The upskilling nobody asked for
Gartner expects most of the engineering workforce to need AI upskilling through 2027. Here is what that looks like from the inside: taking hundreds of consultants across six countries through an AI literacy programme that many of them did not ask for. Senior experts who quietly feared their expertise was being devalued. Juniors who leapfrogged them in a month. Badge paths that worked, mandates that backfired, and metrics that flattered us until we fixed the denominator. An honest talk about the human side of AI transformation, from someone still in the middle of it.
Who is this talk for?
Leaders, team leads, and anyone responsible for helping colleagues adapt to AI, plus practitioners in the middle of being "upskilled" who want to see it from the other side.
What will attendees take away?
A learning-path structure people finish, staged from foundations to practitioner to innovator, with continuous refresh rather than a one-off certificate.
Ways to spot and work with the quiet resistance of senior experts, which is fear wearing a professional mask.
How to measure adoption honestly, starting with always stating the denominator.
Mei is the Chief Technology Officer at TTC Global, a software quality consultancy founded in New Zealand and now working worldwide.
Mei spends her days putting AI to work on enterprise testing, and making sure humans stay firmly in charge of it. She is the happiest when a demo breaks and everyone gets to learn something.