Talks & Speaking
At your seniority, one good keynote per quarter is worth more than a year of LinkedIn posts. I run three talk shapes — pick the one that fits your event.
From Hollerith to dbt: what 130 years of data history tells us about AI
The Hollerith 1890 census, Rome’s quinquennial census, Tang dynasty huji registers — recurring patterns of governance, schema drift, and analyst burnout, mapped onto today’s lakehouse and agentic-warehouse architectures. The audience walks out with three pattern checks to run against their own platform on Monday morning.
The DIKW pyramid, re-cast for the age of AI
Russell Ackoff’s pyramid (1989) with Impact added as the modern apex. Where the LLM/agent layer slots in — and where it is being mis-slotted. Concrete examples from senior practitioners on what changes about data architecture once Wisdom isn’t human-only.
The Forty-Year Patterns: war stories from a Data Alchemist
Five stories from FT, Vroemm, SURFsara, Rabobank, Booking.com — each one a pattern that keeps recurring in 2026. The red/green CEO dashboard. The FT tag-management system. The ML model nobody trusted. Optimised for the slot where the audience wants storytelling, not slides.
Programming a data conference?
These three talks are available for autumn 2026. I’m open to keynotes, panel appearances, and fireside formats.
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Helping senior data leaders at European mid-market organisations build trustworthy, AI-ready foundations.
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