EPIC AI Conference
an all-day TechWeek26 event in Christchurch
The EPIC AI conference is a day of workshops, community conversation, presentations, and leadership dialogue at EPIC Innovation. This event is part of TechWeekNZ, Aotearoa New Zealand’s national festival of tech and innovation.
The spirit of the day is shaped by the themes of this year's TechWeek festival: innovation, inspiration and impact across Aotearoa; bringing together ideas, people and opportunities; and connecting innovators with communities across the motu to help shape New Zealand’s future.
Throughout the day, the emphasis is on local capability, shared learning, practical experimentation, thoughtful discussion, and the wider Christchurch AI community. This will collect and share insights about how AI is being explored, applied, and led in Aotearoa.
A celebration of Christchurch’s AI community at TechWeek26
The EPIC AI Conference brings together different parts of the local ecosystem in one place: educators, founders, nonprofit voices, infrastructure thinkers, AI safety practitioners, startup builders, and leaders responsible for real teams and real decisions.
That breadth allows us to gain a holistic view of the multifaceted Artificial Intelligence community. The morning workshops focus on skills and experimentation. Lunchtime Coffee & Jam expands the conversation into Christchurch’s founder and innovation scene. The afternoon presentations move into operational, ethical, and technical questions. The evening panel examines the evolution of leadership, trust, and the human side of adoption.
- 1. AM Workshops — 9–11:45am — RSVP here
- 2. Lunchtime Coffee & Jam — 12–1:15pm — RSVP here
- 3. PM Presentations — 1:30–5pm — RSVP here
- 4. Evening Panel — 5:30–7pm — RSVP here
RSVP for the entire day, or only the sessions you want. Tickets are $10 each for Workshops, Speakers, and Panel ($30 for the whole day).
Seen as a whole, the day reflects TechWeek’s wider purpose: creating a space where communities can learn together, share capability, and think seriously about the future they want to build.
Full-day AI conference in Christchurch
From morning skill-building to evening leadership reflection, the programme unfolds as a day-long community gathering at EPIC. Each event stands on its own, but together they create a fuller picture of how AI is being explored and discussed in Christchurch during TechWeekNZ.
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 visual creation.
Hosted by the Christchurch AI Meetup Group as part of TechWeekNZ, the EPIC AI Conference 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.
To attend the whole day, please RSVP to all 4 events individually
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.
To attend the whole day, please RSVP to all 4 events individually
EPIC AI Conference — PM Presentations
The afternoon speaker session of the EPIC AI Conference brings together practitioners working at the edge of 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 operational excellence, AI safety, privacy-preserving infrastructure, and the long-term future AI may unlock.
To attend the whole day, please RSVP to all 4 events individually
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.
To attend the whole day, please RSVP to all 4 events individually
How 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.
Profiles across the day
These speaker sections are intentionally longer and more editorial, so visitors can understand not just the names on the programme, but the kind of experience, perspective, and conversation each person brings into the room. Image areas are left as placeholders for headshots to be added later.
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.
LinkedIn
Hannah Hardy-Jones
Transform Meetings into Actionable Insights
Hannah Hardy-Jones 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.
LinkedIn
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.
LinkedIn
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.
LinkedIn
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.
LinkedInPM Presentations · 1:30 PM to 5:00 PM
Varsha Das
When Code Gets Cheap, Operational Excellence Wins
Varsha Das explores why operational excellence becomes the real differentiator when code generation is abundant. Drawing on real production incidents and the realities of running AI systems at scale, she unpacks the failure modes that appear under real load and the patterns that separate demos from dependable services.
LinkedIn
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.
LinkedIn
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.
LinkedInCaelan 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.
LinkedIn"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
Tom Sweeney
Serial Founder and Director
Tom Sweeney brings a founder and systems perspective shaped by companies that leverage systems and human capital to achieve strong business outcomes. His voice adds breadth to the discussion about leadership, performance, and navigating uncertainty with discipline.
LinkedInEvent links for the full day
Each part of the programme is registered separately through Humanitix. The links below make it easy to move from this guide to the relevant event pages.
Useful details
Do I need to register separately for each event?
Yes. Each session has its own Humanitix registration page, so this page acts as a guide to the full programme while keeping the direct event links in one place.
Where is the conference happening?
The programme is centred on EPIC Innovation, 78–100 Manchester Street in Christchurch. Coffee & Jam is also hosted at EPIC, making it easy to move through the day as a continuous community event.
What is the cost?
The Workshops, Speakers, and Panel are $10 each. RSVP for only those parts you want to attend, or for the whole day for $30.
What is the overall shape of the day?
The day begins with hands-on workshops, moves into a lunchtime networking session, continues with presentations on implementation and strategy, and closes with a leadership panel about trust, capability, and adoption.
Who is the day for?
Professionals, founders, operators, managers, community builders, nonprofit teams, consultants, and curious learners who want to engage with AI in a grounded, practical, community-minded way.
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.