Data & AI Literacy Round Table (10th edition)

Nine editions in, one question keeps coming back: who actually owns this?

For most organisations, Data & AI strategy has sat firmly with the data function: planning, vendor selection, governance. Adoption started out there too. But it is becoming clear that adoption depends on far more than that one function can control. AI is proving strategic and genuinely disruptive, so companies now treat it as a board-level priority. And with that, HR comes to the table to take more ownership too.

Meanwhile, your people are already using AI. Most of them without much grasp of where the data comes from, and most of them without anyone having decided who is responsible for changing that. The data office holds the strategy. HR holds the learning infrastructure, the budget for people's hours and the performance conversation. Neither side can do it alone, and this is exactly the seam programmes stall on.

Getting the full benefit of AI investments takes broader change initiatives and company-wide literacy programmes. That is exactly why HR/L&D and Data & AI need to work far more closely together than they have. Adoption does not follow from investing in technology. It takes cross-functional collaboration to make sure people can actually use what is there.

So for the 10th edition we are putting both sides in the same room for one afternoon, to dig into where literacy and adoption should be owned. The honest answer is rarely one function on its own. Co-hosted with Sandra Oudshoff, Conclusion.

Two talks. A keynote on what changes when AI literacy moves from the data office to the CHRO: what broke, what it cost, and what they would do differently. Twenty five minutes, not the polished version. Plus a short add-on from Sandra on where ownership of data & AI literacy actually belongs. Speaker announced closer to the date.

Four tables, forty minutes. The questions come from three months of conversations with our clients. Every table needs at least one HR and one data person, which is the whole point. Who owns this. Why time, not money, has become the real budget. How you prove it worked when compliance, your sponsor and technical leadership each want a different kind of evidence. And why measuring AI usage tends to produce exactly the behaviour you did not want.

The room is the point. Past editions brought together people from ING, Rabobank, ABN AMRO, Schiphol, KLM, Heineken, PGGM, PostNL, Just Eat Takeaway, Eneco and Brenntag. Invite-only and deliberately small, so it stays a conversation between peers rather than a stage. Our last edition had Stefano Puntoni of Wharton on AI adoption, and Daniëlle Bourgondiën of PGGM on what it actually took there.

Jaarbeurs Innovation Mile, Beatrixgebouw, Jaarbeursplein 6, Utrecht. Doors 14:30, programme 15:00 to 17:00, drinks from 17:00 until 18:00. Thirty to forty seats, registration by approval. Tell us which side you sit on when you register, because we balance the room.