"Building and Maintaining Culture for High-Performing Teams” tackles culture not as fluffy rhetoric, but as the backbone of sustained excellence. Our panellists will share how they establish values, embed them into daily life, and keep them alive during growth, disruption, and digital transformation. A special focus will be on how AI is shifting cultural dynamics: enabling real-time insight, nudging behaviours, introducing new ethical questions, and rebalancing power among teams. Expect stories, challenges, and principles you can carry straight into your organisation.

Key Discussion Points

• The founding moments: how to intentionally seed culture (vision, norms, rituals)
• Sustaining trust, psychological safety, and accountability as teams scale or shift
• Embedding feedback, learning, and adaptive rhythm as culture layers evolve
The role of AI in culture: opportunities, risks, and design (e.g. sentiment analysis, nudges, bias, explainability)
• Resilience through change: culture in times of crisis, merge, or disruption

As agentic AI systems evolve from passive tools to active collaborators, organizations must prepare their people—and their data—for this shift. In this keynote, Jan explores the convergence of AI literacy, governance, and modern data architecture as the bedrock of workforce enablement. Delegates will learn how to build AI-ready teams by fostering literacy, trust, and ethical oversight—while also ensuring their data platform can deliver trusted, accessible, and context-rich business data at scale. Drawing on real-world examples, this session provides a roadmap for responsibly deploying agentic AI and upskilling the workforce to thrive alongside it.

Key Takeaways:
• How to foster AI literacy across technical and non-technical roles
• Governance strategies tailored to agentic and autonomous AI systems
• The role of a modern data platform in ensuring accessible, high-quality, trusted data
• Case examples of AI-enabled workforce transformation—what works and what doesn’t
• Practical steps for aligning data, technology, and people in AI-augmented environments

A Service Design Approach to Digital Transformation and Organisational Change: What’s Your Problem?!

Your answer to someone else’s problem is not the solution...
This workshop explores how service design methodologies can drive sustainable digital transformation and organisational change.

Session Outline:

• Defining a Service: Understanding what a service is and how it relates to organisational dynamics.
• Understanding the Problem: Exploring techniques to uncover and define core challenges.
• The Knowledge Board: What do you know versus what you think you know?
• Service Design and Organisational Agility: Examining the interplay between service design principles and agile practices.

In this practical session, participants will gain hands-on experience with easy-to-use tools that help identify what’s working, what’s not, and where the real issues lie. By leveraging these tools, teams can quickly identify, test, and refine solutions to create impactful, lasting change.

Key Takeaways:

By the end of the session, participants will be able to:
• Recognise that within any organisation, every staff member delivers a service to their colleagues.
• Appreciate the critical importance of thoroughly understanding the problem before driving change.
• Easily distinguish between what is known, what is assumed, and what is unknown.
• Quickly adopt a ‘testing’ mindset.
• Understand the importance of iteration in driving digital transformation and organisational change.

In an era shaped by AI, quantum computing, and data-driven disruption, today’s C-suite must evolve from strategic oversight to dynamic transformation leadership. This session explores how executive leaders can future-proof their organizations by embracing agility, embedding ethical innovation, and aligning tech adoption with long-term resilience goals. With real-world insights from across industries, delegates will leave with an actionable framework for navigating uncertainty and leading responsibly in the face of rapid technological change.

Key Takeaways:

• Understand the emerging tech landscape and its implications for executive decision-making
• Learn how to embed agility and continuous innovation into C-suite leadership culture
• Explore responsible tech adoption strategies balancing innovation with risk
• Gain a practical framework to align emerging technologies with ESG and resilience goals
• Discover real-world lessons from C-level leaders navigating digital transformation

The Standard Bank Group (SBG) has leveraged Enterprise Architecture (EA) to navigate the complexities of modern business and technology landscapes. Over the past two years, SBG has successfully introduced generative AI and an API strategy into its operations. Despite facing numerous challenges—including a lack of understanding, clashing priorities, stakeholder buy-in, funding issues, vendor interference, and lack of clear business requirements—these initiatives have thrived through the application of mature EA practices. These practices have evolved over five years, emphasising collaboration, transparent governance, reference architectures, and an agile approach to emerging concepts.
This presentation will delve into the strategies that have enabled EA to effectively address and overcome these challenges, showcasing the benefits of collaborative efforts and innovative solutions within SBG.
Key takeaways:

• How reference architectures can guide implementation and ensure consistency.
• The role of governance in aligning goals and educating stakeholders.
• The importance of collaboration between architecture and engineering teams.

"Building and Maintaining Culture for High-Performing Teams” tackles culture not as fluffy rhetoric, but as the backbone of sustained excellence. Our panellists will share how they establish values, embed them into daily life, and keep them alive during growth, disruption, and digital transformation. A special focus will be on how AI is shifting cultural dynamics: enabling real-time insight, nudging behaviours, introducing new ethical questions, and rebalancing power among teams. Expect stories, challenges, and principles you can carry straight into your organisation.

Key Discussion Points

• The founding moments: how to intentionally seed culture (vision, norms, rituals)
• Sustaining trust, psychological safety, and accountability as teams scale or shift
• Embedding feedback, learning, and adaptive rhythm as culture layers evolve
The role of AI in culture: opportunities, risks, and design (e.g. sentiment analysis, nudges, bias, explainability)
• Resilience through change: culture in times of crisis, merge, or disruption

• Discover how transforming your mindset can turn AI from a challenge into a strategic partner in HR.
• Learn practical steps to build confidence and embrace AI-driven innovation.
• Gain insights into a clear, step-by-step approach to implementing AI solutions effectively.

As agentic AI systems evolve from passive tools to active collaborators, organizations must prepare their people—and their data—for this shift. In this keynote, Jan explores the convergence of AI literacy, governance, and modern data architecture as the bedrock of workforce enablement. Delegates will learn how to build AI-ready teams by fostering literacy, trust, and ethical oversight—while also ensuring their data platform can deliver trusted, accessible, and context-rich business data at scale. Drawing on real-world examples, this session provides a roadmap for responsibly deploying agentic AI and upskilling the workforce to thrive alongside it.

Key Takeaways:
• How to foster AI literacy across technical and non-technical roles
• Governance strategies tailored to agentic and autonomous AI systems
• The role of a modern data platform in ensuring accessible, high-quality, trusted data
• Case examples of AI-enabled workforce transformation—what works and what doesn’t
• Practical steps for aligning data, technology, and people in AI-augmented environments

A new era of intelligence is here. But who will actually build, manage, and ensure these advanced AI systems work correctly and reliably? The traditional lines of engineering are blurring, demanding skillsets that are both deeper technically and broader in scope than ever before. What if the engineer of tomorrow isn't just coding features, but orchestrating complex ecosystems of specialized AI agents? And when these powerful systems inevitably hit edge cases, produce unexpected outputs, or require deep validation, who will have the expertise to dive in, debug, and ensure they stay on track?

A fundamental shift is happening in tech. While there's plenty of predictions about automation replacing engineers, the reality is different: a new type of expert is becoming indispensable. These are the engineers who can truly get under the hood of AI systems, rigorously validate their outputs, and troubleshoot the toughest problems. They won’t just be ‘needed’, they’ll be the critical go-to people in this AI-driven landscape.

We'll explore why Data and AI Engineers are set to become some of the most vital and in-demand roles in the industry. We’ll dive into the future of data engineering that is now critically intertwined with AI, demanding new levels of expertise in architecting and managing the high-throughput, real-time systems that intelligent applications depend on. Join us to understand the evolving challenges and opportunities, and how you can become a key player in building the future of intelligent systems.

In an era shaped by AI, quantum computing, and data-driven disruption, today’s C-suite must evolve from strategic oversight to dynamic transformation leadership. This session explores how executive leaders can future-proof their organizations by embracing agility, embedding ethical innovation, and aligning tech adoption with long-term resilience goals. With real-world insights from across industries, delegates will leave with an actionable framework for navigating uncertainty and leading responsibly in the face of rapid technological change.

Key Takeaways:

• Understand the emerging tech landscape and its implications for executive decision-making
• Learn how to embed agility and continuous innovation into C-suite leadership culture
• Explore responsible tech adoption strategies balancing innovation with risk
• Gain a practical framework to align emerging technologies with ESG and resilience goals
• Discover real-world lessons from C-level leaders navigating digital transformation

AI Test Labs:

• We launched AI Test Labs as hands-on, interactive workshops enabling employees to explore and apply AI tools in real-world scenarios.
• Demand exceeded expectations, leading us to schedule additional sessions. Participant feedback was highly positive, with an average satisfaction rating of 4.75 out of 5
• Over 20% of our workforce has now received AI-related training, building foundational knowledge across the business
• The sessions cover critical topics such as deepfakes, data privacy and protection, AI hallucinations, and responsible AI use, ensuring employees understand both opportunities and risks
• AI Test Labs serve as a launchpad for advanced training and help identify practical use cases for rolling out AI tools and technologies across the organisation
• Feedback highlights strong relevance and usability of AI tools, with an average effectiveness rating of 4 out of 5 and ease-of-use scoring 4.77 out of 5

Government AI Programme:

• We are proud to be one of only 20 UK companies selected to join the Alan Turing Institute’s national AI programme
• The programme runs from September 2025 to March 2026, focusing on ethical, secure, and impactful AI adoption.
• Our participation includes the Turing Way Practitioners Hub, which addresses:
• AI sustainability
• Human-centric design
• Legal and governance frameworks
• Cybersecurity and ethics
• Tooling for AI strategy and road mapping
•This collaboration positions us at the forefront of responsible AI innovation and strengthens our ability to integrate best practices into our operations.