AEO Unplugged: Building Your AI-Ready Digital Customer Hub

AI isn’t just reshaping search, it’s raising the bar on what strong Digital Customer Success leadership looks like. If you’re still operating with monolithic courses, locked community threads, and siloed hubs, this shift will expose the cracks fast. At AEO Unplugged, you’ll learn from real experts, see what it takes to move from fragmented content to a connected ecosystem, and walk away thinking like a builder.

Agenda

8:00 AM PT  ||  11:00 AM ET Pre-Party with DJ Skemaddox

Join 30 minutes early to get pumped up with the best tunes from Gainsight's favorite DJ—Skemaddox!

8:30 AM PT || 11:30 AM ET From SEO to AEO: What Answer Engines Actually Mean for Education & Community Leaders

AI answer engines are already deciding which content gets surfaced, cited, and ultimately, ignored. In this level-setting keynote, leading AEO experts break down what’s actually happening, how LLMs interpret your content, and why Education and Community teams are uniquely positioned to win if they act now.

You’ll move from 101 to 301 quickly, gaining clarity on how citation works, what to measure, and why modular, structured educational content has a competitive edge. Before you change anything, you need to understand the new system you’re operating in.

9:15 AM PT  ||  12:15 PM ET Expert Roundtable: From Analysis Paralysis to Action: What You Can Actually Change This Year

Understanding the shift is step one, applying it without overcomplicating everything is step two. In this candid discussion, experienced academy and community leaders unpack what’s realistic this quarter, what’s noise, and where most digital hubs are structurally misaligned. You’ll hear how teams are restructuring content, thinking about what to open up versus gate, and designing experiences that work across academy, community, knowledge, and agents—not in silos.

From there, you’ll pick which AEO Build Lab you want to attend for hands-on, practical plans for the next 90 days. 

10:05 AM PT  ||  1:05 PM ET Community Build Lab: Designing Community for the Zero-Click Era

Members don’t just read your community, AI interprets it. In this working session, you’ll get coached by experts on how threads get surfaced or misquoted, what makes a discussion citation-ready, and how structure, tagging, and accepted answers influence visibility. You’ll identify clear structural and governance shifts that strengthen authority while still building real human connection.

You won’t leave with abstract advice, you’ll leave knowing exactly where to start and what to adjust in the next 90 days. 

10:05 AM PT  ||  1:05 PM ET Academy Build Lab: From Monolithic Courses to Modular Intelligence

If your learning content is just locked in long-form courses or buried behind walls, AI can’t parse it, and customers won’t find it. In this tactical session, you’ll explore how to break down content into modular, answer-friendly units, diversify long-form and short-form learning intentionally, and architect content so it can live across academy, knowledge, community, and agents without becoming chaotic.

You’ll walk away with a sharper structural lens and a clear execution path for your team in the next 90 days.

You'll leave with:

• A clear understanding of what AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) actually means for post-sale teams
• A structural audit of your academy or community
• A 90-day AI-readiness action plan you can implement immediately

Who Should Attend: 

Heads of Customer Education

• Leaders who own adoption and retention through learning, and are now rethinking how to make their academy modular, discoverable, and structured so AI surfaces the value they’ve worked so hard to build.

Community Leaders

• Builders who drive support deflection and retention through peer knowledge, and want their community AI-structured so the right answers get surfaced, cited, and trusted.

Digital Customer Success Strategists​​​​​​​

• The operators tying it all together—academy, community, in-product, lifecycle—owning the full post-sale journey and the retention metrics that come with it, while designing a connected Digital Customer Hub built for AI.

Post-Sale Content Owners

• The content strategists behind the scenes who fuel everything customers (and LLMs) read, analyze, and surface. Those who need to architect content intentionally across channels instead of letting it sprawl.

Why Attend Now?

Because the shift is already happening.

The teams who restructure first will become the default authority AI cites.

The teams who wait will struggle to catch up.

Unplugged is your opportunity to get ahead, with real experts and real operators  before this becomes table stakes.