Improv Asylum founder and CEO Norm Laviolette has joined the Board of Boston AI Week, bringing a decidedly human perspective to an organization focused on one of the fastest-moving areas of technology.
For more than 25 years, Laviolette has built businesses around live interaction. Through Improv Asylum, Asylum Team Building, Laugh Boston and his work as a speaker and facilitator, he has created comedy shows, training programs, and corporate experiences designed to get people talking, listening, collaborating, taking risks, and responding to one another in real time.
In other words, pretty much the opposite of staring at a screen.
That experience is part of what Laviolette hopes to bring to Boston AI Week as the organization continues to bring together leaders from technology, business, education, and the broader Boston community.
“I’m personally thrilled to be joining the board of Boston AI Week. The fact that they would ask me — someone whose expertise is decidedly not technology, but rather direct human-to-human communication, interaction, entertainment and humor — shows that they are taking into account not only the rapid rise and growth of all kinds of new technology, but also the need for human-level consideration as to how this technology is impacting all of us in real life. And also, let’s be honest, there needs to be somebody in the room that lightens the mood!”
While Laviolette’s career has been rooted in comedy, much of his work has centered on something broader: how people communicate when there isn’t a script.
The principles behind improvisation — listening closely, adapting quickly, building on other people’s ideas, reading a room, communicating clearly, and being comfortable when you don’t know exactly what comes next — have become the foundation of Improv Asylum’s work with companies and organizations around the country.
Those skills become particularly interesting as AI changes how people work.
The question isn’t simply what new technology can do. It’s also what happens to the people using it. How do teams communicate? How do leaders build trust? How do people remain curious and creative? What happens to collaboration when more of our work is mediated by technology?
And where, amid all that efficiency, do we leave some room for actual human beings?
Those are questions Laviolette has spent much of his career exploring — although usually with considerably more laughter involved.
Joining the Boston AI Week board creates an opportunity to bring that experience into conversations that will increasingly shape how businesses, educators, entrepreneurs, and communities think about AI and its place in everyday life.
For Improv Asylum and Asylum Team Building, it also reflects something we’ve believed for a long time: technology will continue to change, but the ability to connect with another person, listen to them, understand them, make them laugh, and create something together isn’t becoming less important.
If anything, it may be becoming more important.
