DifFest 2026
About this Event
This June, it’s festival season, and we’re throwing one too - just ours happens to be for transformation leaders.
DifFest 2026 — limited to 50 senior leaders — is a three-day, Inside–Out experience built around Intelligent Transformation, set in the heart of Sheffield. This isn’t your normal conference. It’s an immersive reset. It’s about the real work:
- Winning commercially without losing socially
- Designing tomorrow without a blueprint
- Building advantage in an AI-accelerated world
- Leading when certainty has expired
- Creating performance that outpaces disruption
- And, yes, it will have energy, food, coffee, music, conversation, creative contributors, and more.
A festival feel, with substance at its core. You can move in and out as your diary demands:
- One day will sharpen you.
- Two days will deepen the thinking.
- All three will give you the full arc.
If you’re shaping what comes next — not just managing what is — this is the tent you’ll want to be in.
Day 1 - 29 June
🕑: 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Arrival and lunch
🕑: 01:00 PM - 01:30 PM
Kick-off: welcome to DifFest
Host: Dave King
🕑: 01:30 PM - 02:30 PM
The Future Belongs To The Brave
Host: Matt Davies
Info: The Future Belongs to the Brave Leading people and brands through the AI revolution. Every major shift in history creates the same reaction: excitement, fear, resistance, and huge opportunity. The Industrial Revolution changed how the world worked. Today, AI is changing how the world thinks, creates, and competes. In this energising opening keynote, Matt Davies explores the parallels between then and now — from the Luddites’ backlash against mechanisation to the modern anxieties surrounding automation and artificial intelligence. But history shows us something important: technology alone never wins. The organisations that thrive are the ones that understand people, solve real customer problems, and adapt with purpose. Matt will challenge leaders to stop chasing tools and start leading through principles. He’ll introduce the concept of Brand Leadership — using brand strategy to guide decisions, align teams, and create meaningful customer value in uncertain times.
🕑: 03:00 PM - 04:30 PM
Breakout session: AI and transformation - failures and design
🕑: 04:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Reflections and day 1 closure
🕑: 06:00 PM - 09:00 PM
Networking - drinks, food, and entertainment
🕑: 09:00 PM - 11:00 PM
Let's see where the night takes us...
🕑: 02:30 PM - 03:00 PM
Collaborative session: the co-ordination problem
Day 2 - 30 June
🕑: 08:00 AM - 09:00 AM
Attendee optional activity
🕑: 09:00 AM - 09:30 AM
Welcome back!
Host: Dave King
🕑: 09:30 AM - 10:30 AM
Keynote: Building advantage in an AI accelerate world
Host: Dr Ashwin Mehta
Info: The AI landscape has matured through three stages: Traditional AI (established), Generative AI (maturing), and Agentic AI (emerging and experimental). Underpinning all three is a critical but often overlooked foundation: orchestration and automation. Without solid data infrastructure, process automation, and integration layers including APIs, Model Context Protocol, and middleware, agentic deployment is premature and carries significant risk. The central challenge for change managers is not technology adoption. . The solution lies not in more sophisticated technology, but in applying rigorous governance principles to the synthetic workforce. Underpinning both of these challenges is a question that most organisations have not yet answered adequately: what does responsible AI look like in practice, at the organisational and individual level?
🕑: 10:30 AM - 11:00 AM
Collaboration session: Control, influence, and letting go
🕑: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Breakout: High performance, organisation design, and strategy under uncertainy
🕑: 12:00 PM - 01:30 PM
Lunch and activity
🕑: 01:30 PM - 02:00 PM
Welcome back and afternoon set-up
🕑: 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM
Rotating Breakouts: AI labs and transformation case studies
🕑: 04:00 PM - 04:30 PM
Break
🕑: 04:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Sum up and day 2 closure
🕑: 06:00 PM - 09:00 PM
Networking - drinks, food, and entertainment
🕑: 09:00 PM - 11:00 PM
Let's see where the night goes...
Day 3 - 1 July
🕑: 08:00 AM - 09:00 AM
Optional attendee activity
🕑: 09:00 AM - 09:30 AM
Welcome back and reflections
🕑: 09:30 AM - 10:30 AM
Panel: Designing organisations for the next decade
🕑: 10:30 AM - 11:00 AM
Collaborative session: How to do things differently (creating new neuropaths)
🕑: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Breakouts: Commitments, priorities, and collaboration
🕑: 12:00 PM - 01:30 PM
Lunch
🕑: 01:30 PM - 02:00 PM
Closing summary from Dave King
Host: Dave King
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
GBP 0.00
