AI Adoption is a deeply personal journey

We've spent the last few years measuring and celebrating AI adoption as if it were one thing - when really it's a deeply personal journey, and no two of us are on quite the same one. How it lands depends on where you're starting from, on how you think you'll be seen and measured for using it, and on what it's quietly doing to the craft you love.

Drawing not just on recent research and my own study, but on living it and talking with many others on the same path, this talk weaves those layers together. You'll leave with a clearer sense of your own journey, and that you have far more control over this technology's effectiveness than you might realise.

However you're feeling about all of this, you're not doing it wrong.

Agenda (time in Melbourne/AEST)

• 5:30pm Networking
• 6:00pm Welcome
• 6:05pm Main Presentation
• 6:35pm Q&A
• 7:00pm Networking
• 7:30pm Close

This will be a HYBRID event:
Zoom link - will be posted 1hr before event starts.

Our Speaker
Annie Vella
Annie Vella is a Distinguished Engineer at Westpac New Zealand, where she focuses on AI adoption, governing agentic systems at scale, and transforming the software development lifecycle. With over 20 years of experience across startups, scale-ups, and large enterprises in four countries, she has spent two decades on both sides of the engineer/manager pendulum — and actively encourages others to do the same. Having fallen in love with computers when she got her first Commodore 64 at age six, Annie has cared deeply about the craft ever since. That curiosity led to a Master's of Engineering exploring how professional software engineers experience the impact of AI coding assistants. Through her writing and speaking, Annie's aim is to help engineers and leaders find joy and pride in the work ahead.