Full-day AI conference in Christchurch
EPIC AI Conference — AM Workshops
The morning workshop block is designed for people who want practical experience, not just theory. Across five fast, hands-on sessions, attendees explore how AI can support communication, workflow design, nonprofit impact, and collaborative idea-building.
Hosted by the Christchurch AI Meetup Group as part of TechWeekNZ, the EPIC AI Conference at EPIC Innovation brings together local and international practitioners for a compact, high-value morning of experimentation and applied learning. Whether you’re just getting started, or already using AI at work, these sessions will give you fresh ways to think about what the tools can do, where they fit, and how to use them more effectively.
Ministry of Awesome: Coffee & Jam
Coffee & Jam is Christchurch’s longest-running founder meetup: a lunchtime tradition where the Ōtautahi startup community comes together to connect, learn from founders across different stages, and collaborate on ideas that help startups thrive.
With light refreshments provided at EPIC, this session creates a natural bridge between the morning workshops and the afternoon presentations. It broadens the day beyond AI tooling alone and roots the programme in the wider innovation community around EPIC.
EPIC AI Conference — PM Presentations
The afternoon speaker session of the EPIC AI Conference brings together practitioners working across creative AI, implementation, risk, infrastructure, and strategy.
These are not abstract future-gazing talks. They are grounded presentations from people thinking deeply about what happens when AI moves from prototype to production, from possibility to governance, and from technical novelty to social consequence. Across four sessions, attendees hear perspectives on creative practice, AI safety, privacy-preserving infrastructure, and the long-term future AI may unlock.
Leadership in the Age of AI
The closing panel widens the lens from tools and implementation to leadership, responsibility, trust, and change.
After a full programme of workshops and presentations, this is where the conversation turns to leadership, responsibility, and the human decisions that shape how AI actually lands inside teams and institutions.
Workshop Recordings and Slides
AM Workshops · 9:00 AM to 11:45 AM
Caelan Huntress
Create Your Own AI Coach to Learn Anything
Caelan Huntress opens the day with an interactive workshop on using conversational AI as a partner for learning, reflection, and growth. As LLMs become more conversational, asking better questions shapes your AI thinking partner around the goals you care about and the way you learn best.
Slides
Siena Brody-Heine
Transform Meetings into Actionable Insights
Siena Brody-Heine demonstrates how AI can turn conversation into useful outputs, insights, actions, and communications. Her session treats meetings and spoken exchanges as one of the most valuable and underused resources in any organisation.
Try Contented
Steve Fox
Mapping AI Opportunities in Your Organisation
Steve Fox introduces a practical framework for identifying where AI can create new value in real workflows. Using a simple sliding scale from manual to fully automated, he guides participants through breaking work into tasks, assessing where AI fits, identifying where human oversight still matters, and estimating the cost and opportunity impact of each change.
Slides
Lois McClintock
AI for Good: Empowering Nonprofits
Lois McClintock explores how nonprofits can use AI to increase impact, free up volunteer time, and improve operations without needing large budgets or complex systems. Her session includes practical examples from nonprofit work including strategy, social media, fundraising, and policy support.
Slides
Dan Randow
Ideas into Action: A Micro-Hackathon
Dan Randow closes the morning with a fast-moving micro-hackathon that turns the room's AI ideas into action in under thirty minutes. Participants pitch ideas, develop them in teams – and everyone walks into lunch with actionable inspiration.
PM Presentations · 1:30 PM to 5:00 PM
Arthur Machado
Filmmaking Frameworks for High-Impact AI Visuals
Arthur Machado shares a practical visual storytelling framework for prompting better creative assets, from hero images to product mockups. His session encourages attendees to think like directors rather than technicians when working with AI-generated visuals.
Slides
Emma Humphrey
AI Self Defence: Risks and Solutions
Emma Humphrey brings experience from AI implementation in the UK Home Office to explore cybercrime, misinformation, bias, digital trust, safety engineering, and responsible procurement. Her session helps attendees move beyond hype into more mature thinking about AI governance and risk.
AI Safety Report
Dr Chandranil Chakraborttii
Ghost Vectors: Securing AI Privacy Without Sacrificing System Performance
Dr Chandranil Chakraborttii examines how ‘ghost vectors’ can expose supposedly removed information, why conventional deletion methods fail in high-dimensional environments, and what architects can do instead. Attendees gain insight into privacy-by-design approaches that improve both compliance and performance.
SlidesCaelan Huntress
The Case for a Superabundant Future
To close the afternoon, Caelan Huntress zooms out from present-day implementation into the larger human story. Drawing on recent writings from Dario Amodei and Peter Diamandis, this talk explores the idea that AI may not just change how we work, but could also change what it means to be human — for the better.
Slides"Leadership in the Age of AI" Panel · 5:30 PM to 7:00 PM
Featuring:
Anya Anderson
Founder and CEO, RedSeed
Anya Anderson leads RedSeed, a corporate training platform that creates a coaching culture to build high-performing teams. She brings a leadership development perspective to the conversation about trust, capability, and organisational change.
LinkedIn
Julie Ryan
CEO, Caitlyn
Julie Ryan leads Caitlyn, an AI-powered knowledge platform that turns agricultural and research-led knowledge into trusted, usable insight. Her perspective helps ground the discussion in practical adoption, trusted information, and sector-specific usefulness.
LinkedIn
Brad Fraser
Head of AI Solutions & CEO, Agentic Intelligence
Brad Fraser helps organisations move beyond experimentation into real capability building. His contribution focuses on adoption, solution design, and what meaningful AI implementation looks like beyond surface-level hype.
LinkedIn
Alison Adams
CEO, ChristchurchNZ
Alison Adams leads ChristchurchNZ, the city’s economic development agency, with a background spanning more than two decades across senior leadership. Her contribution to the panel brings a city-shaping perspective on growth, collaboration, and responsible AI adoption for Christchurch.
LinkedInHow the programme maps to TechWeek values
Digital foundations and skills show up most clearly in the morning workshops, where attendees build practical confidence and test real applications of AI.
Social good appears in conversations about nonprofit use, community impact, and the role of trustworthy systems in public life.
Responsible governance runs through the afternoon talks and the closing panel, especially in discussions of risk, privacy, safety, procurement, leadership, and organisational trust.
Christchurch, not just content
The day is rooted in Christchurch’s local innovation network: Christchurch AI as organiser, EPIC as venue, Ministry of Awesome at lunchtime, and a programme that makes room for founders, advisors, operators, and community-minded practitioners.
That local grounding gives the event a different tone from a generic conference. It becomes a place to meet people, compare approaches, share capability, and build the kinds of relationships that help ideas travel beyond a single stage session.
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Where do I go to continue building my AI Literacy?
Join the Christchurch Artificial Intelligence Meetup Group, to be notified of future events. Join the AI Coaching Academy for practical games and activities to build your AI literacy, and to join a community of ambitious professionals practicing the tools of the future.