VALUE FIRST

Talks & Programs

Every session below moves a team one rung up: understand what AI shifts, apply it to your own workflows, and only then redesign the work itself.

The ladder

LevelThe decision on that rung
1. UnderstandWhat AI shifts about value and trust, and where that hits your organization.
2. ApplyWho decides, who reviews, who ships, settled per workflow.
3. RedesignWhich work you delegate, which work you redesign, and which work you protect.

Sessions

Seven sessions, two tracks. Talks fill your main program; workshops run pre-conference or in-house. Details below.

Session overview by format and audience
SessionFormatAudience
When the Metrics Go Up and the Team Goes QuietKeynote / talk · 45'Leaders
AI Development Governance: The 3 Collaboration ModelsTalk · 45'Leaders & practitioners
Your Agent Architecture Is Your Org ChartKeynote / talk · 45'Leaders & practitioners
The Work That RemainsInteractive talk · 90' · also half-day workshopLeaders
Leading When Agents Do the WorkFull-day workshopLeadership teams
Agentic Development, Hands-OnFull-day workshopPractitioners
Designing Agents for Your Value StreamFull-day workshopCross-functional teams

Each talk carries one of the concepts below; each workshop puts one to work on your own material.

Talks & keynotes for the main program

Keynote / talk · 45' · For leaders

When the Metrics Go Up and the Team Goes Quiet

AI tools speed up delivery while quietly eroding candor, ownership, and trust. Those are the conditions teams actually run on. Three erosion patterns already visible in real teams, and the values check that catches them before they become irreversible.

Participants can:

  • Name the tension between AI-driven speed and team trust in your own context.
  • Apply a values check to a running AI initiative.
  • Formulate three concrete agreements that protect psychological safety around AI use.

Agile2025, Denver — PMI Agile Alliance (earlier version under the title "AI Harmony").

Talk · 45' · For leaders & practitioners

AI Development Governance: The 3 Collaboration Models

What AI changes about team collaboration, in three concrete models for software delivery: who decides, who reviews, who ships. Includes a live hands-on demo using the open-source BMAD method, with AI agents organized in agile roles. Leaders leave knowing which model fits which risk profile.

This session is about choosing the governance model. Its design counterpart is Your Agent Architecture Is Your Org Chart.

Participants can:

  • Distinguish the three models and map them to risk profiles.
  • Determine, for their own delivery process, who decides, who reviews, and who ships.
  • Explain what an agent-structured workflow (à la BMAD) changes about roles.

Dutch AI Conference, Amsterdam. Audience feedback: the hands-on demos and the concepts on how AI changes team collaboration were rated most valuable.

Keynote / talk · 45' · For leaders & practitioners

Your Agent Architecture Is Your Org Chart

Conway's Law applied to AI agents: your agent design will mirror your organizational design, whether you plan it or not. Patterns from Lean, Agile, and consent-based decision making.

This session is about designing the agent system. Its governance counterpart is The 3 Collaboration Models. They can be programmed together or separately.

Participants can:

  • Explain how organizational design seeps into agent design (Conway's Law).
  • Apply two design patterns from adaptive ways of working to an agent architecture.
  • Recognize the risks of agent structures that copy existing silos.

Interactive talk · 90' · For leaders

The Work That Remains

When AI does the building, what is left for the team? Participants build the Delegate / Redesign / Protect model themselves through structured exercises.

Participants can:

  • Apply the Delegate / Redesign / Protect distinction to their own workload.
  • Identify which team work deserves protection and why.
  • Formulate one redesign experiment for their team.

No preparation needed.

Also available as a half-day pre-conference workshop: the extended version, applied in depth to participants' own workload (max 24).

Two tracks: Leading When Agents Do the Work for leaders, Agentic Development, Hands-On and Designing Agents for Your Value Stream for practitioners. The last two work as a two-day track. The Work That Remains is also available as a half-day workshop. Every conference workshop is also the demo for an in-house program.

Workshops for pre-conference and in-house

Full-day workshop · max 20 · no laptops · For leadership teams

Leading When Agents Do the Work

One day through the full ladder: understand what AI changes about value and trust, apply the 3 Collaboration Models to your own organization, and make your first redesign decisions with Delegate / Redesign / Protect. For leadership teams and executives. This is decision work, not tool work. No laptops needed.

Participants can:

  • Assess one of their own AI initiatives on strategic fit, risk profile, and ownership.
  • Choose a collaboration model per workflow, matched to risk profile.
  • Leave with three explicit redesign decisions, each with an owner.

For leadership teams; come with one real AI initiative in mind.

Full-day workshop · max 20 · laptops required · For practitioners

Agentic Development, Hands-On

From first agent to governed workflow in one day, using the open-source BMAD method. Set up agents in agile roles, run a real story through the workflow, hit the failure modes, and add the quality gates that catch them. For developers, architects, and tech leads. Bring a laptop; leave with a running setup and your governance choices documented.

Participants can:

  • Configure an agent workflow with roles and hand-offs.
  • Identify where the workflow fails without human review, and place quality gates there.
  • Take home a working configuration plus a decision log.

Laptop with terminal access required; basic development experience assumed.

Full-day workshop · max 20 · no laptops · For cross-functional teams

Designing Agents for Your Value Stream

Cross-functional teams bring their own value stream as working material and leave with a concrete agent design template. Design workshop, no laptops. The hands-on coding counterpart is Agentic Development, Hands-On. Together they work as a two-day track.

Participants can:

  • Map their own value stream as the basis for agent design.
  • Deliver a completed agent design template for one concrete step.
  • Explicitly lock down governance choices (who checks what).

Come as a team if you can; bring knowledge of one real value stream.

All sessions are hands-on. My facilitation style uses Liberating Structures and Training from the Back of the Room.

For your program page

Copy-ready descriptions for conference and event program pages.

When the Metrics Go Up and the Team Goes Quiet
AI tools speed up delivery while quietly eroding candor, ownership, and trust — the conditions teams actually run on. Three erosion patterns already visible in real teams, and the values check that catches them before they become irreversible. Keynote or talk, 45 minutes. For leaders.
AI Development Governance: The 3 Collaboration Models
Three concrete models for human-AI collaboration in software delivery — who decides, who reviews, who ships. Includes a live hands-on demo using the open-source BMAD method. Leaders leave knowing which model fits which risk profile. Talk, 45 minutes. For leaders and practitioners.
Your Agent Architecture Is Your Org Chart
Conway's Law applied to AI agents: your agent design will mirror your organizational design, whether you plan it or not. Patterns from Lean, Agile, and consent-based decision making. Keynote or talk, 45 minutes. For leaders and practitioners.
The Work That Remains
When AI does the building, what is left for the team? Participants build the Delegate / Redesign / Protect model themselves through structured exercises. Interactive talk, 90 minutes. For leaders.
Leading When Agents Do the Work
AI changes who does the work, who reviews it, and who is accountable. In this full-day workshop, leadership teams apply three practical models to their own organization and leave with explicit redesign decisions. Decision work, not tool work — no laptops needed.
Agentic Development, Hands-On
Build a governed agent workflow in one day with the open-source BMAD method. Configure agents in agile roles, find the failure modes, place the quality gates. For developers, architects, and tech leads. Laptops required.
Designing Agents for Your Value Stream
Bring your own value stream as working material and leave with a completed agent design template, including who checks what. A design workshop, not a coding lab. For cross-functional teams.
The Work That Remains (extended)
When AI does the building, what is left for the team? Participants build the Delegate / Redesign / Protect model themselves through structured exercises, applied to their own workload. Half day, highly interactive.

Concepts

The concepts behind the sessions above, in more depth. Reference material you can use yourself, whether or not you book a session.

CONCEPT 01

The 3 Collaboration Models

Most teams adopting AI tools are making one of three choices about who's in control, without realizing they're making a choice at all. At one end: AI-assisted development, where a human reviews and decides on every step. At the other: fully agent-driven workflows, where the system acts and a human reviews after the fact. Each model carries a different risk profile, a different definition of "done," and a different governance requirement.

Getting the model wrong is how most AI adoption fails — not because the tools don't work, but because nobody decided who's accountable for what.

Apply this when your team is choosing an AI collaboration model for a specific workflow, or has quietly inherited one. Map the task to a risk profile first, then pick the model, not the other way around.

CONCEPT 02

Your Agent Architecture Is Your Org Chart

Conway's Law says systems mirror the communication structure of the organizations that build them. It was true for software architecture, and it's true for agent architecture: the way you split work between agents will mirror the way your organization already splits work between teams, whether you design it deliberately or not.

That's a problem when your organization has silos you don't want to repeat. An agent architecture copied straight from an org chart with hand-off delays and unclear ownership will reproduce exactly those delays and that unclear ownership, just faster.

Apply this when you're designing or inheriting a multi-agent system. Borrow patterns from Lean and consent-based decision making before you borrow your existing reporting lines, and check, deliberately, whether the agent boundaries you're drawing solve a real problem or just copy an old one.

CONCEPT 03

Delegate / Redesign / Protect

When agents take over the building, the obvious question is what's left for the team. The wrong answer: "whatever's left over." Some work should be delegated outright: agents do it, humans check outcomes, not process. Some work needs redesigning: the task still needs a human, but the way it's done has to change now that agents handle the mechanical parts. And some work needs protecting: the parts of the job where the friction itself is the point. The debate in planning, the disagreement in a design review. Removing that friction removes what made the team good.

Apply this per task, not per role. Run it across a real backlog, task by task, and all three categories show up, usually in proportions that surprise the team doing the sorting.

Formats

FormatDurationMaxUse
Keynote45'UnlimitedMain program
Interactive talk / breakout90'~60Parallel session, with an exercise
Half-day workshop3.5 h (incl. breaks)24Pre-conference or in-house
Full-day workshop7 h (incl. breaks)20Pre-conference or in-house

Above 20 participants I work with a co-facilitator — quality over volume.

Room requirements

FormatRoom setupMaterialsOther
Keynote (45')Theater seating, stage, screen visible from every angleProjector + screen, wireless handheld or lapel mic, countdown timer visible to the speaker, speaker screen to see slides and slide notes, reliable Wi-FiLive survey, the audience uses their own phones
Interactive talk / breakout (90')Theater or cabaret seating, with room to turn into pairs or small groupsProjector + screen, 1 flipchart, markers, reliable Wi-FiA short paired exercise works without fixed tables
Half-day workshop (3.5 h, incl. breaks)Cabaret seating: round or rectangular work tables, max 4-6 participants per table. No theater seating.One flipchart per table (4-6), markers, sticky notes, projector + screen, wall space for flipchart sheetsNatural light and room to move between tables preferred; breaks are built into the 3.5 h
Full-day workshop (7 h, incl. breaks)Same as half-day, plus extra wall space for cumulative exercises over the daySame as half-day + extra flipchart sheets per session blockCatering breaks (lunch + 2× coffee): logistics with the organizer. A separate corner for break conversations is welcome

Booking bundles

A

Keynote

45' + Q&A or an exercise.

B

Keynote + pre-conference workshop

The most attractive package for organizers: ticket revenue, and your program gets the speaker twice.

C

Workshop standalone

Half day or full day.

D

Interactive talk

90' parallel session, with an exercise.

Fees on request. A fixed fee or revenue share on workshop tickets, depending on what works for your event.

The demo

Live demos use, among other things, the open-source BMAD method: AI agents in agile roles as PM, architect, developer, and Scrum Master. It makes the "Agent Architecture = Org Chart" thesis literally visible. The audience sees an agent team organized like an agile team.

In-house

The same keynotes, workshops, and training programs, delivered on location. Flagship: AI leadership development, a multi-day training track for leadership teams along the same ladder (Understand → Apply → Redesign). Leading When Agents Do the Work is the single-day conference version of this same track. Every workshop above is also available as an in-house program.

Availability

Available for conferences worldwide. All sessions in English and Dutch.

Frequently asked questions

How quickly do you respond?
Within two business days, with a proposal tailored to your event.
How far in advance should we book?
Most conferences book 3 to 6 months ahead.
What does it cost?
Commercial conferences pay a speaking fee. Community and non-profit events are considered case by case.
Can sessions run virtually?
Yes, for both keynotes and workshops. In person is preferred, but virtual works.
Can the format be shorter or longer?
Keynotes scale from 20 to 75 minutes; workshops run from half a day to multiple days.
Do leadership audiences need a technical background?
No. Leadership keynotes focus on governance and decision-making, not code.
Is this a product pitch?
No. No tool or vendor recommendation, no implementation work. Just mechanism, decision frameworks, and what AI concretely changes about roles and accountability.
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