Agenda
AGENDA ANNOUNCED SOON!
8:55am – 9:00am
Welcome by MC: Mark Jones, Author, Journalist and Entrepreneur
9:00am – 9:15am
Keynote Address: Powering Aotearoa – AI, Cloud and the Next Wave of National Growth
Manuel Bohnet, Country Manager New Zealand, AWS
9:15am – 9:30am
Keynote Address: The Next Horizon – Building New Zealand’s AI-Driven Future
The Hon Dr Shane Reti, Minister for Science, Innovation and Technology, NZ Government
9:30am – 10:00am
THE CHIEFS: CXO Leaders Panel
- The Ultimate Disruptor – how top Chiefs are determining their AI strategies, and reaping the rewards
- The Criteria – how to extract value from data to leverage AI-powered business opportunities
- The Agile Mind – the must-have qualities of innovative CXOs to ‘keep up’ in an AI World
- The 4th Industrial Revolution – educating and upskilling a future AI workforce
Panellists:
- Roxanne Salton, Chief Digital Officer, TSB Bank
- Angela Henderson, Chief Information and Delivery Officer, Fidelity Life NZ
- Helius Guimaraes, Chief Data & AI Officer, Fonterra
- Alexandra Smart, Chief Technology Officer, Southern Cross Travel Insurance; NZ CIO of the Year 2025
- Ankit Gupta, General Manager Group Technology, The Warehouse Group
10:00am - 10:15am
Fireside Chat: Decoding the Path to Value with AI
Avni Nanabhai, Customer Success Executive, Adobe & Travena Addenbrooke, Gen AI & Marketing Transformation Executive, Spark NZ
10:15am – 10:30am
Keynote Address: Generative AI in Action – Unlocking New Zealand’s Next Wave of Productivity
Libby Lavrova, AI Partner Technical Specialist, IBM
10:30am - 11:15am
Morning Tea
11:15am – 11:30am
Fireside Chat: Shaping the Future with AI & CX - A Spark Case Study
Nilay Rathod, Head of Group Architecture & IT, Spark NZ
11:30am – 11:45am
Fireside Chat: AI that Delivers ROI – Embedding AI Across the Value Chain
Francis McGregor-Macdonald, ANZ Head of Technology – Data & AI, AWS and Shahid Saiyad, Financial Services Lead, HCLTech
11:45am – 12:15pm
THE STAND-OUTS: Best Use Cases Panel
- Agentic AI and Synthetic Data – the latest trends and success stories to draw inspiration from
- Sorting the Wheat from the Chaff – the criteria for choosing an LLM
- The Culture Imperative – top strategies to create a culture of innovation to embrace AI’s opportunities
- 2030 – the key innovations that are shaping the next wave of Gen AI and LLMs in the enterprise
Panellists:
- James Bergin, EGM Technology Research and Advocacy, Xero
- Dr Mahsa McCauley, Associate Professor, Auckland University of Technology; Chairperson, AI Forum NZ
- Peter Gavin, GM, Data & Analytics, ANZ Bank
- Danu Abeysuriya, Chief Technology Officer & Founder, Rush Digital
12:15pm – 12:30pm
Fireside Chat: Unlock Hyper-Productivity & Business Value with AI Agents
David Irecki, Chief Technology Officer, APJ, Boomi & Nikolai Blackie, Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder, Adaptiv
12:30pm – 1:30pm
Lunch
1:30pm – 2:00pm
THE CYBER CREW: AI + Security Panel
- AI-Powered Cyber – the latest on how machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) is detecting data breaches
- AI vs. AI – the tactics used by attackers to compromise AI models and the countermeasures to mitigate risks
- Security & GenAI – how future-ready organisations are contending with automated content generation
- Responsible AI – the ethical fundamentals and risk frameworks to applying AI to customer data
Panellists:
- Neville Richardson, Former CIO, Gallagher; Executive Council, Info-Tech Research Group
- Nick Draper, Head of Enterprise Architecture, Foodstuffs South Island
- Kate Kolich, Head of Data and Artificial Intelligence, Contact Energy
- Johan Fantenberg, Director, Product and Solution Marketing, Ping Identity
2:00pm – 2:15pm
Fireside Chat: From Disruption to Opportunity: AI, Cloud & Channel Evolution
Gilbert Quinn, Senior Partner, AWS
2:15pm – 2:30pm
Beach balls, mystery prizes and your chance to win
2:30pm – 3:00pm
THE INNOVATORS: The Next Big Things
- The inspirational start-ups and cutting-edge breakthroughs in AI
- The Perfect Pitch – what large enterprises can learn from start-ups to get the Board ‘on board’
- Off the Blocks – how to identify the business functions that would benefit the most from AI
- AI @ Scale – how to manage rapid growth and kickstart scaling AI
Panellists:
- Habib Baluwala, General Manager, AI & Data Foundations, One New Zealand
- Adrian Smith, Chief Executive Officer, BlinkPay
- Michael Witbrock, Professor, University of Auckland/The Strong AI Lab
- Manvi Madan, Port of Auckland; Emerging ICT Leader 2024, CIO Awards
- Richard Davies, Regional Lead, ANZ, Airia
3:00pm – 3:30pm
INDUSTRY VOICE: Audience Questions Answered
Pose your burning questions on the future of AI on the registration form, and have them answered live from the industry experts in this dynamic Q&A session
Panellists:
- Kym Niblock, Chief Digital Officer, Sky New Zealand
- Willem van der Steen, Chief Information Officer, Delegat
- Rachel Harrison, Head Of Analytics & Insights, ASB Bank
- Kenny Thein, Director IT (NZ), Restaurant Brands
- Grant de Leeuw, CEO, DataMasque
3:30pm
Prizes Giveaway, Canapes, Music & Networking!