Garth Case

Garth Case saw AI coming. Not in a vague theoretical sense. He saw it in 2017, inside the NBA's data infrastructure, in a four-week backlog of game photos waiting to be manually tagged, and in a Microsoft platform that could collapse that backlog into a single day.

He took that story to Microsoft Build 2018 in Seattle. The tool he demoed, NBA PhotoSorter, used Azure Cognitive Search to automatically sort, tag, and categorize the massive stream of photography generated by 30 teams across an 82-game season. Microsoft featured his work nationally. He considered it a starting point.

Garth has 30 years in technology, earned in some of the most demanding environments in the world. He cut his teeth in corporate systems at Revlon, then moved to the international foreign exchange trading desk at Societe Generale, where he supported over 200 traders on a 24-hour global operation. At Citigroup, he helped design and deploy what became the internet's first consumer banking platform. He co-founded OneConnect Enterprises and invented a multi-antenna mobile hotspot device for Caribbean travelers, solving a real connectivity problem before connectivity was a mainstream conversation. Each stop taught him the same lesson: complex systems reward people who build for the constraint.

He spent nearly 20 years at the NBA as Vice President of Information Technology. His portfolio covered customer relationship marketing, player contract and collective bargaining systems, emerging technology initiatives, and facilities security and surveillance infrastructure across 30 arenas. The job rewarded people who could hold a long view while solving today's problem. That was his specialty.

Today he runs PLUG Labs, an AI strategy, transformation, and automation company. He works with enterprise organizations and mid-market companies across many industries, helping them move AI from a boardroom conversation into something that actually changes how they operate. He consults, speaks at events where practical AI matters more than theoretical AI, and builds agentic systems designed to earn their keep from day one. His clients are usually at one of two moments: curious about AI and overwhelmed by the options, or already experimenting and not yet seeing results. Both are good places to start.