HotTopics Studio: Abbey Road Studios

Day 1 Theme  

Leading at the edge of whats next:

Transformation with purpose

How leaders are setting direction, aligning teams and turning bold ideas into progress.

Large enterprises continuously transform. They modernise security frameworks, replace ERPs, migrate to the cloud, and, now, rapidly proliferate AI pilot projects. These enterprises pursue four or more such transformations every year, on average.

Despite the continuous nature of transformation, companies still treat every new transformation – whether in finance, HR or IT – as its own unique undertaking. This means encountering, and endeavoring to ovecome, the same challenges over and over again.

In this panel at The HotTopics Studio, we ask: What can the key player in all those transformations, the IT function, do to make transformations easier to pull off? 
 
We’ll explore how CIOs, by focusing on the nuts and bolts (process, applications, data) can both tie together your multiple transformation projects and, by bringing a level of monitoring and measurability to transformation, give business leaders what they need most: A clearly communicable and quantifiable goal for every transformation initiative. 

In partnership with SAP

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

Topics to be discussed include:

• Data sprawl crisis: You can’t protect what you can’t see 

• Reclaiming enterprise capacity in the age of collaboration

• Visibility or obscurity?

• What happens when software delivery stops being the constraint? 

• How to build the agentic workplace Digital resilience in practice: How to collaborate securely in a cloud-first world  

• Decision velocity: Turning collaboration into an execution engine

Agentic AI promises enterprises the opportunity of efficiency, speed - even through new ways of working and reimagined operating models. Despite this, the path to the agentic AI is far from straightforward.

Skills gaps, complex processes, data governance and questions over costs against return of investment (ROI) are just some of the issues facing CIOs and CTOs today.

In this panel with Salesforce, we bring together the early agentic AI adopters to discuss how to identify the use cases most likely to generate demonstrable returns, how to build the operational structures which allow successful pilots to scale to production, and - critically - how to sustain board confidence (and investment) through the time lag between deployment and market proof. 

In partnership with Salesforce

AI adoption is accelerating faster than governance. Boards want growth and efficiency, regulators want accountability, and customers want trust. Executives are caught in the middle.

This panel explores how C-suite leaders are navigating the tension between innovation and responsibility, and where the line should be drawn.

In partnership with eSynergy

Examines how trust, security, identity, and governance are becoming foundational requirements for collaboration platforms as AI transforms how decisions are made and information is shared. 

In an era where AI can generate, summarise, and act on information instantly, what does it take for leaders to truly trust the platforms where their most sensitive conversations and decisions happen?

In partnership with CISCO

As AI accelerates, so does the flood of data it creates — but is more always better? In today’s information-saturated landscape, the real challenge isn’t collecting data, it’s knowing what (and who) to trust. Are we leveraging AI to drive real innovation, or simply reacting to the outputs it feeds us? This session will challenge the narrative: Are your decisions truly insight-led, or are they shaped by systems you don’t fully understand, can we trust the data behind the innovation we’re chasing?

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

Topics to be discussed include:

• The data is there, why not the confidence?
  Reclaiming enterprise capacity in the age of collaboration

• Visibility or obscurity?

• Imagine that: What novel possibilities could AI unlock?

• How to build the agentic workplace

• Control, trust, and competitive advantage: Collaboration in a dynamic digital economy

• Decision velocity: Turning collaboration into an execution engine

We often talk about how to prepare young women for careers in technology, but are organisations and leaders equally prepared for them?

As TechGirl continues to grow from a competition into a thriving community, this panel flips the narrative. Instead of focusing on how young women should adapt to the industry, we ask: what needs to change at the top?

Featuring a TechGirl alongside senior tech leaders, this conversation explores how expectations are shifting, what support really makes a difference, and how leaders can move beyond mentorship to actively create environments where the next generation can thrive, lead, and innovate.

Day 2 Theme  

Evolving with resilience

Building trust while creating change

How leaders are protecting what matters, managing risk and building organisations that can keep moving, even under pressure.

In partnership with

Agentic AI promises speed; faster decisions, faster execution and faster value. But, as any sage technology or security leader would know, speed without robust guardrails equals risk - and brand exposure. 

For the technology executives deploying autonomous agents across often complex, and highly-regulated organisations, the pre-existing governance frameworks are proving largely inadequate.

This session examines the governance paradox at the heart of agentic AI: agents require deep access to real-time data and systems, all of which brings significant risk around machine error, data loss and regulatory breach.

We explore how technology and security leaders are managing business expectations, building governance structures (e.g controls, policies, standards, cross-functional-teams/CoEs/councils) at the speed of business- and why data quality, ownership and lineage are now as much a security issue as a data one.

In partnership with Salesforce

The role of the CISO is no longer confined to managing risk—it's expanding into one of the most strategically influential positions in the enterprise. As digital innovation accelerates, CISOs are stepping into boardrooms, shaping AI governance, securing high-stakes M&A deals, and leading digital transformation from the inside out.

This isn’t evolution—it’s elevation. The message is clear: the modern CISO is not just a protector of infrastructure, but a builder of trust, value, and competitive edge. Those who embrace this shift won’t just keep up with the future—they’ll define it.

The amazing potential for AI and AI agents is becoming clear, but so are the risks associated with this technology. These risks impact compliance, security, and operations and involve everything from data and IP leakage to service failure. This panel discussion will examine risks associated with AI, some of which are quite novel, as well as explore how leading companies create and maintain the visibility needed to anticipate and manage AI risk today. 

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

Topics to be discussed include:

• Identity beyond the human: Access, accountability, activation 

• Imagine that: What novel possibilities could AI unlock? 

• Guardrails at scale: Bridging the gap between agentic speed and security

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

Topics to be discussed include:

• Resilience at the collision of AI and ransomware

• What happens when software delivery stops being the constraint?

• Architecting truth: Scaling AI on trusted foundations

The enterprise security model was once built around human behaviour, which was largely predictable, auditable and accountable. But this model changes completely in an age of AI agents.

With nine in ten organisations already running agents but only 10% carrying a mature governance strategy, the gap between adoption and oversight has become a vulnerability in the agentic enterprise. After all, agents are autonomous, high-speed decision makers operating across systems, data and third-parties, and often without the visibility, authentication or authorisation which security teams typically demand.
In this panel session, security leaders explore how this issue is as much cultural as technical; the agentic enterprise requires new cultures, frameworks, mindsets and team capabilities for a team that is half human and half machine.

In partnership with Okta

As organisations accelerate technology, data, and AI initiatives, leaders are under pressure to move faster while remaining resilient. This session explores how executive teams balance innovation, compliance, and operational realities, and how clearer alignment across functions leads to better decisions. It reframes resilience not as a constraint, but as a shared leadership responsibility that enables sustainable progress and long-term value.

We’ll close the day with Stories in Sound - a rare, immersive experience inside the world’s most iconic recording space. Through storytelling and live performance, we’ll step inside iconic songs that have shaped popular culture for over 92 years.