Early Birds Win Big: First 50 Delegates Win a Dancing Robot!

AI is transforming business strategy, and CIOs must act decisively. This keynote explores practical strategies for adopting, scaling, and governing AI across the enterprise. Attendees will gain insights on infrastructure, talent, and risk management, as well as actionable approaches to drive innovation, operational efficiency, and measurable business impact in today’s AI-driven landscape.

Navigating the chaos of change

New research shows that 83% of ANZ knowledge workers understand their strategic priorities, yet only 51% say daily work reflects them — while AI capability outpaces most organisations’ ability to absorb it. Drawing on the 2026 Workforce Productivity Report, this session reveals where productivity is lost and how connected, agentic work platforms close the gap.

In 1962, a single officer’s refusal stopped a nuclear launch. The safeguard that made it possible was partly luck. Today, AI systems make thousands of consequential decisions every day, and leaders can’t afford to leave judgement to chance.

When AI can act, trust becomes the limit on how far it can go. In this talk, Meera Govan from NiCE explores how organisations can scale AI without scaling away human judgement. She unpacks why trust is the outcome of ethics, responsible AI and governance working together, why traditional governance struggles to keep pace, and how starting with your “ethical nightmares” creates guardrails that grow with you, rather than slow you down. The session closes with three practical steps CIOs can start this quarter, before the conversation continues in the roundtable discussions later in the day.

The evolution to cloud computing and SaaS purchase models have given rise to dependence on a number of mega-vendors who have control over where our data and the infrastructure associated with that data are located. These models raise questions about who has authority over and access to our data, applications and associated infrastructure and create concerns about corporate intellectual property and sensitive data privacy and security. Further, this dependence creates a loss of control and leverage regarding the roadmaps, stability and costs of these solutions. The rising requirement to leverage AI models that require integrity of data and protection against unwanted bias increase the urgency of these issues.

This session will generate discussion about what steps need to be taken today, to create vendor independence and digital sovereignty.

HCLTech and Team Global Express will present this fireside chat, giving CIOs a practical playbook for moving GenAI out of pilot mode into governed, agentic-scale operations. Sharing real world experience and insights, they will cover data readiness, ROI measurement frameworks, and the operating-model shifts needed to prove business impact.

The rapid evolution from assistive generative AI to autonomous, multi-agent systems represents a fundamental shift in how organisations operate, decide, and deliver services. While agentic workflows offer unprecedented leaps in operational velocity, decision intelligence, and citizen services, they introduce profound challenges for regulated industries and public sector agencies – where data sovereignty, zero-trust security, continuous auditability, and deterministic compliance are non-negotiable.
In this keynote fireside chat, we’ll explore what it takes to transition agentic AI from experimental sandboxes into mission-critical production. The session investigates regulatory guardrails, data stewardship, and how modern hybrid cloud architectures deliver the confidential computing, sovereign isolation, and enterprise trust necessary to scale AI responsibly.

Get ready to unleash your inner chef! Join us for a MasterChef-style cooking activity, where you’ll team up, get creative, whip up something delicious together, and take your creation home with you!