Beyond the Hype: AI in Practice Powered by Duncan Cotterill
Join Revved for Beyond the Hype: AI in Practice, powered by Duncan Cotterill
We're all tired of talking about AI. We get it.
So let's talk about what's actually happening, inside real businesses, right now, in New Zealand.
We're bringing together leaders who are in it, building it, implementing it, navigating the fallout, to give you an honest picture across three cuts:
The bleeding edge. What are the most forward-thinking businesses actually building? The implementations that sound like science fiction but are running in production. What is possible, and how does it actually play out?
The day-to-day reality. What are businesses genuinely using AI for, week in week out? Where is it saving time, reducing cost, and changing how teams work, and where is it falling flat?
The legal and organisational reality. What issues are surfacing as AI embeds into businesses regarding contracting, privacy, liability, IP, and governance? Where are businesses getting it wrong, getting stuck, or quietly creating risk they haven't accounted for yet? And what's going right?
No pitches. No headlines or hype. Just case studies, sharing the reality of what Kiwi businesses are doing today.
Thursday 28 May | 5-7pm | Duncan Cotterill Offices, 37 Gallway St, Britomart
3 speakers, each with 15 minutes to present, followed by a group discussion and questions.
Networking drinks to close.
Exclusive to Revved Assembly Members
Our speakers:
Nyssa Waters - The Bleeding Edge Nyssa is bringing two case studies that sit at opposite ends of the implementation curve. First: an agentic campaign planner that's doing the work of a media planner end-to-end, in production, right now. What it took to get there, what broke, and what had to be redesigned once real people started using it. Second: an AI avatar platform for law enforcement interview training that's been running since mid-2024. What the long tail actually looks like: model drift, governance, and what happens when the novelty wears off and it just has to keep working.
Joy Guo - The Legal and Organisational Reality Joy is a senior technology and AI lawyer at Duncan Cotterill, with a background in commercial litigation and management consulting at Bain. She works with both tech vendors and the businesses adopting their tools, which gives her a ground-level view of where things go sideways. Joy will cover the questions she hears most from clients right now: what AI adoption is actually surfacing in contracts, privacy, liability, IP, and governance, where businesses are quietly creating risk they haven't spotted yet, and what getting it right looks like in practice.
Eoghan Neligan - The day-to-day Reality Eoghan is the founder of Gravity, an applied innovation studio that helps founders and executives turn high-stakes ideas into scalable products. A tech entrepreneur and venture strategist, he works at the intersection of product, commercial design, and venture building. After years working inside large enterprises where promising ideas often stalled in process, he now partners with organisations to move quickly from concept to traction. Eoghan is the architect behind TIKA - New Zealand’s first legal platform for anonymous reporting of sexual harm. Building for an environment with zero margin for error, he has engineered the operating model to navigate the extreme legal and organisational complexities of privacy, liability, and governance from day one. He brings this ‘builder’s reality’ to the AI conversation, focusing on the foundations required to handle sensitive data and complex risk. Eoghan will share what it takes to build AI solutions that actually land in market and survive the pressure of real-world implementation.