Most AI keynotes tell you what's coming.

Mine asks what you're going to do about it.

I've spent more than thirty years working at the intersection of technology and human potential - as Chief Envisioning Officer at Microsoft UK, as a non-executive director at organisations navigating digital transformation in real time, and as the author of two books whose arguments arrived, as my wife cheerfully points out, about ten years before anyone was ready for them.

What I've learned is this: the technology is never the hard part. The hard part is helping leaders ask the right questions at the right moment. That's what I design every keynote to do.

W H A T   T O   E X P E C T

How I work with event organisers

Some speakers arrive five minutes before they're due on stage and leave as soon as they step off it. I've never understood that approach.

My measure of a successful engagement isn't how well the keynote lands in isolation. It's whether your audience feels like I was a genuine, integrated part of your event - someone who understood what you were trying to achieve and helped you get there, not someone who delivered a polished set piece and disappeared.

That means I invest time before we get anywhere near the stage. I want to understand your event themes and objectives properly - not so that I can echo them back to your audience, and certainly not to make a sales pitch for your product or platform, but so that I can establish the context that makes your message genuinely relevant. When that works well, the keynote doesn't feel like an addition to your programme. It feels like the moment your programme crystallised.

It also means I'm there throughout. I'm happy to engage with your audience before and after the session - in the corridor, at the networking break, on a panel. Some of the most valuable conversations happen in the thirty minutes after a keynote, when the ideas are live in the room and people are working out what they actually think. I want to be part of those conversations.

Beyond the day itself, there's a toolkit I bring to every engagement and deploy based on what will make the most difference for you. Pre-event content and social to build anticipation and frame the conversation before the room fills. Post-event pieces that give your audience something to share and return to after the energy of the day has faded. Media engagement around the event. Customer roundtables, where you want the ideas from the stage to generate real strategic conversation rather than polite nodding.

Not every event needs all of these. But the starting point is always the same question: what does success look like for you? Everything else follows from that.

Core KeyNote Themes

These themes aren't five separate keynotes. They're five facets of a single, connected argument about humans, machines, and what the next decade demands of the organisations navigating both. The core of the work has been tested and refined across financial services, technology, hospitality, professional bodies, universities, and public institutions - and it travels. What changes for every engagement is the context, the examples, and the specific challenge your audience is sitting with right now. That's exactly what the pre-event conversation is designed to uncover.

Who Dave speaks to

The short answer is: anyone for whom the relationship between humans and technology is a live strategic question. In practice, that covers a lot of ground.

Dave speaks to executive leadership teams and full company all-hands. To IT departments repositioning themselves as strategic growth partners, and to HR functions redesigning work around human capability. To government departments navigating AI policy and public sector leaders managing transformation at scale. To global professional networks, industry conferences, and boards who need the conversation to happen before the decisions get made.

The common thread isn't sector or seniority. It's the moment - organisations at a point where the technology questions and the human questions have become the same question, and where someone needs to help the room think it through properly.

A B O U T   D A V E

The background that shapes the work

I started my career as an IT professional - a nerd's nerd, as I occasionally describe myself to audiences who are relieved to be getting a geek on stage rather than a management consultant. I spent over a decade at Microsoft UK, eventually as Chief Envisioning Officer - a title I invented deliberately, designed to draw the ire and satire of industry commentators and even some customers. The title was intended to poke fun at an industry that was far too serious about itself; the role most certainly was not.

Since leaving Microsoft in 2017, I've worked as an independent thought leader, speaker, and advisor. I currently hold non-executive director positions at Mitchells & Butlers plc (one of the UK's largest hospitality companies), Vianet Group plc, and Pensions UK. These roles matter not just as credentials but as the source of live material: I'm in the boardroom when the decisions get made, which means my keynotes reflect the reality of AI transformation rather than a commentator's view of it.

I'm the author of Business Reimagined (2013) and The Rise of the Humans (2015). A third book - The Rise of the Machines: Learning to Thrive in an AI World - is in development.

I'm based in both the UK and North America (Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada) and speak internationally. Recent engagements have included Info-Tech Research Group (Barcelona and Las Vegas), HLB International (Dubrovnik, Mexico City), the Automotive Leadership Network, the University of Leeds, and the Alternative Accountancy Strategic IT Conference.