In this energetic and thought-provoking keynote, Bart Grootveld explores how technology has increased our productivity over the years and how AI is now accelerating that development at an unprecedented pace.Drawing on his own AI-native way of working, he demonstrates just how much more is possible today, while also asking a challenging question: has it actually made our lives less busy? His personal answer is clear: no, he simply gets a lot more done. That is precisely where the productivity paradox lies.
Audiences can expect a visually engaging, accessible and insightful session packed with relatable examples, practical takeaways and humour. Bart combines his experience in product management, software and entrepreneurship with a direct and engaging presentation style.
The result is that participants not only leave excited about the possibilities of AI, but also think more consciously about how they want to use the capacity it creates: to produce more, improve quality, create more space for meaningful attention, or simply gain more breathing room.
In this inspiring talk, Bart Grootveld shows how AI becomes truly powerful when it moves beyond carrying out isolated tasks and gains access to the context of your work, organisation and thought processes.
Using his own digital brain as an example, he demonstrates how emails, meetings, CRM data, transcripts, notes and reusable skills can come together to form a personal knowledge system that continuously reads along, thinks ahead and helps you prepare. Not as a futuristic gimmick, but as a practical layer for work in which raw information is rapidly transformed into insight, preparation and action. Bart shows how organisations can move from searching through folders, dashboards and disconnected systems to having conversations with their own collective memory. At the same time, he raises a critical question: what happens when everything is stored, connected and instantly retrievable? Does knowledge finally become truly useful, or are we simply building a bigger haystack with a smarter magnet?
Through relatable examples, realistic scenarios and a pragmatic perspective on privacy, ownership and adoption, Bart makes it clear that the digital brain is not about adding more tools, but about organising context more effectively. Participants leave with a clear understanding of how they can strengthen their own information position and why AI only becomes truly valuable when it knows who you are, what you are working on and what has already been said, decided and learned.
What happens to software when AI is no longer simply a feature within applications, but becomes the interface, the logic and ultimately the execution layer itself?For years, organisations have adapted their processes to fit their systems: ERP, CRM, workflows, dashboards, portals and endless screens. AI turns that principle on its head. Software is increasingly adapting to the user, the context and the intent. Through relatable examples from ERP, SaaS, software development and agentic workflows, Bart shows why today’s digital infrastructure is coming under pressure. Not because every system will disappear tomorrow, but because its role is changing: from the place where people work to a source that AI works with.
This raises major questions for software vendors, IT departments and organisations that have spent years investing in application landscapes, integrations and process logic. Bart demonstrates how small AI-native teams could compete with major software companies, how legacy systems can evolve into sources of context, and why “we already have a system for that” is becoming an increasingly inadequate answer. Participants leave with an understanding not only of how AI is accelerating software development, but more importantly of how it is rewriting the rules of the software market: who will own the customer interface, where will business logic reside, and which systems will remain strategically important when AI can operate as a layer on top of virtually everything?
