Programmable 2025 Melbourne featured a fantastic program, heavy on practical data & AI in an apt reflection of the times. It was also a great chance to catch up with many in the Melbourne tech community.
I presented my 7 Wastes of Data Production talk. In the spirit of continuous improvement, I made some minor updates from earlier versions. My talk tied in well with themes of the day, including both keynotes on dark sides of AI – thanks Chris Simon and J. Rosenbaum.
While waste wasn’t the key message from the keynote speakers, in their talks I saw particularly the wastes of overproduction, transportation and defects, manifest on a global scale of excessive consumption and ailing health of our information ecosystem, ultimately causing hurt to people – producers and consumers of the data the drives and is driven by AI – in other words, all of us. While my talk focusses on what we can do in a professional capacity in our organisations, the keynotes reinforced to me the urgency of doing better as society to reduce the negative impacts of AI.
There are some great photos up on the Programmable site and I think a video of my talk is coming. Thanks to the awesome team behind Programmable – I’m looking forward to 2026!