IT By Design's eighth annual conference brings more than 500 MSP leaders to Jersey City August 3 through 5 for operator-led sessions and a hands-on AI Accelerator, closing with a Great Gatsby-themed night at the New York Stock Exchange.

JERSEY CITY, NJ / ACCESS Newswire / July 28, 2026 / Zack Kass, former Head of Go-To-Market at OpenAI, will headline the opening day of Build IT LIVE 2026, IT By Design's annual conference for managed service provider (MSP) leaders. The event runs August 3 through 5 at the Hyatt Regency Jersey City and brings together more than 500 MSP founders and decision makers around one question: not what AI tools exist, but how to actually deploy them.

Kass helped build the commercial strategy that brought ChatGPT to enterprise buyers. On the mainstage, he'll join IT By Design founders Sunny and Kam Kaila to apply that experience directly to how MSPs grow.

The room is built to match the stakes. Build IT LIVE runs at 92% C-suite attendance, so the founder or leader in the next seat is making the same AI buying and implementation calls you are, right now.

What's on the Agenda

Days One and Two run four tracks: AI & Future, Leadership, Operations, and Growth & Sales, with more than 40 breakout sessions. Day Three is the AI Accelerator, opening with a mainstage keynote and a live AI panel.

The AI Accelerator

Day Three belongs to the AI Accelerator. The morning opens with a mainstage keynote and a live AI panel, then the room splits into three consecutive rounds of hands-on workshops across the morning, afternoon, and late afternoon. Owner-operators build. Senior executives map strategy. Every attendee leaves with working tools rather than slides: N8N workflow templates ready to deploy and a pricing guide for reselling AI services to clients. The day closes with the ITBD Partner Awards, then a Great Gatsby-themed night at the New York Stock Exchange.

Ahead of the event, attendees can take the AI Index, a short self-assessment that scores an MSP's AI maturity and flags where the biggest gaps sit. IT By Design built the agenda around it, so attendees can match their score to the Accelerator track that fits where their business actually stands.

"Understanding AI was never the bottleneck for this industry. Knowing how to build the team and the culture around it is. That's the gap we built this event to close."

- Sunny Kaila, Founder and CEO, IT By Design

"Every year, Build IT LIVE gets better. The biggest value comes from the relationships, the conversations, and the collaboration with other MSPs that help shape new ideas and long-term direction."

- Ed Pawlowski, COO, Meriplex

Full agenda and details at itbd.net/live.

About IT By Design

IT By Design is the operating partner behind managed service providers, the IT companies running the technology of small and mid-size businesses across North America. We build and run global delivery teams, 24x7 NOC and SOC operations, AI automation, and performance management systems for MSPs,

Media Contact: Tushar Doara, Director of Marketing
Tushar.doara@itbd.net
(551) 278-0927

SOURCE: IT By Design