Our First Stop: 1985

Is AI Just Today's Fax Machine?

If you’re under 40, you may have never watched Back to the Future. In that case, consider this article a recommendation for movie night.

If you’re over 40, there’s a good chance you just heard someone yell, “Great Scott!” in Doc Brown’s voice.

Either way, stick with me on this little trip we're about to make as a detour from the typical business article vibe to indulge my enjoyment of describing things with a pop-culture reference.

Quick note: Need a refresher about what this car is? It's a DeLorean - a stainless-steel sports car built in the 1980s and achieved global fame after becoming a time machine in the movie, Back to the Future.

Moving On...

Imagine Doc Brown pulls up outside your Chamber office, swings open the gull-wing doors and says, “Get in. We’re going to visit the past, the present and the future of Chambers.”

• For any young readers, Doc Brown

  is the crazed white-haired guy on the left.

Here we go:

Destination Time: 1985

The DeLorean slows to a stop outside a Chamber office in 1985 and you step inside.

The fax machine is humming, which, for the young generation, just imagine the person standing over it fascinated that they could put a piece of paper into one machine and somehow it magically appeared on another machine somewhere else. Unless the user on the other end forgot to fill the paper tray.

And you notice other things.

Someone is carefully typing a newsletter before physically cutting and pasting the layout for the printer; a volunteer is sticking mailing labels onto envelopes by hand; someone else is updating the Chamber’s Rolodex.

Meeting minutes are typed, hole-punched and put in a binder that somehow weighs more than a pickup truck. And because the search bar on a computer isn't a thing yet, someone's opening filing drawers looking for last year's AGM minutes and surprise, can't find them.

As opposed to AI...

• Nobody ever looked at a fax machine and thought, “Well, that’s cheating.”

• Nobody argued that photocopiers would replace Chamber professionals.

Those tools simply made the work a little easier, and over time, they became normal.

So, maybe AI is simply today’s fax machine. Not because the technology is the same but because every generation has a tool that feels unfamiliar at first, helpful a little later, and eventually becomes so ordinary we can’t imagine working without it.

Present Time: 2026

Back to the DeLorean we go.

Doc nudges the car faster and suddenly we’re back in today’s Chamber office.

• The fax machine has disappeared.

• The Rolodex has become a contact database.

• The filing cabinet has become Google Drive.

• Board meetings happen on Zoom.

• Newsletters arrive in inboxes instead of mailboxes.

Things have grown and shifted, yet more Chamber teams than you'd think haven’t.

Chances are high that the people you see here are starting each social media post and board meeting agenda from scratch for any number of reasons, primarily that they have no time to learn it and/or are fearful of it, thinking it may be replace Chamber professionals. That's not at all it though. I see it as replacing the blank page and gives you somewhere to start.

Instead of rewriting the same membership renewal email every year, AI helps you create a fresh version in seconds. Instead of staring at your screen wondering how to promote an event, AI helps brainstorm ideas you can shape into something uniquely yours. Instead of spending half your afternoon summarizing meeting notes, AI helps organize them while the conversation is still fresh.

Notice what’s missing from that list?

None of those tasks remove your judgment, none replace your relationships, and none eliminate your knowledge of your community.

You’re still the editor, strategist, and Chamber professional.

AI simply helps you spend less time wrestling with repetitive work and more time doing the work only you can do.

Future Time: 2030

“One more stop,” says Doc.

The DeLorean lands a few years into the future.

The Chamber office looks… familiar.

There are still ribbon cuttings, networking events and board meetings.

Still coffee meetings with local business owners,

advocacy to do, and communications to pump out.

The biggest difference isn’t what the Chamber does.

It’s how much more time there is to do it.

And the Chambers making the best use of AI haven’t become more robotic.

They’ve become more human because every hour technology saves becomes another hour invested in relationships.

And if there’s one thing AI will never replace, it’s the trust that comes from sitting across the table from a member and asking,

“How’s business?”

Back to the Present

Every generation of Chamber leaders has embraced new tools. The telephone.

The photocopier and fax machine.

Email, websites, social media, video meetings.

Each one felt unfamiliar at first and became just another part of doing business.

AI is following the same path.

Not because it’s replacing people, but because it’s giving people back something they’ve never had enough of:

Time. The resource that's not renewable despite what time-travel stories may have you believe.

So here’s the question I’d leave you with.

If AI eventually becomes as ordinary as email or the photocopier…

Will your Chamber look back and wish you’d climbed into the DeLorean a little sooner?

Probably.

Because as I've become fond of saying:

"AI is like glitter. It's everywhere and impossible to get rid of."

And truthfully, because we survived dial-up internet, I know we can survive learning AI.

BEFORE YOU SIGN OFF...

Hit the 'Click Here' button to see one of many ways I use AI to get to know chamber leaders. It won't take long and you'll enjoy it, promise!

Click Here

Thank you for reading this far, and if you'd like some ideas on how you can comfortably

implement AI into your Chamber operations, please reach out. It's one of many things I enjoy helping chambers do!

~ Tara Lehman

Chamber Executive Consultant

tara@hellochamber.ca