Big conversations.
Notes worth keeping.

Stop by the registration desk to grab your pass. You'll need it for entry to all sessions and events throughout the day.

We cant say who, But we pormise you know who they are. Delivering our opening keynote on the Big idea stage to kick off the day, come and check it out

Welcome to BTF 2026. Ashleigh Ainsley and Dion McKenzie open the festival, set the agenda for the day and explore why this year’s conversations matter. Expect big questions, fresh perspectives and a preview of the ideas, people and experiences waiting across the festival.

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AI is now on both sides of the hiring process. This conversation brings together talent leaders from media and tech to show how applications are really being read in 2026. They'll cover where AI gives you an edge, where it quietly costs you the job, and how to stand out to both the machines and the people behind them.

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This panel debates the evolving value of a traditional degree in a rapidly shifting job market. Industry leaders and educators weigh rising tuition and alternative learning pathways against the long-term career benefits of higher education.

Between utopian promises and existential warnings, it can be difficult to separate genuine AI risk from speculation. This debate brings together contrasting perspectives on safety, power, environmental impact and human control. How worried should we be, who should be accountable and what action is justified before the most serious predictions become possible?

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Join NVIDIA & BTF for Building Practical AI Agents Using NemoClaw: Hands-On Workshop. This one-hour workshop introduces participants to AI agents using NemoClaw through a practical mix of a short talk, guided setup, hands-on exploration and Q&A.

Participants will explore how AI agents can work with tools, files, APIs, models and workflows, before using NVIDIA Brev to get started with their own development environment. The session is designed to be practical and collaborative, giving participants the foundations to continue experimenting and building after the workshop.

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What Participants Will Learn

What AI agents are and why tool-using workflows matter.

How OpenClaw supports practical agent workflows.

Where NVIDIA NemoClaw and OpenShell fit into safer agent development.

How to use NVIDIA Brev to quickly access a development environment.

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NVIDIA Brev credits will be provided to participants at the end of the workshop so they can continue exploring and developing their workflows afterwards.

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Bring a laptop, charger and an idea for a useful agent workflow.

Most organisations have experimented with AI. Far fewer have translated that experimentation into meaningful productivity. Senior technology leaders share what it takes to move from isolated tools and pilots to secure, scalable adoption. The session will examine infrastructure, workforce behaviour, leadership and the practical decisions separating incremental improvement from transformative impact.

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Can You Have It All Without Doing It All? We’re told that success takes sacrifice: longer hours, bigger goals, more visibility and an endless willingness to keep pushing. But does ambition really have to come at the expense of your peace? Author and creator Toni Tone joins us for a candid conversation inspired by Soft Life, exploring ambition, self-worth, money, boundaries and the pressure to constantly be “on”. Can you build an extraordinary career without making work your entire identity? Can you want more without constantly doing more? And is burnout really the price we have to pay for success? A conversation about redefining ambition — and whether having it all might actually require deciding what you’re willing to leave behind.

AI may dominate the headlines, but it is not the only force reshaping business. Leaders from the Big Four explore the technologies, skills and operating changes that deserve equal attention. From cyber resilience and cloud infrastructure to data, workforce transformation and implementation, this conversation looks beyond the hype to the wider technology agenda organisations cannot afford to ignore.

What does it really take to thrive as a software engineer beyond university? In this interactive technical workshop, we'll bridge the gap between studying computer science and working as software engineer in industry. Whether you're preparing for your first internship, graduate role, or simply want to understand some of the scenarios software engineers go through, this session will give you the practical insights and tools to help you make the transition from university to industry

The UK wants to become an AI superpower, but ambition alone will not deliver it. This session tests the country’s readiness across government, infrastructure, regulation, transport, skills and public trust. Leaders shaping national policy and deploying frontier technologies will explore where Britain is moving quickly, where it risks falling behind and what readiness really requires.

The workplace of the future will not be built by people or AI alone. It will depend on how the two work together. Chief People Officers from EA, ITV and Prosus examine how roles, leadership, performance and company culture will change as AI becomes part of everyday work—and what employers must do to ensure people remain central to that transformation.

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AI transformation is not simply a technology deployment. It requires new leadership habits, operating models and ways of bringing people with you. In this conversation, Pam Maynard OBE shares lessons from leading large-scale change, including how organisations move from ambition to adoption while maintaining trust, accountability and measurable business value.

Automation will change jobs, but it does not have to shorten careers. This practical conversation explores how professionals can stay valuable as tools, roles and industries evolve. Expect honest perspectives on reinvention, transferable skills, internal mobility and building a career that can withstand disruption without requiring you to chase every new trend.

A senior government guest joins BTF to address the choices shaping Britain’s technology future. This special session will offer a timely perspective on national ambition, innovation, opportunity and the role diverse talent must play in the country’s next chapter.

Getting the offer is the part everyone prepares for. What comes next is the part nobody trains you for - your first real production incident, learning to ask good questions early instead of quietly struggling, working out whose opinion actually moves a decision, choosing between going deep and staying broad, and finding your footing in rooms where you are still building credibility.

This panel brings together engineers and technologists at different points of that journey to talk candidly about what they got right, what they got wrong, and what they wish someone had told them on day one. Honest, specific, and free of "just be confident" advice.

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Investing knowledge, financial products and market information are more accessible than ever. But access alone does not guarantee confidence, good decisions or better outcomes. This session examines how technology is changing who participates in finance, which barriers remain and what happens when tools once reserved for institutions reach millions of everyday investors.

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Black culture drives attention, shapes trends and influences what the world buys. Yet its commercial power is still too often underestimated. Leaders from Cosmopolitan and ELLE examine how representation translates into readership, relevance and revenue—and why recognising Black audiences as commercially powerful is essential to building media brands that matter.

AI is increasing the speed, scale and sophistication of cyberattacks while expanding the systems organisations must defend. This session explores the threats emerging next, whether current defences are keeping pace and how government, businesses and communities should prepare. Expect a clear-eyed discussion about resilience, responsibility and the capabilities tomorrow’s security leaders will need.

"Move fast and break things" was never written with a regulator in the room. Yet standing still is its own form of risk, and in markets that reprice in microseconds, slow is simply another word for wrong. This workshop is about the hardest trade-off in regulated engineering: shipping at pace without ever dropping the ball.

We start where speed is non-negotiable - the pricing engines and event-driven architectures that publish two-sided quotes across thousands of instruments and manage the risk of every trade the moment it is agreed (Dominion).

We then flip to organisational velocity: how a hub-and-spoke SRE model lets dozens of federated teams move independently while still sharing error budgets, SLOs and a common definition of "safe" (Geoff).

From there, what happens when speed outruns your controls - a billion-pound discrepancy hiding in a vast trading dataset, and the thirty-minute race to reconcile the numbers and trace it to source before anyone else does (Arushi).

And finally, the velocity nobody expects: how stopping work speeds you up, as delegating authentication to specialised Identity Providers strips out compliance overhead and hands developer cycles back to the business (Maciej).

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AI promises productivity and growth, but its benefits and disruption will not be distributed evenly. This session explores how the technology could reshape jobs, wages, industries and economic power. A leading AI scientist and employment expert examine who stands to gain, which workers face the greatest change and what a genuinely inclusive transition would require.

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A viral moment is not a business model. This session explores how creators can turn attention into lasting careers, trusted brands and sustainable revenue. Leaders from major digital platforms will unpack audience development, platform strategy, partnerships, ownership and monetisation—and share what creators need to build something that survives beyond the next algorithm change.

AI has made it easier than ever to create copy, campaigns, visuals and content at scale.

But if everyone is using the same tools, models and workflows, there is a risk that everything starts to look and sound the same.

This session asks:

If content is becoming cheaper and easier to produce, what actually makes a brand distinctive?

We’ll explore where AI genuinely improves marketing, where it risks creating more “slop”, and whether taste, judgement, originality, customer insight and brand become even more valuable.

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Culture can create relevance faster than any media budget, but turning that relevance into enduring commercial value requires more than borrowing the right aesthetic. This session explores how brands can build with communities rather than simply market to them—and whether cultural authenticity, global scale and billion-dollar ambition can genuinely coexist.

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Join Bloomberg for a behind-the-scenes look at how our Product, Data, and Engineering teams collaborate  to solve complex problems at global scale. Our panel shares perspectives from these three disciplines to explore how ideas become products, how data becomes insight, and how technology enables financial professionals around the world to make more informed decisions faster.

Who gets to decide which founders, ideas and communities receive investment? This session brings together fund managers, investors and institutions to examine what it takes to move from asking for capital to controlling and deploying it. The conversation will explore emerging fund managers, access to institutional backing and how a more representative investment ecosystem gets built.

Join Electronic Arts for a dedicated hour of relaxed, purposeful networking with the people behind games like Battlefield, EA SPORTS FC and F1. Connect with EA professionals across technical and non-technical teams, along with members of our recruiting team. Whether you’re exploring your next opportunity, curious about careers in gaming, or looking to expand your network, come ready for real conversations, career insights, and meaningful connections.

Join ElevenLabs for a hands-on workshop where you’ll build an AI voice agent you can actually talk to. After a quick introduction to who we are and how voice agents work, you’ll build your own agent step by step using ElevenAgents, no coding required, and leave with a working agent you can keep improving after the session.

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‍What you’ll do

• Meet (and call) a live ElevenLabs voice agent
• Learn how a voice agent works: listening, thinking, speaking, and knowing when it’s its turn to talk
• Build your own agent: write its personality, pick a voice from our library or design a brand-new one, and teach it about a business by adding a website
• Talk to it, and see how agents go live on websites and over the phone

Who it’s for: PMs, consultants, engineers, founders, students, and anyone curious about building with AI. No coding needed, and engineers will find plenty to dig into.

Bring a laptop and charger, your phone, and earphones, preferably with a mic. Create a free account at elevenlabs.io before you arrive so you can start building straight away.

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Sport now sits at the centre of fashion, music, gaming, technology and entertainment. Traditional audience size alone cannot explain its growing cultural influence. This session explores how athletes, teams and brands create relevance across communities—and why meaningful cultural participation is becoming more valuable than simply reaching the largest possible crowd.

The original plan rarely survives contact with the market. Three founders share how they recognised when something was not working, made difficult changes and rebuilt around a stronger opportunity. This is an honest discussion about timing, identity, resilience and the difference between abandoning an idea and evolving it into the business it needs to become.

AI development has long depended on acquiring more data. But as models gain access to vast datasets and synthetic information, the constraint is shifting. This session asks what becomes decisive next: compute, talent, evaluation, proprietary context, product design or trust? Join data and technology leaders for a forward-looking discussion about the next competitive frontier.

AI promises transformation, but successful adoption requires far more than access to the latest tools. Join Avanade's interactive reality check workshop and explore what separates AI ambition from AI impact. Through exercises and facilitated discussion, you'll uncover the conditions needed for successful adoption, challenge common misconceptions, and develop a practical roadmap for turning opportunity into outcome. Expect honest conversations, real-world lessons, and actionable takeaways that you can apply immediately.Challenge common AI myths and assumptionsUnderstand how to assess readiness for AI adoptionIdeate practical experiments with clear success measuresCome for the reality check. Leave with a plan.

What does it take to build and exit a company worth more than $100 million? Mattias Scheek shares the decisions, setbacks and inflection points behind his entrepreneurial journey. This conversation moves beyond the headline number to explore product, timing, leadership, negotiation and what founders discover when years of work culminate in a landmark exit.

Britain produces world-class talent and ideas, yet often struggles to scale them with American speed and ambition. This provocative debate asks what the UK can learn from the United States about capital, risk, policy and founder confidence. Which American instincts should Britain adopt, and which parts of its own ecosystem are worth protecting?

AI is changing what products can do, how quickly teams can build and what customers expect. Product leaders must now rethink discovery, roadmaps, experimentation and the role of judgement. This session explores how leadership changes when prototypes appear in hours, features become easier to copy and responsible decision-making matters more than ever.

Curious where your experience could take you in fintech? Come meet the people behind our global platform and get to know what we’re building. Hear about what we do, the challenges we’re tackling across commercial, product and technology, and the opportunities to build alongside some of the most talented people in the industry. Discover roles across our teams and markets, connect with our people, and see where your experience could take you next — whether that’s closer to home or somewhere new.

AI can personalise content, recreate voices and generate convincing media at extraordinary speed. Can those same tools deepen authentic storytelling, or will they make trust harder to earn? BBC leaders and talent explore creativity, identity, deepfakes and fact-checking—and ask what authenticity means when audiences can no longer assume that seeing is believing.

Software development is being rewritten in real time. AI can now generate, review and test code, but speed introduces new questions about quality, security and the engineer’s role. Leaders from frontier AI, global technology and developer infrastructure explore what engineering teams will look like next—and which skills will become more valuable, not less.

From scaling modern digital marketplaces to designing future-proof strategy, this panel explores actionable frameworks for leading through uncertainty, aligning cross-functional teams, and turning continuous disruption into a lasting competitive advantage.

Inside EA: Turning Data into Decisions, Experiences and Impact gives attendees a behind-the-scenes look at how Analytics, Product, Engineering, Marketing, and Program Management work together to build, operate, and evolve games at EA.

Attendees will follow the journey from player signal → insight → decision → build → reach → measure → learn, seeing how data and collaboration ultimately translate into player experiences.

Attendees will also learn what it takes to thrive and build a career in gaming, including the importance of craft depth, data fluency, player obsession, systems thinking, cross-functional influence, and AI adaptability. They’ll leave with a practical framework to assess their own strengths, identify areas to grow, and understand how their existing experience can translate into impact within the gaming industry.

Accenture is bringing analysts to run a marketplace-style AI showcase, where they present a real applied-AI project or piece of research they've delivered. Attendees walk the stalls, get live demos, talk directly to the builders, and vote for their favourite. They'll come away with: real examples of agentic AI and RAG delivering quantified business impact; a strong throughline of AI designed for accessibility and inclusion rather than efficiency alone; and direct insight from early-career technologists building this work today.

By 2027, the best marketing teams will operate very differently. This session examines which tools, platforms and capabilities will matter as AI reshapes content, customer insight, experimentation and distribution. Expect a practical debate about what belongs in the modern stack, what can be removed and where human judgement still creates the advantage.

Join Apple Music’s Ebro Darden, Dotty, and Nadeska Alexis on the Black Tech Fest Main Stage for an exclusive headline conversation. Together, the trio unpack how Apple Music translates real life culture into landmark digital experiences, turning authentic moments into worldwide phenomena. From capturing the grassroots energy of Verzuz to amplifying the world stage of the Super Bowl, they explore the lasting impact of live connection. The session also spotlights the new Battersea Studios and venue in London, revealing how this inspiring creative hub champions artists, drives bold storytelling, and unites communities everywhere.

When anyone can prompt an interface into existence, the value of design has to extend beyond producing screens. This session asks whether AI diminishes designers or makes strategic thinking, research, taste and judgement even more important. Product design leaders will debate what becomes automated, what remains distinctly human and how designers can lead the next generation of products.

How can AI help us think more clearly about decisions that require both evidence and judgement? Through live demonstrations and discussion, we’ll explore how to frame better questions, make sense of information and challenge assumptions. Attendees will leave with practical ways to use AI in their decision-making, while recognising where human judgement remains essential.