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.
Suitable for: data conferences, tech summits, architecture tracks
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.
Suitable for: CDO days, data leadership forums, innovation tracks
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.
Suitable for: closing keynotes, storytelling slots, senior practitioner audiences
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.
These three talks are available for autumn 2026. I’m open to keynotes, panel appearances, and fireside formats.