Christchurch Artificial Intelligence

5:30–6:00 pm — Drinks & Networking
6:00–6:45 pm — Joshua Campbell - What AI Speeds Up and What It Can’t Replace
6:45–7:30 pm — Caelan Huntress - AI Implementation in Business
7:30–8:00 pm — Drinks & Open Q&A

What AI Speeds Up and What It Can’t Replace — Joshua Campbell
AI is changing what small teams can build, how quickly they can work, and how they make decisions. But faster development does not remove the need for experience, judgement, architecture, privacy, or careful technical design.

Joshua Campbell will share practical lessons from Atlas, which began as a small Christchurch video production business. As the company grew, the challenge shifted from producing content to managing and distributing it across websites and multiple social platforms. Drawing on around a decade of software experience, Joshua began building internal tools to solve those problems, with AI accelerating the development process.

Those tools eventually grew into a broader software platform supporting the team. Joshua will use that experience as a case study in what AI-assisted development makes easier, where the limits remain, and what organisations need to consider when software can suddenly be built much faster.

He will also live-demo Orbit, a networking application designed to help people remember who they met and what they discussed at events, using it to explore the practical privacy, consent, and ethical questions created by AI-enabled software.

Key Points:
• AI-Assisted Development: What AI genuinely speeds up across software development, content workflows, and automation, and which parts still require human expertise.
• Small Teams, Bigger Systems: How AI can enable a very small team to build and maintain software capabilities that previously required much larger development resources.
• Speed vs. Responsibility: Why privacy, consent, security, ownership, and technical architecture become more important as the cost and time required to build software falls.
• Learning Through Building: Mistakes, concerns, and lessons from developing AI-enabled products and internal systems in a real business.
• Where Humans Still Matter: Why experience, architecture, judgement, and careful technical design remain critical even when AI can generate large amounts of the code.

Who This Is For:
Developers, business owners, founders, product teams, consultants, and professionals interested in what AI-assisted development looks like in practice.
The session will be useful for technical attendees interested in the build process, as well as non-technical leaders considering what becomes possible when small teams can create software, automation, and internal tools much faster.

AI Implementation in Business — Caelan Huntress
As AI moves from optional to operational, the challenge is teaching AI agents how the business actually works. The workflows, standards, decisions, rules, exceptions, and institutional knowledge need a digital Company Brain.

Caelan Huntress will explore what practical AI implementation looks like inside a business, with a focus on onboarding agents, transferring workflows, and creating internal structures of responsible adoption.

This session will demonstrate how organisations can train agents to participate in repeatable business processes, and gradually take responsibility for clearly defined work.

Key Points:
• Teaching Agents Your Workflows: How to document a process, provide the right context, define success, and train an AI agent to perform useful work without constant supervision
• The Onboarding Interview: Deploying an AI agent is closer to onboarding a new team member than installing a piece of software
• Ship an AI Working Group: How to assemble an internal group that can identify high-value use cases, test workflows, establish standards, and share lessons across the organisation
• Assessing AI Readiness: How to evaluate your organisation’s workflows, knowledge, capabilities, and culture before investing heavily in implementation

Who This Is For:
Business owners, leaders, consultants, operations teams, and professionals who are ready to move beyond isolated AI experiments and begin building repeatable systems.

Attendees will leave with practical frameworks for onboarding AI agents, handing off workflows, and launching an internal AI Working Group.

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When: Monday, 12 October, 5:30–8:00 pm
Where: EPIC Innovation, Christchurch
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Sponsored by the AI Coaching Academy. Come have some 🍻 beer and wine🍷 and raise a glass with your local AI Community!
https://ai-coaching.academy/

5:30–6:00 pm — Drinks & Networking
6:00–6:45 pm — Cr Joe Davies - AI in the Public Sector
6:45–7:30 pm — Blake Harkness - How I Run My Business On AI
7:30–8:00 pm — Drinks & Open Q&A

AI in the Council Chamber: Learning in Public — Councillor Joe Davies
Environment Canterbury Councillor Joe Davies chairs the council’s AI Working Group, which was re-established in May 2026. The group provides a forum for councillors to explore AI, share knowledge, and report insights back into council discussions.

Joe’s story begins with a Notice of Motion in February 2025. Already using AI himself, he wanted the council table to explore what these tools could do. He’ll describe the working group that emerged: no budget, no delegated authority, but a chamber, a livestream, and the ability to make recommendations in public.

This talk follows two connected journeys: learning AI by using it, and learning how a public institution comes to terms with it. Joe will share what worked, what didn’t, what his own AI workflow looks like, and the questions local government reform raises for where this work goes next.

Key Points:

• A councillor’s AI workflow: See how Joe uses AI in his own work and what he has learned through experimentation.
• From personal use to public discussion: Hear how his experience with AI led to a proposal for a council working group.
• Working within constraints: Explore the role of a group that can discuss and recommend, but has no budget or delegated authority.
• What comes next: Consider the questions AI raises for local government as its responsibilities and structures evolve.

Who This Is For:

• Public-sector professionals, elected members, and people working with government.
• Leaders exploring how to introduce AI within established organisational processes.
• Anyone curious about how AI is being discussed and used in Canterbury’s public institutions.

How I Run My Businesses on AI — Blake Harkness
Blake Harkness is an AI engineer and the founder of Harkness AI and Young Kiwis in AI, with experience helping 50+ New Zealand businesses adopt AI. With most of his own back office handed to AI, he has supported that work and grown a 350-member community without hiring a back-office team.

In this talk, he speedruns it department by department: marketing, accounting, web development, sales, and content. Every build gets the same four slides: the problem, what he built, the results, and what’s next. Then straight to the next one.
You’ll leave with a list of builds you can start on Tuesday.

Key Points:

• Five departments, real builds: See how Blake uses AI across marketing, accounting, web development, sales, and content.
• From problem to results: Get the story behind each build, including what it does and what he plans to improve.
• An AI-powered back office: Learn how he supports two ventures without hiring a dedicated admin team.
• Ideas to take home: Identify builds you could adapt to your own business or workflow.

Who This Is For:

• Business owners and founders looking to reduce their administrative workload.
• Developers and AI builders who want concrete examples of working systems.
• Marketing, sales, and operations professionals looking for practical ideas to adapt.

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When: Monday, 9 November, 5:30–8:00 pm
Where: EPIC Innovation, Christchurch
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Sponsored by the AI Coaching Academy. Come have some 🍻 beer and wine🍷 and raise a glass with your local AI Community!
https://ai-coaching.academy/