About this Event
Speaker
Kate Gray
Agenda
6:00pm - Arrival, networking and refreshments
6:15pm - BCS Edinburgh Branch Annual General Meeting
6:30pm - End of AGM
6:30pm - Start of Kate Gray's talk "So, your company is doing an ‘AI transformation’ - lessons from the coal face"
7:30pm - Questions and answers
7:45pm - Close
Synopsis
Legacy tech continues to impact businesses today.
With each year that passes, the pressure (and cost) grows to deal with the constraints and risks associated with keeping the ‘heritage’ systems operating.
After 11 years of working with organisations through the ‘delicious ambiguity’* of their transformations, the thrill of the shiny and new continues to numb awareness of the investment and effort required to support the people who are core to a successful outcome.
In this talk we’ll review lessons learned from different large-scale transformations that led, over the years, to costly pivots, restarts and time-consuming efforts to win back the trust and belief of the people (no shaming here, these will be anonymised because learning from mistakes is to be celebrated).
Yes, AI plays an important role, and this talk will include a review of how AI is driving changes in op models and ways of working that organisations need to think about today. But, in the end, technology needs people.
*with thanks to Gilda Radner for this brilliant observation about life.
About the speaker
Kate Gray's experiences include investing and working with technology start-ups and scale-ups, and board-level roles / consulting gigs in business strategy, product management, and enterprise ‘transformations’ at technology, finance, media, healthcare, travel, sports, and beverages organisations.
Paying back the leaders who influenced her career, she mentors work colleagues, start-up and scale-up founders and their teams, and women who work in technology. She also has a passion for the potential of AI having spent 2 years studying computational models, which included coding a reinforcement learning model (this was also to avoid being fooled by consultant-speak about AI).
Our events are for adults aged 16 years and over.
This meeting is conducted in accordance with the BCS Code of Conduct for Meetings.
BCS is a membership organisation. If you enjoy this event, please consider joining BCS. You’ll be very welcome. You’ll receive access to many exclusive career development tools, an introduction to a thriving professional community and also help us Make IT Good For Society. .
Please note, if you have any accessibility needs, please let us know via [email protected] and we’ll work with you to make suitable arrangements.
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Photography: by attending this event, you may be photographed or filmed. Please speak to a member of staff if you do not wish to be included.
For overseas delegates who wish to attend the event, please note that BCS does not issue invitation letters.
This event is brought to you by: Edinburgh branch
Event venue & nearby stays
Skyscanner Limited, Quartermile One, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
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