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UPCOMING EVENTS

AI & Data Innovation Strategies: Chicago (Rosemont/O’Hare), Illinois

Aligning Modern Data Architectures with AI-Driven Innovation in the Enterprise

March 25, 2026

9:00am-5:00pm

7 CPE / 0.7 CEU / CISSP / 7 PDU Credits Awarded

Conference location: Donald E. Stephens Convention Center Rosemont (O’Hare) Illinois

  

Overview

AI holds huge promise for the industry as a whole.  The key is determining the right strategy for your organization that you can build and execute on.

What You Will Learn

In this one day conference attendees will learn the following:

  • Own It: AI as Your Leadership Opportunity
  • Designing a Modern Data Architecture for AI-Driven Decision Making
  • Building Trustworthy AI: Data Quality, Model Transparency, and Accountability
  • AI-Ready Talent and Skills: Structuring Teams for Speed and Impact
  • Turning Data into Decisions: Embedding AI Insights into Daily Workflows
  • Inside the Enterprise: How AI & Data Leaders Are Designing Scalable AI Programs

CONFERENCE AGENDA

8:00am – 9:00am: Registration and Continental Breakfast

9:00am – 9:50am:

Own It: AI as Your Leadership Opportunity
James (Jim) MacLennan, Maker Turtle LLC; Former CIO, IDEX

AI tools change every few months, but the real barriers to adoption don’t – they’re organizational, not technical. Most IT leaders already know this. The CEO wants to move faster, security is pushing back, peers are hedging, and the team doesn’t know what to make of any of it. The technology isn’t the hard part. The people are.

Drawing on 40 years of executive leadership, Jim MacLennan reframes AI adoption as a leadership challenge, not a technology challenge. This session walks through how to have three very different conversations about AI inside your organization: up to executives and board members who think in terms of customers and market share, not technology; across to peers who may be using security and compliance as a polite way to resist change; and down to teams who need to hear it in their own currency – whether that’s time, attention, energy, or career growth.

Attendees will work through a self-diagnostic framework to identify where their organization is actually stuck and leave with scenario-based playbooks they can put to work immediately.

 

Actionable Takeaways:

  • How to frame AI strategy for executives who care about business impact, not technology
  • A contrarian perspective on why security culture often blocks change more than it protects the enterprise
  • The “Four Currencies” framework for connecting with teams on what actually matters to them
  • A self-diagnostic quadrant to assess where your organization is stuck and what to do about it
  • Practical approaches for navigating internal politics, competing priorities, and organizational fear

MacLennan

 

9:50am – 10:20am: Refreshment Break

10:20am – 11:10am: Designing a Modern Data Architecture for AI-Driven Decision Making

AI innovation depends on data that is accessible, trusted, and timely. This session examines modern data architectures—lakehouse, data mesh, and hybrid approaches—and how organizations are selecting and evolving architectures to support advanced analytics and AI use cases.

Actionable Takeaways:

  • Criteria for choosing the right data architecture for AI workloads
  • Common architectural pitfalls that slow AI adoption
  • How to align data platform investments with business use cases

11:10am – 12:00pm: Accelerating Enterprise AI: Deliver Value Fast Without Creating Risk or Rework
Debashis Rana, VP Data and AI Markets, Myridius

AI promises enormous value, yet many enterprises remain stuck in pilot mode, unable to translate experimentation into durable business impact. The challenge is rarely the models themselves, but how AI is integrated into enterprise data, systems, and workflows.

In this session, we’ll explore how organizations can deliver measurable AI-driven outcomes quickly without creating the governance, security, and technical debt that slows them down later. Drawing on real-world patterns and lessons learned, we’ll examine what enables rapid deployment, where AI initiatives commonly break at scale, and how to establish the right foundations so early wins don’t turn into costly rework.

Attendees will leave with a practical blueprint to accelerate AI initiatives, manage risk, and build AI systems that scale across the enterprise, safely and sustainably. 

Rana

12:00pm – 12:50pm: Lunch and Exhibit Break

12:50pm – 1:40pm: AI-Ready Talent and Skills: Structuring Teams for Speed and Impact

Technology alone does not drive AI success—people do. This session explores how organizations are rethinking roles, skills, and collaboration models to accelerate AI initiatives while reducing dependency on scarce talent.

Actionable Takeaways:

  • Recommended role definitions across data, AI, and business teams
  • Upskilling strategies that work without large training budgets
  • How to embed AI capabilities directly into business functions

1:40pm – 2:30pm: Turning Data into Decisions: Embedding AI Insights into Daily Workflows

AI insights only matter when they change decisions and behaviors. This session focuses on integrating AI and analytics directly into operational workflows, products, and customer interactions to ensure insights are acted upon.

Actionable Takeaways:

  • Design patterns for embedding AI into business processes
  • Change management techniques that increase adoption of AI-driven insights
  • Examples of organizations closing the gap between insight and action

2:20pm – 2:50pm: Refreshment Break

2:50pm – 3:40pm: Managing AI Risk Without Slowing Innovation

Innovation and risk management are often seen as opposing forces. This session demonstrates how organizations can proactively manage AI risks—legal, ethical, operational, and reputational—while still enabling rapid innovation.

Actionable Takeaways:

  • A risk-based approach to prioritizing AI governance efforts
  • Practical controls that balance speed with oversight
  • How to engage legal, compliance, and security teams early without creating bottlenecks

3:40pm– 4:30pm: Inside the Enterprise: How AI & Data Leaders Are Designing Scalable AI Programs

Panelist will include:

  • Aureo Zanon, Director, Data Analytics & Engineering, HAVI
  • And other AI & Data Executives sharing strategies, tactics and lessons learned

This interactive panel features senior enterprise AI and data executives sharing firsthand insights into how they are designing, governing, and scaling AI programs across their organizations. Panelists will discuss real-world decision points—from operating models and funding structures to data readiness and stakeholder alignment—highlighting what has worked, what hasn’t, and what they would do differently if starting today.

Actionable Takeaways:

  • How enterprise leaders structure AI programs for scalability and sustainability
  • Common design mistakes organizations make when launching AI initiatives
  • Practical lessons on aligning business, data, and technology stakeholders
  • How peers are prioritizing AI use cases and measuring success


Zanon

Conference Price: $349.00 per person

Each attendee will receive a certificate awarding 7 CPE credits for CISSP continuing education, in addition to 0.7 CEUs and 7 PDUs. CISSP is a registered certification mark of (ISC)², Inc.

 

Exhibits

As is always the case at CAMP IT Conferences events, the talks will not include product presentations. During the continental breakfast, coffee breaks, and the luncheon break you will have the opportunity to informally meet representatives from the following sponsoring companies, who have solutions in the area of the conference.