Join Us for an Exclusive Executive Dinner & Discussion
Production-Ready AI in 2026: What Actually Scales
The Ortus Club, together with our host Infotel, warmly invites you to an exclusive dinner roundtable for Data, AI & Transformation leaders in Birmingham. Over great food and good company, you'll join a select group of senior peers for an evening of candid, off-the-record conversation. An expert moderator will guide the discussion in a closed, confidential setting — no presentations, no sales pitches, just meaningful exchange between people facing the same challenges. Attendance is complimentary and by invitation only.
📅 Thursday, July 2nd, 17:30 BST 📍 Birmingham
The Topic
Production-Ready AI in 2026: What Actually Scales
The rapid acceleration of AI across every industry is fundamentally changing expectations of what modern organisations should be capable of. Competitors are moving quickly from pilot programmes to production-ready, AI-driven services, putting growing pressure on business leaders to respond — not just by adopting AI as a technology, but by integrating it responsibly and sustainably into existing IT estates.
Questions around governance, cost, data readiness, compute capacity and operational ownership are now board-level concerns. The gap between a promising pilot and dependable enterprise value is where most initiatives stall, and closing it demands more than enthusiasm — it requires clear operating models, disciplined prioritisation, and a realistic view of what production actually takes.
This roundtable creates space for leaders to step back from the hype, compare real-world approaches, and explore how AI can be scaled as a reliable enterprise capability rather than a series of disconnected experiments.
How do business leaders decide which use cases should advance based on business outcomes and ROI — ensuring they leverage AI as an effective tool rather than using AI for AI's sake?
Where do AI initiatives most often break down between successful pilots and enterprise-wide value, and what are the most common operational or organisational blockers causing this?
As AI capabilities and expectations continue to rise, what do sustainable operating models — supporting continuous deployment, monitoring, retraining, and lifecycle governance at enterprise scale — actually look like?
The Evening
17:30 — Arrival & Welcome Drinks
18:00 — Host Welcome
18:05 — Introduction Round
18:25 — Keynote: What Actually Scales in 2026
19:00 — Roundtable Discussion
19:40 — Break
19:55 — Starters & Table Conversations
20:15 — Main & Deep Dive Discussion
20:40 — Dessert & Open Networking
21:10 — Closing Reflections
Who Should Be in the Room
This evening is designed for senior leaders focused on turning AI pilots into enterprise-scale value, overcoming operational blockers, and evolving their operating models to deliver measurable impact in 2026 and beyond. Expect to meet CIOs, CDOs, CTOs, Chief Digital Officers, Heads of Data, IT Directors, and other senior decision-makers shaping their organisations' AI strategy.
Confirmed Attendees Include:
Chief Information Officer at Jaguar Land Rover
Chief Digital Officer at HSBC UK
Head of Data at Severn Trent
IT Director at National Express / Mobico
Chief Technology Officer at Unipart Manufacturing
Head of AI & Analytics at Aldi UK
Director of Data & Transformation at Lloyds Banking Group
Final attendee list to be confirmed closer to the event.
Keynote Speaker
Fabrice Le Gascoin, Director of Consulting, AI Practice at Infotel. Fabrice specialises in AI applications and has been developing AI-driven systems across multiple industries and countries since the 1990s — serving as a developer, project manager, business analyst, and CTO. Alongside his consulting work, he is an associate professor at Gustave Eiffel University. Fabrice lives in the Greater Paris area and enjoys cooking, hiking, and biking.
How to Join
Seats at this dinner are limited and allocated personally. To request your place, simply reply to your invitation or register your interest. Once confirmed, you'll receive a calendar invite along with full event details, including the venue, ahead of the evening.
The Host
Infotel is a consultancy with deep expertise in designing and deploying AI-driven systems across industries. With decades of hands-on experience taking AI from concept to production, Infotel helps organisations move beyond experimentation to build dependable, scalable enterprise capability.
The Organisers
The Ortus Club runs executive knowledge-sharing events worldwide, bringing senior leaders together for curated, off-the-record discussions in a relaxed, peer-to-peer setting.