Exploring the Potential of Agentic AI
Putting AI Assistants and AI Agents to Work
Join us for our half-day event to examine the potential for AI assistants and AI agents to improve your business processes. We’ll look at some of the technology that sits behind assistants and agents, show you where businesses are already using the technology, identify where the benefits can be found and help you find opportunities to integrate assistants and agents into your own business.
Taking place in Sheffield, this event is your chance to engage with industry experts and move to the next stage of your AI journey.
Date: Wednesday 18 June 2025
Time: 1.00pm-5.30pm
Venue: The Victoria, Rowland Street, Sheffield
This event has passed. Keep your eyes open for future events!
Agenda and Speakers
During the event, speakers from DeeperThanBlue and other industry experts will talk about:
- AI Assistants and Agents
- How Agentic AI will impact the Business World
- Use cases for Assistants and Agents
- The future of AI in Business
You will hear from experts with experience in implementing AI solutions for business processes and advanced technical applications.
Presentation: AI – A Year in Review
Speakers: Chris Booker and Stephen Birch, DeeperThanBlue
Presentation: AI That Lands: Where Strategy Meets Human Experience
Speaker: Carolyn Shepherd, Emmeline.AI
Outline: What does it take for AI to move from plan to practice — and actually deliver performance gains? In this talk, Carolyn Shepherd shares real-world use cases and one powerful personal story to show how adoption happens when people see themselves in the change. She introduces the idea of next-gen job crafting — a human-first approach to role evolution that helps individuals hand off low-value tasks to AI and refocus on work that truly makes a difference.
Presentation: Leveraging artificial intelligence to enhance media localisation
Speaker: Dr Duncan Payne, ZOO Digital
Outline: Join us for an inside look at how ZOO Digital is leveraging artificial intelligence to enhance media localisation services for the global entertainment industry. This session will explore real-world examples of AI-driven innovation from voice transformation research to workflow automation and enhancing developer productivity. Learn how ZOO identifies the right problems to solve, partners with experts, and integrates AI in ways that deliver meaningful impact for clients and teams alike.
Panel discussion: AI for Business – Where are we heading?
Panellists: Duncan Payne, Carolyn Shepherd, Chris Booker (DeeperThanBlue)
Chair: Stephen Birch (DeeperThanBlue)
Presentation: How Agentic AI is transforming automation and data-driven decision-making in the enterprise.
Speakers: Mark Ketteman and Dan Salt, IBM
Outline: What does Agentic AI look like in practice. How can it blend with your existing data and business processes. IBM will demonstrate how AI agents can be created and incorporated into existing processes in the business and within IT.
Who should attend
This event is suitable for business and technical leaders working across a broad range of sectors, including Automotive, Banking, Consumer Products, Financial Markets, Healthcare, Industrial Products and Manufacturing, Insurance, Retail, Distribution and Wholesale, Telecommunications, Travel and Transportation.
Speakers
Our speakers come from different sectors, but are equally passionate about how AI can be adopted in business.
Dr Duncan Payne
Duncan Payne is Head of Software Engineering at ZOO Digital, where he leads the software R&D team, covering software engineering, AI research, QA, DevOps, project, and product management. Based in Sheffield, he’s been with the company for over 15 years, starting out as a software engineer after completing a PhD in Computational Biology at the University of Sheffield. He stepped into his current role almost two years ago, providing strategic leadership across the department, with a strong focus on people, consistency in management, and hiring.
His interest in AI is practical and grounded, having worked closely with engineers and stakeholders across the business to identify how and when AI can be meaningfully applied in R&D. This has included involvement in a KTP research project in partnership with Sheffield University, as well as helping guide the use of AI technologies within software development and their potential for broader organisational impact.
ZOO Digital
ZOO Digital (zoodigital.com) is a company that specialises in media localisation and technical media services. They are one of a select few vendors in the localisation industry that offer end-to-end (E2E) services, providing an all-in-one solution for streaming companies and media producers. ZOO’s services include subtitling, dubbing, captions, audio description, translation of artwork and metadata, among others. ZOO serves the biggest names in entertainment, who favour the E2E model as it simplifies vendor management and streamlines the process.
Leveraging a dedicated in-house R&D team, ZOO uses technology to deliver streamlined services, combining its own proprietary systems with best-in-class third-party software. They have been pioneering automation in media localisation for over a decade, developing an AI-ready architecture and infrastructure, allowing them to seamlessly incorporate, test, and improve AI technologies.
ZOO deploys AI technology where appropriate, driven by client needs for quality and on-time delivery. ZOO positions itself as an innovator and leading E2E provider in the industry and is committed to developing and integrating AI technologies responsibly, ethically, and with full transparency.
Carolyn Shepherd
Carolyn Shepherd is an AI Workforce Transformation Consultant, LinkedIn Learning AI Tutor, and founder of both the AI Learning Lobby and The Work Intelligence Partnership. A non-practising barrister with a background in L&D strategy, HR change programmes, and innovation projects, she helps organisations bridge the gap between AI ambition and human adoption — empowering non-technical professionals to lead with clarity and confidence in the AI era.
Carolyn is Founder of Emmeline.AI, a community of non-technical professionals encouraging each other to master Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and beyond in the belief that having these skills will increase our productivity, wellbeing and career choices.
Mark Ketteman
Mark Ketteman is an accomplished AI and Business Automation Architect at IBM, bringing over 20 years of experience in helping clients enhance and automate their business processes. With a deep expertise in leveraging artificial intelligence and automation technologies, Mark has consistently delivered innovative solutions that drive operational efficiency and business transformation for a diverse range of organisations. His extensive background and commitment to excellence have established him as a trusted advisor in the field of business process improvement and automation.
Working in collaboration with...
DeeperThanBlue is collaborating with IBM to bring you this event.
As a world-leader in the IT world, IBM are one of the most advanced businesses in the development of AI, offering tools and applications suitable for organisations from start-ups to blue-chips.
AI Agents and Assistants
AI assistants have been with us for some time, whether that has been as chatbots on websites or virtual assistants on smart speakers. They have evolved quickly, becoming more useful and more intuitive.
They can also be implemented by companies of any size to help staff and customers make better use of their time.
AI agents, however, are still relatively new. While AI assistants are designed to help users with specific requests and tasks, often acting as virtual assistants in a human-like way, AI agents, are more autonomous, making decisions and taking actions independently to achieve predefined goals, often in more complex environments.
AI for Business at DeeperThanBlue
At DeeperThanBlue we focus on helping business gain benefits and efficiencies from Generative AI. We do this through the following service offerings:
- Workshop
- Discover problem and pain areas in your business
- Review areas that might be a good candidate for using AI.
- Consider repeatable Use Cases that apply to your business
- Building a proof of concept quickly—in days/weeks
- Build out a minimal viable product—and get that into production in weeks.
- Scale out once the ROI has been proven.
- Select the correct AI platform provider, Large Language Model or Foundational Model for results accuracy and understanding the total cost of ownership.
