Rashina Hoda is a Professor of Software Engineering, Director of the HumanAISE Lab, and Associate Dean ED&I in the Faculty of IT, Monash University. Her research focuses on the human and socio-technical aspects of Software Engineering at the intersections of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Health. She is a book author, TEDx and SXSW speaker, 2025 Top Australian Researcher in Software Systems, 2024 Women of Colour in STEM Guiding Star Mentorship Award recipient, 2021-22 Superstar of STEM, and a passionate champion of underrepresented girls and women in STEM. For videos and more, visit www.rashina.com

Beyond the Hype and Fear: Three Steps to Reclaim Control in the AI Era

We are living in times of extreme geopolitical, climate, and economic uncertainty. Add to that disruptive technologies at unprecedented scale and speed, lagging regulations and laws, and growing societal concerns about ethics, fake vs truth, and perceived loss of human control – it is overwhelming for most of us. In this talk, Rashina will bring a research informed perspective to help you make sense of the changes brought on by the AI revolution and equip you with three key takeaways on how to process emotions, find perspective, and take control of your future with AI.

Chris has a passion for creating engaging, high performing working environments that encourage people to be human and to bring their best self to work, every day.

Operationalising Product Strategy with Bets & Flight Levels

Empowered product teams sound simple, until you scale. In large orgs, strategy often turns into huge amounts of planning and process, with little room for uncertainty & discovery. So how do you align tens or hundreds of teams to big outcomes without SAFe-style control? Drawing on over a year of experience addressing this challenge at ABC Digital, we’ll demonstrate a lightweight model for turning strategy into coordinated action. You’ll learn where key decisions belong, how to think about strategic bets, and how to balance alignment with autonomy.

John’s deep understanding of systems of work comes from more than two decades of strategy, customer, marketing, and ventures leadership in major organisations, including ANZ bank and Bupa Asia Pacific, with start-up teams of three to multinational teams of hundreds. As Founder of Joyous Work, John is an advisor to leaders of organisations of all sizes, from Australia’s biggest brands to not-for-profits.

Before founding Joyous Work in 2024, John was Chief Customer & Strategy Officer for Bupa Asia Pacific. His education spans Monash University, London Business School, and MIT.

Why Work Feels Broken – And What Fixes It

Ask someone what they love about their work and the answer comes easily: impact, craft, doing something meaningful. Ask if they love their job and it gets complicated.

There’s a reason for that gap. It’s called sludge — reports nobody reads, pre-meetings for committee meetings, status updates, work about work. It now makes up 60% of the average knowledge worker’s day.

Work isn’t broken due to bad intentions, it is broken because of inherited systems nobody has questioned — annual planning cycles, rigid job descriptions, managers hired to assure rather than guide. These practices quietly choke the three engines that make work joyous and productive: shared clarity, allocation agility, and execution velocity.

Organisations that get all three firing deliver 30% more profit than peers and 50% less staff turnover. Iit’s the single greatest untapped productivity opportunity in the modern organisation.

John will show you what’s killing these engines in your workplace, and exactly what to do about it.