🤖 Group Therapy: An Honest Session on How We Actually Feel About AI

We are finally doing it. A talk themed around AI. But we know it's session nobody wants to admit they need.

We've all heard the AI buzzwords - "excited," "leaning in," "embracing the tools", "It's about Taste"

But what's the version we tell our partner at 11pm? This session is a confession booth disguised as a meetup: no corporate talking points, no performative optimism, just a room full of professionals finally saying the quiet part out loud.

What you'll hear:
✨ The mood ring check-in: Has your relationship with AI actually evolved - curiosity, to fatigue, to something like grudging acceptance? Or are you stuck on repeat?

✨ Empowered or expendable: The gap between the tools making us faster and the fear that "faster" was never really the point

✨ The honesty audit: Are we saying what we actually feel, or reciting the script we think we're supposed to perform?

✨ Slop or stealth: Is AI-generated mediocrity actually improving - or has it just gotten better at hiding in plain sight?

✨ The invoice after the honeymoon: Businesses got the discounted intro rate. Is anyone budgeting for what this actually costs once the novelty pricing ends?

✨ Who's actually watching the risk: How leaders are (or aren't) identifying, assessing, and managing AI risk before it becomes a headline

👉 The debate on the table:
"Most people are more anxious than they admit" vs "People are largely fine and adapting"
Pick a side. Defend it. Or admit you're not sure, which might be the most honest answer in the room.

📌 The details:

• Date: Thursday 13th August
• Host: Melbourne Design Thinking Meetup x Scyne Advisory
• Refreshments included: Pizza and fizz!

Our Speakers:

Liz Collins León
Experience Architect | Design Operations Strategist
Liz is an Experience Architect with over 15 years designing systems, campaigns, and communication solutions across retail, telecommunications, and front-to-back office operations.

With tenure at Telstra, Google, and more recently Genesys, she is a design leader and mentor whose passion for creating inclusive experiences expands beyond delivering data-driven, digital products.

Whether fostering a community effort to found a greenbelt reserve, designing learning spaces, or promoting psychological safety in the workplace, she endeavors to strengthen communities through online and offline connections.

Gemma Mooney
Product Design Lead | RACV

With over 20 years of experience spanning UX, digital product design and design leadership. She specialises in helping organisations understand customer needs and translate insights into improved products, services and experiences.

At RACV, Gemma leads strategic discovery, research and experience design initiatives across a range of member experiences, including onboarding, emergency roadside assistance, payments, chat and AI-enabled digital services. She also led the design of the RACV app from concept through to launch, helping shape the vision, user experience and member proposition for one of RACV's most important digital products. More recently, she has been helping embed AI into the design practice, developing practical approaches for using tools such as Copilot to support research, synthesis, journey mapping and opportunity identification.

Prior to RACV, Gemma was UX Manager at Intrepid Travel, where she established the company's UX practice and championed user-centred design across the organisation. She also led Intrepid's first innovation hackathon, bringing together cross-functional teams to solve customer and business challenges through design-led thinking.

Throughout her career, Gemma has been passionate about creating evidence-based, customer-centred experiences and helping teams use research and emerging technologies to drive better outcomes for customers and organisations alike. Her work has been recognised with Intrepid Travel's Outstanding Achievement Award and Travel Weekly's Women in Travel Award.

David Cullen
Managing Director, Scyne Advisory (GAICD)

David has spent two decades on the front line of Australia's cyber resilience — the kind of career where "incident response" isn't a slide in a deck, it's a 3am phone call. As Victoria's former Chief Information Security Officer, he built the state's Cyber Incident Response Service from scratch and led the response to Victoria's largest-ever public sector cyber-attack, all while establishing the frameworks that now coordinate cyber emergencies statewide.

At the national level, David represented Victoria on the National Cyber Security Committee and built the National Operations Subcommittee to get states talking to each other before a crisis, not during one. He's now a Managing Director at Scyne Advisory, leading national incident response capability and helping organisations across the public and private sector get serious about cyber preparedness before they need to.

David holds a Master of Public Policy and Management, is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and is a recipient of the Resilient Australia Award. He brings a rare thing to a stage: someone who's actually been the person picking up the phone when it all goes wrong — and has the scars, systems, and stories to prove it.