Writing · May 2026 · 3 min read
Four lessons from the AWS Summit Exec Forum
What senior leaders, big customers and global experts agreed on about data, AI and how to structure for what’s next.
A highlight of AWS Summit Sydney was the Exec Forum track: some of our senior AWS leaders, our biggest customers and global experts in one room, discussing the strategic imperatives for leaders and organisations to evolve their approach to data and AI, and how they resource and structure their teams and enterprises.
The common themes were typically Amazonian:
- Lean in rather than fear it. Embrace the ability and opportunity of new technology like AI.
- Start with the value. Be clear on the objectives and value you want to realise first, then deploy the right tools and technology.
- The real work is cultural and operational. The technology will mostly stay ahead of your pace of business.
- Be bold and take action. Run experiments, bring your people into this evolution, and keep hiring and developing tomorrow’s leaders as much as enabling today’s.
Three sessions that stood out
AWS Executive in Residence Tom Godden laid out three excellent phases for evolving and using data.
Jonathan Southee from New Zealand Rugby had fascinating insights into building truly user-centric tools to give their coaches and players the edge, across 150 teams.
Rianne van Veldhuizen hosted a conversation with Cliff Obrecht, co-founder of Canva, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, CEO of Xero, and Steve Day, CTO at NAB, on the evolution and possibilities that only the cloud has given their businesses and customers.
The other standout for me was AWS Executive in Residence Stephen Brozovich’s presentation on the future structure of teams and organisations in an agentic world. Many learnings to come from this in the coming weeks.
As our CTO Werner Vogels says: now go build!