Enterprise AI Melbourne schedule

In this 5-minute networking session, the goal is to connect with three new people. Enjoy the opportunity to expand your network!

This session will focus on how RAI and AI governance is being redesigned by AI itself.

Moderator
Su Jella
Lecturer and Consultant
Torrens University

The mandate is clear: take friction out of the way work gets done.

Agentic AI is the most credible path there in years, yet many organisations are still stuck at the pilot stage. One agent in, and with no clear path to scale.

In this session, InfoTrack’s Emie Fernandez walks through the adoption ladder from first pilot, to champion network, to agents embedded in everyday practice. She will show what changes at each stage, what must be true before you climb, and why integration with existing systems, the usual blocker, no longer has to mean a rebuild.

The session will also unpack how Model Context Protocol makes it easier to connect agents to the systems your organisation already runs, turning integration from a major transformation project into a more configurable path to scale.

Panel Discussion
AI Transformation: Redesigning the Organisation for an Intelligent Future

• How is AI reshaping organisational structures, roles, and decision-making processes?
• What capabilities and cultural shifts are required to embed AI across business functions?
• How can leaders drive adoption and ensure AI initiatives deliver measurable business impact?

Moderator
Tristan Tan Commercial Associate Director IFM Investors 

Speakers
Dr Greg Adamson Chief Information Security Officer Department of Transport and Planning (Victoria)
Amanda Princi Head of Data & AI Enablement Transurban
Bhavika Unnadkat Head of Data and AI Enablement Energy & Utilities Sector & Programme Director Women4STEM (MentorShe)
Tim Sparks Head of Data Science and AI QBE Insurance 

• How do organisations prevent AI chaos and ensure domain discipline across multiple systems?
• What role does a context or knowledge layer play in making AI outputs reliable and trustworthy?
• How can composable and agentic architectures accelerate AI impact while maintaining accountability?

Melbourne Polytechnic has engaged IM Systems to help develop an enterprise AI Blueprint, but getting to the point of developing the strategy required more than agreeing that AI was important. In this fireside conversation, Melbourne Polytechnic’s Karen Mann and IMS engagement lead Peter Houlihan share lessons from the journey so far, from navigating contested ownership and establishing executive sponsorship, through to engaging the Board, Executive Leadership Team, educators, staff and students. They will explore what was necessary before this work could get underway, how stakeholder engagement needs to be deliberately designed, and how different groups require different forms of engagement. They will also discuss general lessons from the journey so far.

As AI adoption accelerates, the question isn’t whether businesses should embrace it—but what role humans will play alongside it. Will AI ultimately replace human decision-making and jobs, or does its greatest potential lie in augmenting creativity, judgment, and trust? In this debate, AI leaders will challenge each other on the realities of automation, the limits of augmentation, and the responsibility of organisations to balance efficiency with human value. Expect sharp perspectives, bold predictions, and a candid look at what the future of work means for business.

Affirmative: Al will replace us

Negative: AI will not replace us

Moderator
Tristan Tan Commercial Associate Director IFM Investors 

Speakers
Bhavika Unnadkat Head of Data and AI Enablement Energy & Utilities Sector & Programme Director Women4STEM (MentorShe)
Poornima L Nathan Chapter Lead – Technical Solution Design 7-Eleven
Su Jella Lecturer and Consultant Torrens University 
Amanda Princi Head of Data & AI Enablement Transurban 

As enterprise AI scales, runaway token expenses and compute costs threaten bottom lines, while fragmented data and inconsistent KPIs undermine trust in business decisions. Uncurated data sources slow time-to-insight and create governance risks that stall execution.

Join Strategy and Kmart for a fireside chat on solving these enterprise bottlenecks. Strategy will demonstrate how a Universal Semantic Layer operationalises trusted AI while cutting token and compute costs in half. Kmart will share their frontline story of eliminating fragmented data, solving governance hurdles, and unifying KPIs into a single source of truth while empowering business users with fast, trusted data.

Speakers
Andrew Gu Senior Solutions Architect, ANZ   Strategy 
Adam Aston Data Manager Kmart Australia

• How Does Inference Cost Impact the Real ROI of AI at Scale and What Should Companies Measure?
• The AI Triage – How can companies view Cost, Performance, and Intelligence to deliver an AI strategy?
• How do you balance AI governance and usage to prevent runaway costs?

• How can leaders prioritise AI projects to deliver maximum business value?

• What frameworks help measure ROI beyond efficiency gains?
• How do you balance quick wins with long-term strategic bets?

This presentation is designed to give the audience a clear understanding of one of the most immediate and under-governed AI risks facing modern organisations: AI that is already in use, but not yet properly visible, owned, or assured.

• A clearer understanding of the real governance problem. The session will show that shadow AI is not simply an IT policy issue. It is a broader governance, accountability, privacy, security and assurance challenge created by the mismatch between informal AI adoption and formal control structures.
• A practical framework they can apply. Attendees will be introduced to DAVE — Discover, Assign, Verify and Evolve — as a new four-step governance framework for bringing employee-led, vendor-embedded and contractor-delivered AI use into governance scope.
• A stronger understanding of how control failures occur in practice. Through Australian evidence and a case example, the presentation will illustrate how governance blind spots emerge when AI use is not visible early, ownership is unclear, and assurance happens after rather than before adoption.
• Immediate actions for leaders and governance functions. The presentation will leave attendees with practical actions they can take to improve visibility, accountability and risk-based oversight now, rather than waiting for a larger AI program or formal governance overhaul.

Speakers

Bharat Bajaj Board Director ISACA Melbourne Chapter
Ravneet Kaur Chapter Member/Moderator ISACA Melbourne Chapter 

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