Carnegie Hall

Join us as we kick off the HotTopics Studio New York. Grab a coffee, meet your peers, and get ready for a day of bold conversations and leadership insights.

As AI systems become capable of performing more complex and creative work, organisations must decide where human judgement remains essential. This is no longer simply a technology question, but one of identity, ethics and culture. In a world where almost everything can be automated, what should never be?

Be a part of engaging, honest, and thought-provoking conversations with your peers, exploring the ideas and challenges shaping today’s HotTopics communities.

TOPIC AND DISCUSSION

Where is your north star?

What should define the next chapter of your leadership career? Explore influence, purpose, skills and succession as the expectations of technology leaders evolve.

Resilience is a leadership decision

How do you keep the organisation moving when threats collide? Examine decision rights, cross-functional accountability and the trade-offs between efficiency, resilience and growth.

Modernise for the hybrid multi-cloud reality

Choose the right home for applications and workloads while managing legacy constraints, cost and continuity. Show the business outcome of an infrastructure or operating-model change.

Make AI pay off with agents built for scale

Move beyond pilots with clear ownership, governed workflows and measurable results. Bring a customer story (where possible) showing where agents add value and where people retain control.

The future workplace people really need

How do we improve productivity without sacrificing wellbeing, belonging or trust? Examine hybrid work, AI adoption, employee voice and the experience of work.

Secure AI before it scales

Control human, machine and agent access; protect sensitive data; make accountability visible. Show how practical controls enable AI adoption across the enterprise.

Doing more with less

How do you protect delivery when budgets, capacity and expectations pull in different directions? Discuss what to stop, where to invest and how to avoid exhausting the team.

From projects to products: A new operating model

Organise persistent, cross-functional teams around products and measurable outcomes. Explore funding, ownership and ways of working that sustain value beyond a one-off technology delivery.

Sustainable AI and IT

Measure technology’s footprint and use the evidence in AI, cloud, infrastructure and supplier decisions. Show the trade-offs between performance, cost, energy use and environmental impact.

People-first AI adoption

Build AI fluency and redesign work so teams can use AI effectively while retaining human judgement and expertise. Show how adoption, skills and job design translate into better work.

Be a part of engaging, honest, and thought-provoking conversations with your peers, exploring the ideas and challenges shaping today’s HotTopics communities.

TOPIC AND DISCUSSION

Where is your north star?

What should define the next chapter of your leadership career? Explore influence, purpose, skills and succession as the expectations of technology leaders evolve.

Resilience is a leadership decision

How do you keep the organisation moving when threats collide? Examine decision rights, cross-functional accountability and the trade-offs between efficiency, resilience and growth.

Modernise for the hybrid multi-cloud reality

Choose the right home for applications and workloads while managing legacy constraints, cost and continuity. Show the business outcome of an infrastructure or operating-model change.

Make AI pay off with agents built for scale

Move beyond pilots with clear ownership, governed workflows and measurable results. Bring a customer story (where possible) showing where agents add value and where people retain control.

The future workplace people really need

How do we improve productivity without sacrificing wellbeing, belonging or trust? Examine hybrid work, AI adoption, employee voice and the experience of work.

Secure AI before it scales

Control human, machine and agent access; protect sensitive data; make accountability visible. Show how practical controls enable AI adoption across the enterprise.

Doing more with less

How do you protect delivery when budgets, capacity and expectations pull in different directions? Discuss what to stop, where to invest and how to avoid exhausting the team.

From projects to products: A new operating model

Organise persistent, cross-functional teams around products and measurable outcomes. Explore funding, ownership and ways of working that sustain value beyond a one-off technology delivery.

Sustainable AI and IT

Measure technology’s footprint and use the evidence in AI, cloud, infrastructure and supplier decisions. Show the trade-offs between performance, cost, energy use and environmental impact.

People-first AI adoption

Build AI fluency and redesign work so teams can use AI effectively while retaining human judgement and expertise. Show how adoption, skills and job design translate into better work.

As AI-generated content becomes indistinguishable from reality, trust is emerging as one of the most valuable assets in business. From digital identity and data provenance to brand credibility and customer confidence, leaders must navigate a world where seeing is no longer believing. In an era of synthetic everything, how will organisations earn trust when reality itself becomes negotiable?

Every technology decision reflects a choice about priorities, values and outcomes. As AI becomes embedded across organisations, technology leaders are increasingly shaping not just business performance, but societal impact. Are we building systems that optimise for efficiency alone, or stewarding a future people actually want to live in?

Organisations are facing a future where cyber incidents, AI-driven threats and operational shocks are no longer exceptional events but part of the operating environment. Building resilience is becoming as important as reducing risk, requiring leaders to rethink how their businesses respond, recover and evolve. As disruption becomes a certainty, what does it mean to build an organisation that cannot just survive change, but benefit from it?

Every technology decision creates value, or in some cases, debt. Today, growing complexity, legacy estates and accumulated operational debt are consuming resources that could otherwise fund innovation. How much of your technology budget is building the future, and how much is paying for the past?

An invitation to unwind, reflect, and continue building meaningful connections after a day shaped by thought leadership and candid conversation.