA practitioners
- Digital, data, and AI leaders responsible for delivery and scale
- OT cybersecurity, network engineering, and remote access owners
- Engineering, integrity, measurement, and allocation teams
- Technology partners, integrators, and EPCs supporting deployment and handover
Why This Matters Now
Appalachia is at the center of a major energy transformation. As operators, utilities, and midstream companies balance growing energy demand, AI adoption, workforce shortages, and infrastructure modernization, the challenge is no longer identifying AI opportunities - it's deploying them at scale while delivering measurable operational value. The organizations that will lead are those that can move beyond pilots, build trusted data foundations, and embed AI into everyday operations without compromising reliability, safety, or security.
What You Will Learn and Apply
- Scaling playbooks: how to take AI initiatives from pilot projects to enterprise-wide deployment across multiple assets and business functions
- Building AI-ready data foundations: breaking down data silos, modernizing legacy systems, and creating trusted data for scalable AI
- Operational intelligence: applying AI to improve asset performance, production optimization, and predictive decision-making
- AI governance in practice: establishing secure guardrails, governance frameworks, and responsible AI adoption across the enterprise
- Smarter field operations: using AI, computer vision, and remote monitoring to improve safety, asset visibility, and frontline execution
- Modernizing critical infrastructure: preparing utilities and industrial operations for grid transformation, distributed energy, and data center growth
- Agentic AI and intelligent automation: understanding where autonomous workflows create value and where human oversight remains essential
- Creating lasting business value: measuring ROI, securing stakeholder buy-in, and building digital transformation programs that deliver measurable operational outcomes
What You Will Leave With
- A shortlist of use cases that are scaling in the region, and why they scale
- Practical rollout patterns you can use to deploy faster across assets
- A clear view of the data foundations needed to make solutions portable
- Realistic approaches to adoption, governance, and sustaining value
- Stronger peer connections with people solving the same operational constraints
New in 2026
Scale or Stop Sessions: Peer-led discussions on what to standardize, what to retire, and why
Rollout Patterns Workshops: Step-by-step deployment approaches, including adoption, training, and handover
Reliability and Throughput Clinics: Deep dives on preventing slowdowns across compression and processing
Control Room Excellence: Practical improvements to alarms, displays, and shift handovers
Secure-by-Design Roundtables: Aligning IT, OT, and operations on access and monitoring that works in the field
Metrics That Matter: How teams measure value and model health without creating reporting overhead
Past Event Highlights
