What Exactly Is an Agent? + The POC That Never Ships

Registration: please read. This event is inside Accenture’s building, so security needs every attendee’s full name in advance. When you RSVP, you’ll be asked for your first and last name exactly as on your photo ID. Please bring that ID on the night. No name, no entry.
Two practical talks for people building with AI: one on what an agent really is under the hood, and one on why so many AI projects never make it past the demo.

Co-hosted with The Syntax Social.

What Is an Agent, Really? Building a Coding Harness from Scratch
Emily Price, Data Engineer, Accenture
What exactly is an agent? How does a harness work? Emily struggled to find straightforward answers to these questions, so she built an agentic coding harness herself. She’ll share how she went about it and what she’s learned as she’s added features, with a live demo of the harness in action and a comparison with more fully featured harnesses.
Emily is a Data Engineer at Accenture, with experience in big data processing and a background in physics.
The POC That Never Ships
Raji Bhamidipati, Senior AI Product Manager, Finova
Why do so many GenAI projects die after the proof of concept? The problem is rarely the technology. Raji looks at what teams get wrong before they write a line of code, such as measuring a baseline and agreeing what would make you kill the project. She then covers what production actually demands once the demo is over: evaluation, audit trails, cost per decision, and the handover to whoever runs it at 2am. Drawn from real work in a regulated environment.
Your host for the evening: Oluwadara Adebobola, AI Data Engineer at GWI.
Agenda
5:45 Doors, food and networking
6:15 Welcome from Oluwadara
6:20 Emily Price: What Is an Agent, Really? (talk + Q&A)
7:05 Raji Bhamidipati: The POC That Never Ships (talk + Q&A)
7:45 Networking
8:30 Close
With thanks to Libby Stranks and Accenture for hosting us at Circle Square.