Shreveport Small Business AI Training Joins a $5 Million Network

Northwest Louisiana APEX Accelerator ran free Small Business AI training on September 9, 2026, in two beginner sessions for owners who had never touched the tools. The office asked people to bring a laptop or tablet. No prior experience was required.

The class used the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s Small Business B(AI)sics playbook, a Google-supported national course, and it ran inside a Department of Defense-funded shop whose actual product is government contracting help.

Two Sessions in a Defense-Funded Office

The APEX event page listed Small Business bAIsics Training as an all-day listing with two beginner sessions on September 9, then marked the date expired once the rooms had closed. Dr. DeShana Hall, a contract specialist at the accelerator, was the contact, at 318-677-2505.

The same office sits at 400 Edwards Street in Shreveport, inside the Greater Shreveport Chamber of Commerce. A local television station put a video of the sessions on air on September 10, 2026, at 1:26 p.m. CDT, and named only NWLA APEX as the host.

That credit is accurate as far as the room goes. It leaves out who wrote the curriculum, who paid for the national rollout, and why a Pentagon-backed procurement counselor was the person walking owners through prompts.

NWLA APEX is the old Procurement Technical Assistance Center under a newer name. It serves ten parishes: Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Claiborne, DeSoto, Lincoln, Natchitoches, Red River, Sabine, and Webster. The footer on its own event page still says the accelerator is funded in part through a cooperative agreement with the Department of Defense.

Google.org Put $5 Million Behind 40,000 Owners

Small Business B(AI)sics started as a national project of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, with support from Google. On October 8, 2025, Google said it was putting $5 million from Google.org into the program through its AI Opportunity Fund, to give 40,000 U.S. small businesses basic AI skills.

The next day, at the Chamber’s CO-100 small-business event, the Chamber said the effort would train 40,000 small business owners over three years, with in-person classes plus a digital hub on its CO- platform. Karan Bhatia, Google’s vice president of government affairs and public policy, said more than half of small business leaders already call AI tools critical to success, and that the collaboration was meant to put training in front of Main Street owners.

On April 29, 2026, Shanique Streete, executive director of resilient communities at the Foundation, published the first public roster of local hosts. Greater Shreveport Chamber of Commerce is on that list, next to Livingston Parish Chamber of Commerce, the only other Louisiana name. Counted host by host, the roster is 43 chambers across 27 states. That roster is the in-person delivery list. It is not the same figure as the Foundation’s wider network of more than 1,500 state and local partners cited at launch.

THE MONEY BEHIND THE CLASSROOM

The $5 million buys the national course. The $751,934.75 cooperative agreement, the fifth straight annual award to the Shreveport Chamber of Commerce since 2022, keeps the local APEX office open. Barksdale’s 2022 number is the demand those counselors were hired to chase, not a line item in the AI grant.

Why a Contract Counselor Taught Prompt Writing

Hall’s title is contract specialist. Her office’s published mission is to strengthen the defense industrial base by helping local firms sell to every level of government. The FAQ on the same site names the buyers in this region: Barksdale Air Force Base, Fort Polk’s Joint Readiness Training Center, Red River Army Depot, the General Services Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers, VA medical centers, the state, cities, school boards, and parish offices.

Most federal purchases under $250,000 are reserved for small businesses, the accelerator tells new clients, and its Bid Match tool scrapes more than 2,500 government procurement sites a day. AI literacy is a new module on that older stack. Owners who can draft a capability statement, a marketing email, or a first pass at a bid package faster are easier to get contract-ready, which is the metric APEX already lives on.

The Foundation named the Chamber as the Louisiana host. APEX ran the room because it already had the counselor, the small-business list, and the downtown address. Hall told owners in July that the Foundation grant had gone to her organization and the Chamber together, and that people did not have to be Chamber members or APEX clients to sit in.

The Chamber’s own launch post is the cleanest statement of what the national side thinks it is selling.

The U.S. Chamber and @USCCFoundation, with support from @Googleorg, have launched a national initiative to train 40,000 small businesses on how to use AI to accelerate growth.

Learn more about Small Business B(AI)sics: https://t.co/CsF3rL6f7f pic.twitter.com/fYV57C7IW0

— U.S. Chamber (@USChamber) October 9, 2025

Other APEX offices still teach SAM registration, mentor-protégé rules, and FEMA carrier paperwork. NWLA’s September calendar around the AI class is the same diet: a FEMA Tender of Service briefing on September 10 and an introduction to the mentor-protégé program on September 17. The AI session did not replace that work. It sat on the same agenda.

Hall’s Two-Hour Map From Prompts to Data Safety

Shreveport had already run the course once. On July 29, 2026, three two-hour sessions met in the science lecture auditorium at LSU Shreveport, at 8:30 to 10:30 a.m., 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., and 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Hall described those sessions as soup to nuts, from basic concepts to tools and platforms, and she asked people to bring a phone, tablet, or laptop.

The September 9 pair used the same beginner frame. The public outline did not name a brand, a model, or a paid tier, which matches what Hall said before the first class.

WHAT THE TWO-HOUR CLASS COVERS

• Prompt writing: How to ask a tool for a result you can actually use in the business, not a generic paragraph.
• Daily work: Marketing, sales, customer service, finance, and operations, the five buckets Hall listed.
• Data safety: How to keep customer lists, internal budgets, and donor lists out of a prompt that leaves the building.
• Tool choice: A survey of what is on the market, with no house brand attached.
• Gear: A laptop or tablet in the room, because the session is built as a hands-on lab, not a speech.

Hall was blunt about vendors. She said the class would not pick a winner for anyone.

We’re not gonna recommend any specific brand of AI. It’s just more of this is what’s out here. This is what’s available for you and you choose which is best for you and your company, which one will meet your needs better.

DeShana Hall, contract specialist, Northwest Louisiana APEX Accelerator

That line matters because Google.org is the funder and Google’s own Grow with Google track, announced the same week as B(AI)sics, pushes Gemini and NotebookLM in a separate free course called Make AI Work for You. Hall’s classroom, on paper, stays vendor-neutral even though the check that built the national program came from Mountain View.

She also said businesses that never adopt the tools still need the basics, because the Chamber is pushing the course as AI becomes part of ordinary work. “It’s probably going to be a good idea for a lot of businesses to get on the AI bandwagon, because that is just the direction of things right now,” she said ahead of the July sessions.

Forty-Three Chambers, One Script

Once you look past Shreveport, the September 9 class reads like a franchise date. Battle Creek, Michigan, was already in the program by late August. The Mobile Chamber in Alabama ran a session on June 17, 2026, from 8:30 to 10:00 a.m. at Bishop State Community College. Maryland’s chamber has a workshop on September 23. Detroit’s is on September 22. New Albany, Indiana, has one on October 6.

Local flyers keep recycling the same hook about an extra hour in the day, a month of marketing, hiring packets, meeting notes, and onboarding. After class, the Foundation’s trainee toolkit even hands attendees prewritten social posts that begin “I learned the B(AI)sics!” and credit the Foundation, the local chamber, and Google.org. Several of those posts have already gone up in that exact wording, which is how a national campaign looks when it is working as designed, and also how little of the copy is native to Shreveport.

HOW THE CLASS GOT TO SHREVEPORT

1. October 8, 2025: Google.org announces $5 million for Small Business B(AI)sics and a 40,000-owner target.
2. October 9, 2025: The U.S. Chamber launches the program at CO-100, with in-person classes and a digital hub on CO-.
3. April 29, 2026: The Foundation names 43 local hosts, including Greater Shreveport and Livingston Parish.
4. June 17, 2026: Mobile, Alabama, runs an early in-person session.
5. July 29, 2026: Three two-hour sessions meet at LSU Shreveport’s science lecture auditorium.
6. September 9, 2026: NWLA APEX hosts two more beginner sessions in Shreveport.

The digital course is the overflow valve for people who missed both local dates. The Chamber has been pointing owners to that hub since late August, with the same promise of no tech background required.

The Class Still Has to Beat Paying Work

Two hours is a small ask on a flyer and a large ask on a Tuesday when the owner is also the bookkeeper, the estimator, and the person who answers the phone. Free training still costs the hours that would have gone to a job that invoices this week. That limit is built into the format, and it does not show up in the national target of 40,000 names.

Hall’s safety module is the other hard edge. A prompt that includes a customer list, a bid price, or a donor file can leak the one asset a small contractor cannot replace. Louisiana lawyers have already been fined for filing AI hallucinations in court. Hall’s pitch in July was that owners would rather learn that lesson in a lab than in a sanction order.

The class also will not, by itself, get anyone a contract. NWLA APEX does not award work and says so. A first federal award, at other accelerators in the same network, is often a 12-to-18-month project after the owner is registered, coded, and bid-ready. Prompt practice is a front-end skill on that longer path, not a substitute for SAM.gov, a capability statement, or a reviewed proposal.

Barksdale Already Buys From the Same Zip Code

In a 2023 client write-up, NWLA said its firms won $72 million in federal contracts in 2022, and that Barksdale Air Force Base spent $65.8 million that year, with 90% of it going to small businesses. Those are the dollars the AI class is quietly pointed at, even when the slide deck is about marketing copy.

The region’s other AI story is much larger and much less local in ownership. On August 18, 2026, Louisiana Economic Development said Amazon had added $6 billion to its northwest Louisiana data-center plans, taking the total to $18 billion across three campuses, including a new site at Resilient Technology Park in Shreveport. The state put the add-on at 210 direct jobs and 499 indirect jobs, or 709 in all, plus nearly $500,000 already granted to 46 local groups.

Those campuses will need electricians, HVAC techs, and contractors. They will not, on their own, teach a five-person shop how to keep a customer list out of a chatbot. That is the gap B(AI)sics is built to fill, and it is why a DoD counselor in a Chamber building spent September 9 on prompts instead of NAICS codes.

Hall is still the person to call at 318-677-2505. The same desk that closed the two AI sessions still takes new APEX clients who want to sell to Barksdale, the Corps of Engineers, or a parish school board, which is the work the cooperative agreement actually funds.