Outlook: AI - NOVEMBER 12, MELBOURNE
Program
leading brands
The conference day
Welcome address
Grant Show, Executive Producer of The Outlook, opens Outlook: AI with a welcome address setting the scene for this special edition of The Outlook. He will introduce the themes and speakers featured throughout the event.
Grant ShowExecutive Producer, The OutlookOpening keynote
Kris Rasmussen is the Chief Architect from Figma, where for over a decade he has built Figma's engineering organisation as VP of Engineering and CTO, after early engineering work at Asana. Kris will share Figma's new research on how AI is changing product teams across Asia Pacific, with a closer look at Australia and New Zealand, as the lines between product, design, and engineering blur, with more designers shipping code and more developers designing, and what the research anticipates it will mean for teams.
Kris RasmussenChief Architect, FigmaRecursive self-improvement
Angelica Veness is the CTO ANZ and Head of Transformation from IBM, where she guides some of the region's largest organisations through change. Angelica will explore why every technology shift, from electricity to the internet, has rewarded the curious over the capable, why AI makes a good tutor and a poor parent, and why the original recursive self-improvement is still people learning, unlearning, and teaching one another.
Angelica VenessCTO ANZ/ Head of Transformation, IBMProducts in flux
Ranjitha Kumar is the Chief Scientist from UserTesting and an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois, where her research looks at how interfaces are designed and used at scale. Ranjitha will explore the paradox that how we design and create products is changing both incredibly fast and incredibly slowly, and why, counterintuitively, slowing down to develop human insight is the resolution. She'll discuss why the advantage has moved from the teams that predict best to the teams that learn fastest.
Ranjitha KumarChief Scientist, UserTestingDeath, taxes, transformation
Shasha Pendit is the Executive Manager of AI Enablement from Kolmeo, where she is responsible for making AI work across the entire organisation. Shasha will explore how the only constants in life are death, taxes, and transformation, but the transformation AI brings is wholly different. A new platform or process can be handled with train-the-trainer sessions, a lunch-and-learn, and a handbook, but AI is changing everything everywhere all at once, and those old patterns fall woefully short. She'll discuss how to upend the model: finding the right champions at the right pressure points, building real expertise, and teaching deeply technical new capabilities at pace and at depth, to everyone and not just the early adopters, ensuring we don't leave anyone behind.
Shasha PenditExecutive Manager - AI Enablement, KolmeoAustralia's AI op shop
Matt Blode is an AI Engineer from Linktree, where he builds AI agents for more than 90 million users, as well as an OpenAI Codex Ambassador and co-founder of Melbourne's Vibe Coding Micro Community. Matt will explore why Australia so often gets AI second-hand, with the products, narratives, and risks shaped somewhere else, and why leading on governance hasn't made us leaders at building. He'll look at what Australian AI innovation actually looks like, from teams building distinctive products on global models to local companies making the case for sovereign, trusted AI, and what it would take for more of us to stop shopping for AI and start making it.
Matthew BlodeAI Engineer, Linktree
Richard Terry-LloydChief Customer Officer, Netlify IncWhere do you find the time?
Ivan Seow is a software engineer by training who has spent nearly two decades building, implementing, and taking analytics products to market, and joins us from ThoughtSpot.
Ivan will lead a fireside on why "what should you build now that building is cheap?" is the wrong question, how speed to prototype makes everything look feasible, and why, when everything looks worth doing, choosing gets harder and building is no cheaper than it was. The real question is where, in a forty-hour week, you find the time.
Ivan SeowSenior Director Product Marketing, ThoughtSpotAI narrative bingo
Lou Compagnone is the Director of AI from Datacom, a former editor and design director, and co-host of the AI Ready Women podcast. Lou will explore the pattern of stories that come with every AI announcement, from abundance and replacement to disruption and inevitability, how phrases coined in Silicon Valley end up in our own roadmaps, and who benefits when AI is framed as unavoidable. Behind every one of those stories is a choice about what to automate, what to augment, and what to leave to people.
Louise CompagnoneDirector of AI, DatacomRoundtable: Mindset and action
This roundtable looks at where AI is delivering real outcomes in real teams, and how to see that value clearly and early. Then we turn to intent: how to make your reasoning explicit enough to defend and clear enough to teach.
Death, taxes, transformation
Shasha Pendit is the Executive Manager of AI Enablement from Kolmeo, where she is responsible for making AI work across the entire organisation. Shasha will explore how the only constants in life are death, taxes, and transformation, but the transformation AI brings is wholly different. A new platform or process can be handled with train-the-trainer sessions, a lunch-and-learn, and a handbook, but AI is changing everything everywhere all at once, and those old patterns fall woefully short. She'll discuss how to upend the model: finding the right champions at the right pressure points, building real expertise, and teaching deeply technical new capabilities at pace and at depth, to everyone and not just the early adopters, ensuring we don't leave anyone behind.
Shasha PenditExecutive Manager - AI Enablement, KolmeoWhere do you find the time?
Ivan Seow is a software engineer by training who has spent nearly two decades building, implementing, and taking analytics products to market, and joins us from ThoughtSpot.
Ivan will lead a fireside on why "what should you build now that building is cheap?" is the wrong question, how speed to prototype makes everything look feasible, and why, when everything looks worth doing, choosing gets harder and building is no cheaper than it was. The real question is where, in a forty-hour week, you find the time.
Ivan SeowSenior Director Product Marketing, ThoughtSpotRoundtable: Mindset and action
This roundtable looks at where AI is delivering real outcomes in real teams, and how to see that value clearly and early. Then we turn to intent: how to make your reasoning explicit enough to defend and clear enough to teach.
Australia's AI op shop
Matt Blode is an AI Engineer from Linktree, where he builds AI agents for more than 90 million users, as well as an OpenAI Codex Ambassador and co-founder of Melbourne's Vibe Coding Micro Community. Matt will explore why Australia so often gets AI second-hand, with the products, narratives, and risks shaped somewhere else, and why leading on governance hasn't made us leaders at building. He'll look at what Australian AI innovation actually looks like, from teams building distinctive products on global models to local companies making the case for sovereign, trusted AI, and what it would take for more of us to stop shopping for AI and start making it.
Matthew BlodeAI Engineer, LinktreeRichard Terry-LloydChief Customer Officer, Netlify IncAI narrative bingo
Lou Compagnone is the Director of AI from Datacom, a former editor and design director, and co-host of the AI Ready Women podcast. Lou will explore the pattern of stories that come with every AI announcement, from abundance and replacement to disruption and inevitability, how phrases coined in Silicon Valley end up in our own roadmaps, and who benefits when AI is framed as unavoidable. Behind every one of those stories is a choice about what to automate, what to augment, and what to leave to people.
Louise CompagnoneDirector of AI, DatacomRational output, irrational systems
Gin Atkins is a Principal Product Manager from Octopus Deploy, where she works on the AI foundations of a platform built for complex software delivery at scale, after leading AI product at Zendesk. Gin will explore why AI's answers are so tidy when the systems we work in are anything but, what happens when perfectly logical strategies meet organisations that run on hidden dependencies, competing incentives, and hunches nobody can quite explain, and how to make plans that survive contact with reality. AI is rational. Organisations rarely are.
Gin AtkinsPrincipal Product Manager, Octopus DeployThe agentic customer
Anna Eades and Dalip Sandhu lead customer strategy and design at Deloitte Digital, and are the team behind its research into the rise of the agentic customer. Anna and Dalip will explore what happens when customers bring a plus-one that's impossible to charm, what Australians might hand over to an agent and where they'll keep the final say, and why the old shortcuts to loyalty stop working when an agent reads all the fine print. What happens to brands and loyalty when the customer is no longer human?
Anna EadesSnr Manager, Deloitte Digital
Dalip SandhuDirector, Deloitte DigitalPresenter announced soon
This session is being finalised and will be announced soon.
Multiplayer problems
Maxy Lotherington is a product and design leader, currently Experience Design Lead at Groundplan and writes the Work Bestie newsletter on how people do their best work. Maxy will explore why the PRD, the prototype, and the handover were never really about getting to done, but about the hard thinking and trade-offs a team works through to make them, what we lose when we hand those complex bits to AI in the name of speed, and whether product work should become a single-player game just because it can. The deliverable was always an excuse to talk.
Maxy LotheringtonExperience Design Lead, GroundplanClimbing out of the uncanny valley
Simon Brock is the Chief Product Officer from EthicAi, where he's building AI for organisations with something worth protecting, after a decade leading creative at Digitas Australia and an earlier life as a music producer. Simon will explore how AI got its voice, name, and manner, why it so often sounds like the most confident person in the room, and the design choices, from vocal fry to Comic Sans, that make a system seem credible. The real question is whether we want AI to do anything more than help.
Simon BrockChief Product Officer, EthicAiLet's settle this in the car
Pat Hwang is an Automotive UX Designer at Google where he designs how Google Maps works inside the car, after having worked in product design at Atlassian. Pat will explore why a slide, wireframe or a clickable demo can't tell you what happens on a real drive, how agentic vibecoding is moving automotive UX out of the mockup and into the vehicle, and what transforms when every discipline can start prototyping with production code. In a car, a bad product decision isn't a dip in conversion. It's a potential accident.
Pat HwangAutomotive UX Designer, GoogleThe AI strategy choice
Jaspreet Singh holds a PhD in AI and large language models, and is the AI Lead from Big W, where he runs generative AI in production across millions of listings. Jaspreet will explore why chasing every new model release feels like progress but isn't a plan, what the latest research suggests the next generation of models will look like, and how to tell when a new model is genuinely worth switching for. Choosing a model is a strategy. Accepting every new one isn't.
Jaspreet SinghAI Lead, Big WRoundtable: The immediate future
This roundtable looks at how leaders and builders are making concrete choices about where AI belongs in their work and where it doesn't. Then we turn to readiness: the skills and groundwork it takes to move beyond AI for efficiency.
Roundtable: Today's reality
This roundtable is for the people making those calls in practice, deciding where AI belongs in their work and where it doesn't.
Rational output, irrational systems
Gin Atkins is a Principal Product Manager from Octopus Deploy, where she works on the AI foundations of a platform built for complex software delivery at scale, after leading AI product at Zendesk. Gin will explore why AI's answers are so tidy when the systems we work in are anything but, what happens when perfectly logical strategies meet organisations that run on hidden dependencies, competing incentives, and hunches nobody can quite explain, and how to make plans that survive contact with reality. AI is rational. Organisations rarely are.
Gin AtkinsPrincipal Product Manager, Octopus DeployMultiplayer problems
Maxy Lotherington is a product and design leader, currently Experience Design Lead at Groundplan and writes the Work Bestie newsletter on how people do their best work. Maxy will explore why the PRD, the prototype, and the handover were never really about getting to done, but about the hard thinking and trade-offs a team works through to make them, what we lose when we hand those complex bits to AI in the name of speed, and whether product work should become a single-player game just because it can. The deliverable was always an excuse to talk.
Maxy LotheringtonExperience Design Lead, GroundplanRoundtable: The immediate future
This roundtable looks at how leaders and builders are making concrete choices about where AI belongs in their work and where it doesn't. Then we turn to readiness: the skills and groundwork it takes to move beyond AI for efficiency.
The agentic customer
Anna Eades and Dalip Sandhu lead customer strategy and design at Deloitte Digital, and are the team behind its research into the rise of the agentic customer. Anna and Dalip will explore what happens when customers bring a plus-one that's impossible to charm, what Australians might hand over to an agent and where they'll keep the final say, and why the old shortcuts to loyalty stop working when an agent reads all the fine print. What happens to brands and loyalty when the customer is no longer human?
Anna EadesSnr Manager, Deloitte DigitalDalip SandhuDirector, Deloitte DigitalClimbing out of the uncanny valley
Simon Brock is the Chief Product Officer from EthicAi, where he's building AI for organisations with something worth protecting, after a decade leading creative at Digitas Australia and an earlier life as a music producer. Simon will explore how AI got its voice, name, and manner, why it so often sounds like the most confident person in the room, and the design choices, from vocal fry to Comic Sans, that make a system seem credible. The real question is whether we want AI to do anything more than help.
Simon BrockChief Product Officer, EthicAiPresenter announced soon
This session is being finalised and will be announced soon.
Let's settle this in the car
Pat Hwang is an Automotive UX Designer at Google where he designs how Google Maps works inside the car, after having worked in product design at Atlassian. Pat will explore why a slide, wireframe or a clickable demo can't tell you what happens on a real drive, how agentic vibecoding is moving automotive UX out of the mockup and into the vehicle, and what transforms when every discipline can start prototyping with production code. In a car, a bad product decision isn't a dip in conversion. It's a potential accident.
Pat HwangAutomotive UX Designer, GoogleRoundtable: Today's reality
This roundtable is for the people making those calls in practice, deciding where AI belongs in their work and where it doesn't.
The AI strategy choice
Jaspreet Singh holds a PhD in AI and large language models, and is the AI Lead from Big W, where he runs generative AI in production across millions of listings. Jaspreet will explore why chasing every new model release feels like progress but isn't a plan, what the latest research suggests the next generation of models will look like, and how to tell when a new model is genuinely worth switching for. Choosing a model is a strategy. Accepting every new one isn't.
Jaspreet SinghAI Lead, Big WThe tiny mistakes museum
Sarah Kaur is the Head of AI and International Product from Cureety, where she brings AI to cancer care, after leading human-centred AI design and governance at Portable. Sarah will open a museum of tiny AI mistakes: the AI-to-AI loop that runs unchecked, the confident wrong answer that went live without notice, and the answer that was perfect until it faced the reality of an actual person's life. Every case study leaves these out. Sarah thinks they're the most useful part.
Sarah KaurHead of AI and International Product, CureetyAI Is Playing Jazz. Your Team Is Still Marching.
Tom Karemacher is the General Manager for Australia and New Zealand at Notion, after leading Asia Pacific for Procore Technologies and more than a decade at Salesforce. Tom will discuss why, even as we put AI into our organisations, work is still organised in straight lines where someone sets the direction, tasks move between departments, and people wait for their cue. AI invites us to revisit that arrangement.
In this session, Tom will look at how individuals can explore ideas, build tools, and test possibilities with greater independence, how teams turn that capability into shared progress, and how leaders create the conditions for people to adapt without losing accountability. To realise AI's potential, we need to change how we play together.
Tom KaremacherGM ANZ, NotionWhat it means to be a builder
This session is being finalised and will be announced soon.
Isharna WalshHead of Product, Lorikeet CXTickets
Earlybird
$450
General Admission
$600
A helping hand
From $0
Why attend
What you'll learn
Where AI is genuinely delivering in real teams right now, and how to spot that value early. And when you can suddenly make anything, how to decide what is actually worth making.
What to expect
A full day of expert presentations, in-depth panels and breakout sessions across three themes: mindset and action, today's reality, and the immediate future. Priority festival access is included, with real time set aside to talk between sessions.
Who you'll meet
Product, design, engineering and leadership people from across Australia, and presenters from Figma, IBM, UserTesting, Linktree, Octopus Deploy and Deloitte Digital. Not a lineup you'll find together anywhere else here.