No Slides, No Pitches: Just SE Leaders and Honest Conversation

Last week, something special happened in New York City. Iris partnered with Opine and Olto to bring together some of the brightest minds in solutions engineering and AI for an intimate dinner salon. The Solutions + AI Thought Leaders Dinner wasn't about product pitches or sales decks. It was about connection, conversation, and the future of our industry.

In an industry where most conversations happen over demo calls and Slack channels, we wanted to create something different. An evening where SE leaders could step away from their screens, share a meal, and have the kind of honest, generative discussions that only happen face-to-face.

The Case for In-Person Community Building

If you work in sales engineering, you know the role is often misunderstood. You're the bridge between technical possibility and business reality. You translate customer pain into product solutions. You build demos at midnight before big calls. And often, you do all of this without a large community of peers who truly understand what your day looks like.

That's why investing in community matters so much to us at Iris. The sales engineering community deserves spaces to connect, learn, and grow together. Not just through webinars and LinkedIn posts, but through real human connection. When SE leaders gather around a dinner table, magic happens. Ideas spark. Relationships form. Problems that seemed insurmountable suddenly have three different solutions because someone across the table faced the exact same challenge last quarter.

Communities like PreSales Collective,  and regional groups like SENY (Sales Engineering New York) have been doing incredible work building these connections. Our dinner was our way of contributing to that ecosystem and bringing together people who might not otherwise cross paths.

What Made This Dinner Different

When we started planning this event with Opine and Olto, we knew we didn't want another networking happy hour where people awkwardly exchange business cards. We wanted substance. We wanted depth. We wanted conversations that would still be resonating weeks later.

The dinner salon format gave us exactly that. By keeping the group intimate and structuring the evening around thoughtful discussion, we created space for real exchange. Topics ranged from how AI is reshaping the presales function to the challenges of scaling SE teams while maintaining technical excellence. Leaders shared their frameworks for managing complex deals, their approaches to enablement, and their honest takes on where the industry is heading.

What struck us most was the generosity of the room. SE leaders who technically compete for the same deals were freely sharing playbooks and lessons learned. That's the power of community. When you invest in bringing people together without an agenda, trust forms naturally and everyone benefits.

Why Iris Invests in Community

At Iris, we build AI-powered tools that help sales engineering and presales teams respond to RFPs and security questionnaires faster. But our mission goes beyond software. We want to empower the people doing this work, and that means supporting the community they belong to.

Community investment isn't a marketing strategy for us. It's core to how we operate. We believe that when SE professionals succeed, the entire industry moves forward. Better processes get developed. Best practices get shared. Young SEs learn from experienced leaders. Innovation happens at the community level, not just the company level.

This is why we partner with organizations like Opine, whose platform helps teams capture and leverage customer feedback, and Olto, which is reimagining how presales teams operate. All three of us share a belief that the future of B2B sales is more human, not less. AI should amplify what great SE professionals do. It should give them back time to have strategic conversations and build meaningful customer relationships. And gatherings like our NYC dinner are where those human connections happen.

The AI + Solutions Engineering Conversation

No dinner of thought leaders in 2026 could avoid the topic of AI. But what made our conversation unique was the practical, grounded perspective SE leaders brought to the table. These aren't people theorizing about AI from a distance. They're actively implementing it, seeing what works, and navigating the real challenges of adoption.

The consensus? AI is transforming presales work, but not in the way the headlines suggest. It's not replacing solution engineers. It's handling the repetitive, time-consuming tasks that used to eat up their days. Drafting initial RFP responses. Pulling information from knowledge bases. Handling the first pass on security questionnaires. This gives SE teams more bandwidth for what they do best: understanding customer needs, architecting solutions, and building the trust that closes deals.

Several leaders mentioned they've seen their teams' capacity expand significantly after implementing AI tools. One VP shared that what used to take her team 4-5 hours per RFP now takes under an hour for the initial draft, freeing her SEs to spend more time on customization and customer calls. That's the kind of transformation that gets us excited. Not replacing expertise, but amplifying it.

Building Lasting Connections

The best part of the evening wasn't any single insight or discussion point. It was watching relationships form in real time. SE leaders who came as strangers left as connections. LinkedIn invites were sent before dessert arrived. Plans for follow-up calls were already being made.

This is what community looks like when it's done right. Not transactional networking, but genuine human connection around shared challenges and aspirations. The sales engineering community is full of incredibly talented, generous professionals. They just need opportunities to find each other.

If you're an SE leader looking to connect with peers, we encourage you to get involved with the broader community. Join PreSales Collective. Attend events with your regional SE groups. Participate in online communities where practitioners share openly. And if you're in NYC and want to be part of our next gathering, reach out to us. We'd love to meet you.

Looking Ahead

We're already planning future gatherings in different cities, partnering with other companies who share our commitment to the SE community, and thinking about new ways to bring practitioners together.

Thank you to Opine and Olto for co-hosting with us, and to every leader who took time out of their busy schedules to join. You reminded us why this work matters. The conversations you started will ripple outward, influencing how your teams operate, how your companies approach presales, and how our collective industry evolves.

If you're curious about how AI can support your SE team's work, explore what Iris can do for RFP and security questionnaire automation. Or check out how other teams use Iris to reclaim hours every week. But more than anything, we hope you'll invest in your own community connections. That's where the real magic happens.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a sales engineering community?

A sales engineering community is a network of presales and solutions engineering professionals who connect to share knowledge, best practices, and career advice. Communities like PreSales Collective, SE Nation, and regional groups offer resources, events, and peer support for SE professionals at all levels.

Why do companies invest in SE community events?

Companies invest in SE community events because strong professional communities drive industry innovation and talent development. When SE leaders share insights and build relationships, the entire ecosystem benefits. For companies like Iris, supporting the community aligns with our mission to empower presales teams, not just sell to them.

How is AI changing sales engineering work?

AI is transforming sales engineering by automating time-consuming tasks like initial RFP drafts and security questionnaire responses. This allows SE professionals to focus on higher-value activities: understanding customer requirements, designing solutions, and building relationships. The best AI tools amplify human expertise rather than replace it.

How can I join the SE community?

You can join the SE community by signing up for organizations like PreSales Collective or SE Nation, attending local meetups in your city, participating in online forums and Slack channels, and connecting with peers on LinkedIn. Many communities offer free membership tiers with access to content, events, and networking opportunities.

Join the Conversation

The sales engineering community is stronger when we come together. Whether that's at an intimate dinner salon, a major industry conference, or an online forum, these connections matter. They make us better at our craft and more resilient in our careers.

At Iris, we're committed to being active participants in this community, not just vendors selling to it. If you want to learn more about our approach to supporting presales teams, book a demo and let's talk. We'd love to hear your story and share ours.

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