Building an AI Data Flywheel with GEPA

Join us as James Ryan (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesryanatx/), one of the lead engineers at Tight Line, presents his talk "Building an AI Data Flywheel with GEPA" Abstract Every agent is full of text a human wrote once and never revisited: system prompts, node instructions, tool descriptions, even the config that picks which model runs which step. Meanwhile the agent has produced thousands of traces that could tell you exactly where those guesses are wrong. GEPA (Genetic-Pareto) closes that gap - it reads real failures, proposes rewrites, and keeps only the ones that score better without regressing anything else. Starting from a small open-source text-to-SQL agent, this talk turns GEPA loose on one node's prompt, then on things that don't look like prompts at all. Along the way: building a corpus from OpenTelemetry traces, what a Pareto frontier of prompts looks like, where the human belongs in the loop, and how it breaks when you let it overfit. Live demos and real diffs; leave with a loop you can bolt onto the agent you already have. Location This event is hosted in the Teamworking by TechNexus space. Upon arrival, guests can usually come directly to the 12th floor. If we have a large turnout and you arrive after 6pm, you may need to check-in with the security desk before heading up. The reception team will be there to greet you and help guide you to your room.Parking & TransportationThe Civic Opera Building does not have a dedicated parking lot. There is limited metered parking nearby. We recommend using iParkit or SpotHero to find discounted parking options. The CME Building (10 S. Wacker) is the nearest parking garage, with several additional garages located within a two-block radius. The venue location is highly walkable and conveniently situated near multiple CTA train lines and bus stops, making it easy to access via public transportation. Agenda 6:00 - 6:30 Networking and Bites 6:30 - 6:45 Rising Star Speaker 6:50 - 7:30 Presentation 7:30 - 7:40 Q&A 7:40 - 8:00+ Networking and Wrap Up Sponsors:​​Food and Beverage: Focused an exclusive LangChain partner and boutique consultancy dedicated to building production-ready AI systems that work in the real world. Venue: Teamworking by TechNexus Continue the conversation between gatherings. Join our discord (Join Discord Server)