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SUMMER CAMP DAILY BRIEF
The Summer Camp Daily Brief is published every morning, bringing fresh ideas and inspiration to camp professionals all week long. Mondays explore Leadership & Staffing, while Tuesdays dive into Operations & Systems for smoother, smarter camp management. On Wednesdays, our Professional Development series draws lessons from The Summer Camp MBA. Thursdays celebrate Camper Experience & Program Design, and Fridays look ahead with Industry Trends & Forward Look. Each weekend, we shift gears: Saturdays feature AI in Action, highlighting real-world tools transforming camps today, and Sundays offer the AI & Camp Weekly Summary, a thoughtful reflection on how the week’s AI news connects to the future of camp life.
Camp and Technology
Sunday AI Blog: New Lab Advances, Practical Tools, and Safety Steps for Camps
This week brought steady movement across the major AI labs. The updates from OpenAI, Google, Meta, Anthropic, and Microsoft point toward a clear direction. Tools are becoming faster, more affordable, more controlled, and more grounded in safety. These shifts matter for camps because your teams depend on clarity, reliability, and trust when using new systems. Have you noticed how AI conversations have shifted from "Will this work?" to "How do we use this safely?" That's exactl
Matthew Kaufman
3 days ago
Saturday AI Blog: Two Tools to Tighten Camp Systems and Save Hours Every Week
Ever feel like your camp office is drowning in scattered notes, endless drafts, and routine planning tasks? You're not alone. Most camp offices lose hours each week to the same repetitive work that could be streamlined with the right tools. This week, we're diving into two game-changing tools that can transform how you handle daily operations. Taskade helps you organize and plan with AI-powered structure, while Gemini Tasks speeds up writing and editing inside Google Workspac
Matthew Kaufman
4 days ago
AI and Camp Weekly Summary: How This Week's Breakthroughs Shape Your 2026 Camp Operations (Sunday, November 30, 2025)
This week marked one of the busiest stretches in AI news since early fall. Major platforms released new features. Analysts published adoption reports that caught everyone's attention. School districts and youth programs announced shifts in how they use automation that will ripple through our industry. These stories give you a clear view of where technology is heading and how it will shape camp operations in 2026 and beyond. AI growth affects how families think about safety, c
Matthew Kaufman
Nov 30
AI in Action: How Fireflies.ai and Claude Artifacts Support Faster, Smarter Camp Workflows (Saturday, November 29, 2025)
This week's national news highlighted something interesting: small and mid-sized organizations are adopting AI tools faster than anyone expected. Companies with fewer than 100 employees reported the biggest growth in AI projects, especially for documentation, summarization, and information management. Sound familiar? That's exactly where camps live. You run hundreds of meetings during the off-season. You create training materials, safety protocols, parent communication script
Matthew Kaufman
Nov 29
AI and Camp Weekly Summary: November 23, 2025 Sunday Daily Brief
Welcome to your weekly AI roundup designed specifically for camp professionals. This week delivered some of the biggest AI announcements we've seen all year, and several of these developments will directly impact how you run your camp next summer. Let's dive into what happened and what it means for your day-to-day operations. The Week's Headline News Google dominated this week's AI news with the release of Gemini 3.0, which immediately shot to the top of major AI benchmarks
Matthew Kaufman
Nov 23
AI in Action: How Claude Artifacts and Runway Help Camps Build Stronger Teams
Technology moves fast, but camp moves faster. Between staff training deadlines, parent communications, and program prep, you need tools that work immediately without requiring a computer science degree. This week brought major updates to two AI tools that can transform how you build training materials, strengthen communication, and support program design. Both Claude Artifacts and Runway received significant improvements that push them into the category of tools you can actua
Matthew Kaufman
Nov 22
AI and Camp Weekly Summary: Sunday, November 16 – Week in Review
This week's AI stories all pointed in one direction: the world is moving faster. Tools are getting smarter. Risks are growing. Leaders everywhere are trying to make sense of what this pace means for their work and communities. Camps feel these shifts even when they seem far away. When the outside world speeds up, camp leaders need to respond with steady hands. You work with children, families, and young staff who live in the center of this technological change. You guide them
Matthew Kaufman
Nov 15
AI in Action: How Perplexity and Suno Support Faster, Smarter Camp Workflows
Picture this: It's 9 PM on a Tuesday in March, and you're still at your desk, scrolling through endless Google results trying to find reliable information about new state regulations for summer camps. Sound familiar? Or maybe you're that director who's been searching for the perfect background music for your welcome video for three hours, and nothing feels quite right. Today's AI in Action feature tackles exactly these scenarios with two tools that can transform how you handl
Matthew Kaufman
Nov 15
AI and Camp Weekly Summary : November 9, 2025
Covering developments from November 2 → November 8 As your camp gears up for another season of planning, staffing, and creating those magical moments that help kids grow into confident problem-solvers, the AI landscape keeps shifting in ways that actually matter for your daily operations. This week brought some significant changes that could impact how you communicate with parents, train your staff, and manage the countless details that make camp run smoothly. Let's break dow
Matthew Kaufman
Nov 8
AI in Action: Make.com Automation + Plaud NotePin , Less Clicking, More Leading
The best camp leaders know something their peers are still figuring out: the hours you spend clicking, forwarding, and typing are hours you're not coaching, mentoring, or connecting with your team and campers. Think about your typical Tuesday. How much time did you spend manually forwarding registration emails, copying information between spreadsheets, or frantically taking notes during that important staff meeting? If you're like most camp professionals, it's probably more t
Matthew Kaufman
Nov 8
AI and Camp Weekly Summary : November 2, 2025
Covering developments from October 26 → November 1 As we head deeper into fall and camp planning ramps up, the AI landscape has again shifted in ways that matter for the world of summer camps. This week brought announcements and signals that affect how camps will manage communications, operations, staffing, and safety: not just next year, but right now. What caught my attention this week? Four major developments that camps can't afford to ignore. Let's dive into what happened
Matthew Kaufman
Nov 2
AI in Action · Week 2: Notion Agents and Superhuman Go : Deep-Dive Reviews and Camp-Ready Tutorials
Welcome back to our weekly upskilling series for camp professionals! Each Saturday, we dive deep into two practical, low-cost tools and show you exactly how to use them in real camp workflows. No fluff, no theory – just actionable guides you can implement Monday morning. This week's power duo? Notion with its game-changing Agents feature, and Superhuman Go – the newly launched cross-app AI assistant that follows you wherever you work. Both tools can transform how you handle e
Matthew Kaufman
Nov 1
Camp AI Pulse: This Week’s Innovation & Impact
The October air carries that familiar pre-winter energy: camp directors are deep in planning mode, staff applications are trickling in, and somewhere in a conference room, someone's sketching out next summer's theme weeks on a whiteboard. But this year feels different. While you've been focused on cabin assignments and activity rotations, the AI world has been moving at breakneck speed. This past week alone brought three announcements that will fundamentally change how camps
Matthew Kaufman
Oct 26
AI in Action: Week 1 – Camp-Ready Workflows with ChatGPT Atlas & Gamma
Welcome to the first week of our camp professional upskilling series. Every week, we're diving deep into two practical, affordable AI tools that can transform how you work, no coding required, no complicated setup, just real solutions for real camp challenges. This week's power duo? ChatGPT Atlas and Gamma. Think of Atlas as your research assistant that lives in your browser, and Gamma as your presentation wizard that turns rough ideas into polished decks in minutes. If you'r
Matthew Kaufman
Oct 25
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