UK & Ireland CIO Executive Summit

Join this exclusive evening hosted by the Governing Body, this dinner is a can’t-miss opportunity to connect with your peers prior to tomorrow’s Executive Summit.

Before and during dinner, attendees will engage in a lively conversation around the future role of the CIO facilitated by Sharon Prior, CIO, Heathrow Airport. Sharon will take you through her thoughts around how the role has evolved rapidly, and what this means next for the CIO. This will be followed by a table discussion, and an evening of good food, wine, and lively networking.

Where You Stand — The Evolving Role of the CIO

Today’s CIO must be an innovation, strategy, and business leader that can implement technology to advance the business while effectively communicating value to stakeholders. Sharon Prior, CIO at Heathrow Airport leads this session on where the role of the CIO is today and where it is headed in the future.

Join this session to discuss:

• Being a business technologist in an ever-changing landscape
• Communicating the value of IT by simplifying technology
• Balancing innovation amid economic uncertainty

Zero trust transformation is not a straightforward, linear process. Modern CIOs and CISOs must navigate a complex balance between technological advancement and the need to simplify and secure IT environments. The explosion of AI and recent technological disruptions served as a wake-up call to many organisations to scrutinize progress towards zero trust principles – for users, devices, and workloads. How can leaders take advantage of this momentum to accelerate their zero trust and AI-enabled transformation?

Join this session to learn:

• How a zero trust approach to IT can help secure organisations’ resources reliably and cost-effectively
• How to foster a cultural shift within the organisation, ensuring employees and leadership understand and embrace zero trust principles
• How to manage the complexities of AI integration to create robust security frameworks

Organisations must navigate the unpredictable with a calculated and dynamic mindset. From supply chain shortages to rising inflation and increased regulation, CIOs must position themselves at the heart of the business, ensuring that the organisation's pulse aligns with the ever-evolving digital landscape. But in tough operating environments, how can CIOs better tackle legacy systems, foster a culture of adaptability and drive innovation within the organisation. Join Nuno Miller, Digital COO at N Brown as he shares his insights into:

• How CIOs must take full advantage of digital, agile and data capabilities to drive business outcomes
• Tackling complex legacy systems and driving automation across the organisation
• Ensuring data is used as an ‘organisational compass’, driving better decision making across the organisation

CIOs navigate diverse technology strategies in their careers, with scalability consistently posing a challenge. Adapting operating models and optimising data are vital, but showcasing IT's value at scale remains pivotal. Alongside this, employees must feel empowered and enabled by technologies to drive productivity and experience. In this session, Leanne Lynch, CIO at ISS UK&I will discuss the strategies she has learnt over her career for harmonising and scaling IT assets effectively.

Join this session to learn more on:

• How technology at ISS is being used to empower people and scale the business to new heights
• Aligning tech strategy with business objectives through streamlined architecture, governance and cost
• Communicating how each dimension of your tech strategy demonstrates agility to increase leadership buy-in

The cloud landscape is undergoing a significant transformation. Generative AI, sophisticated cyber risks and complex datasets are all impacting current cloud strategy, and CIOs must ensure what’s currently in place stays secure, relevant and valuable to the business. CIOs must lead the charge to find the skills necessary to plan, build, and operate in a way that delivers on the cloud’s promise of business agility.

Join this interactive boardroom to discuss:

• Recalibrating when necessary for scale and price
• Navigating the unwelcome risk of an increasingly complex attack surface
• Maximising the impact of emerging technologies and AI in the cloud to drive value

New to role CIOs must balance near-term performance objectives while building for the future. Whether you are a first time CIO, new to the company/industry or a seasoned high performer, this workshop will help you drive success in your role through a structured and practical approach to accelerate value. Specifically, you’ll cover:

• Setting yourself up for success in your organisation and driving value, fast
• The strategies and techniques CIOs should employ to accelerate speed to value
• Driving success in your role through effective stakeholder management and engagement

**This session is the first of two. Please make sure to join both sessions**

Digital disruption brings both threats and opportunities to organisations, and CIOs must navigate the unpredictable with a calculated and dynamic mindset. CIOs must increasingly do more with less and find innovative ways to address business challenges. Join David Jones, Global CIO at AEG, as he shares insights and thoughts into the impact fast moving technologies are having on the live entertainment industry, and advice to CIOs who are helping organisations scale and drive revenue. Specifically, David will share:

• How IT and technology has contributed to AEGs growth and impact in live entertainment
• Working with business stakeholders to foster a culture of innovation and showing the link to business outcome
• Focusing on the 'brilliant basics' to foster a motivated workforce who can drive change

The opportunity to reach a cohort of next generation CIOs and provide support, mentorship and guidance can be invaluable to rising IT talent. In contrast, the ideas, fresh thinking and knowledge gained from meeting this cohort can be equally as valuable to gain new perspectives and re-evaluate future strategy. Join this session to meet with members of the ‘Next Generation CIO’ Programme on a one to one basis, providing guidance and sharing a two way flow of ideas that can help shape the future of digital business. You'll have a chance to:

• Connect one-on-one with aspiring tech talent and give back to the community
• Understand what priorities future IT leaders believe they should focus on
• Share your experiences and candid advice to individuals who will be taking on the CIO role of the future

Getting total buy-in from leadership isn’t easy but can accelerate your initiatives and increase success and adoption. If you can learn to communicate with your board by leveraging data to tell a compelling story, IT’s effectiveness will be recognised — inspiring trust and future buy-in across the enterprise.

Join this session to discuss:

• Best practices for communicating with your board
• Using data to tell IT’s story
• Building relationships with stakeholders

New to role CIOs must balance near-term performance objectives while building for the future. Whether you are a first time CIO, new to the company/industry or a seasoned high performer, this workshop will help you drive success in your role through a structured and practical approach to accelerate value. Specifically, you’ll cover:

• Setting yourself up for success in your organisation and driving value, fast
• The strategies and techniques CIOs should employ to accelerate speed to value
• Driving success in your role through effective stakeholder management and engagement

**This session is the second of two. Please make sure to join both sessions**

Accidental misinformation and deliberate disinformation have been a feature of human society for millennia. Now the combination of AI-generated deepfakes, behavioral science, social media and other trends have taken this issue to a whole other level: mass customised, weaponised disinformation designed to hack our mental models – what Gartner calls malinformation. Every day we read about increasingly sophisticated attacks and issues affecting companies, individuals and governments. This erodes trust, damages brands and reputations, and leads us to make poor decisions on unreliable information.

In this keynote, Gartner Research Fellow Dave Aron will discuss:

• Real world examples of malinformation
• Insights into how malinformation is evolving
• Actions leaders and their businesses can take to survive and thrive in a ‘world without truth’