Keynote: How AI is Transforming Cybersecurity Regulation , and What That Means for the World

This technical talk explores how AI is outpacing existing regulatory frameworks. It examines how regulators are beginning to use AI to monitor and update rules in real time, and what this means for organisations navigating a fragmented global landscape.

Speaker: Saba Rubaei

Saba Rubaei is the Global Head of Cybersecurity Regulation Management at Citi, where she leads the firm’s regulatory strategy and compliance across global cybersecurity frameworks. With a background in software engineering and a Master’s in Cybersecurity, she brings a rare blend of technical depth and regulatory expertise to one of the most fast-moving challenges in financial services

Keynote: The Answer is No

Founding a company is hard. Founding one while technology shifts beneath your feet is even harder – you need every edge you can get. This talk introduces one skill you’ve probably never considered. One that could change how you handle every closed door you’ll face: planning what to do when the answer is No.

Speaker: Mike Hawkyard

Mike Hawkyard is a seasoned founder and gaming industry leader with over 25 years of experience building and scaling high-performing teams across mobile, web, and multi-platform titles. He has co-founded and successfully exited two studios—one behind games played over three billion times worldwide and another that reimagined employee engagement for global brands—earning recognition including a BAFTA nomination along the way. Now leading his third venture, Ace High Sports, Mike continues to combine commercial instinct with creative execution, bringing deep expertise in leadership, game design, and business growth.

Locknote: Learning from Failure

We are surrounded by failure. Everywhere we look — our browsers, our phones, supermarket checkouts, advertising billboards, airport timetables — there’s often a display showing a broken configuration, a bootup sequence or the blue screen of death. And sometimes the failure is much larger than what we see in front of us — just think of CrowdStrike.

As software professionals we need to ask what we can learn from these failures. What simple techniques can we apply to reduce the probability that something will go wrong?

Speaker: Kevlin Henney

Kevlin Henney is a independent consultant, trainer, technologist, writer and renowned keynote speaker known for his work helping organisations, teams and individuals with their software development practices, processes and architectures. He is a contributor to the Modern Software Engineering YouTube channel, co-author of two volumes in the Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture series, editor of 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know, co-editor of 97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know, and has written for many other publications, including O’Reilly Radar and The Register. He lives in Bristol and online.