OpenAI announced on September 23 that it’s expanding its Academy program through a new Community Trainer Program. The program trains staff at partner organisations, including small-business networks, to deliver OpenAI’s AI skills curriculum in their own communities.
This is not another webinar you watch alone at midnight. It is a trained local person running a hands-on workshop in your town, helping you apply ChatGPT to the work you actually do. Since 2024, OpenAI Academy has hosted more than 250 events, and more than 4 million people have engaged with Academy content, bringing together educators, small business owners, developers, nonprofit leaders and community members.
The shift matters. Most AI training is either too general or too technical. This is task-focused. A small business owner could build a repeatable customer research process, for example. You bring the problem, the trainer shows you the tool, and you leave with something you can use next week.
What the program covers
Participating organisations nominate staff members to learn the Academy curriculum and how to guide a practical workshop, including demonstrating useful workflows, helping people apply AI to their own tasks, encouraging peer learning, and supporting participants as they evaluate results. They complete training and a facilitation assessment before leading Academy sessions.
The workshops are not theory. Practical application drives the curriculum, and the most effective training gives people dedicated time to try AI tools on work that matters to them, with coaching from OpenAI mentors and peer learning built into the sessions.
Why it works better than online courses
Online AI courses give you concepts. This gives you three things online courses miss: someone who can answer your specific question, other business owners trying the same thing, and accountability to actually finish.
The idea is to move some instruction closer to where people live and work, with trainers guiding hands-on sessions, helping participants apply AI to their own tasks, and encouraging them to compare approaches.
If you run a landscaping business in Brisbane and you want to know how to use ChatGPT to write quotes faster, you need to see someone do it with an actual quote, not watch a generic demo about "content creation."
If you run a landscaping business in Brisbane and you want to know how to use ChatGPT to write quotes faster, you need to see someone do it with an actual quote, not watch a generic demo about "content creation."
How to find a session near you
What to do this week
Go to academy.openai.com and join the Small Business community. The next time a Brisbane or southeast Queensland workshop is listed, you will see it first. Then book it, bring a real task from your business, and use the session to solve it.
The best AI training is the one that saves you three hours next Monday.
Prompted by OpenAI.