Dave Anderson

Speaking · Keynotes

Mainstage keynotes on technology, marketing and AI.

Speaker reel · 81 seconds

Dave Anderson

Dave Anderson

CMO at PointFive · Saxton-listed speaker

For twenty years I’ve been the marketer explaining technology to non-technical audiences — and the technologist explaining marketing to boards. On stage that shows up as clear, funny, story-first keynotes that leave a room with something they can use on Monday.

Enquire about a keynotedaveando@gmail.com

The talks

Four keynotes I’m booked for right now.

Each one gets rewritten for the room — your industry, your numbers, your people on stage. If none of these is quite the talk you need, say what the room needs to hear and I’ll build it.

01

Flagship · 30–45 min

The Marketing Team That Ships Code

Five marketers, production access, one hundred and eight pull requests merged to production. Almost nobody in marketing can say that.

Plenty of people talk about AI in marketing. Very few marketing organisations write and merge their own code. This is what happened when mine did — but the part worth stealing is underneath it. We did not build a content pipeline, we built an evidence layer: thirteen systems of record wired into the working session, so nothing gets made until the real numbers have been fetched and frozen. Every output format is a renderer hanging off that. Same spine, whether what comes out is a landing page, a press release, a competitor audit or a narrated ninety-second video.

A room leaves with

  • Why the source of truth is the product, and the artefact is close to free
  • What changes when the person with the idea can also publish it
  • How one grounded dataset renders as text, web, video and audio
  • Where the bottleneck moves once production stops being the constraint

For CMOs and marketing leaders

Fits: UNBOUND · MAICON · Drive · Mumbrella360

02

Technical · 20–30 min, with a live demo

Non-Engineers in the Repo

What happens when the people writing the copy also open the pull request.

A working session rather than a slide deck. I run one grounding pass against the live systems, freeze the dataset, then fork it into two unrelated outputs in front of the room — a demand page with attribution wired in, and a scene from the video pipeline rendering off the identical numbers. Then the permission model, the review gates, and a deliberate attempt to publish something unsourced so you can watch it get blocked.

A room leaves with

  • Ground, freeze, then render — and why skipping the freeze causes drift
  • The permission model that makes non-engineer commits safe
  • Video as a build artefact: versionable, regenerable, diffable
  • Why faster production made verification the scarce resource

For engineering and dev-adjacent rooms

Fits: Code with Claude · AI Tinkerers · dev-adjacent tracks

03

Board / exec · 20 min

Does the Claim Survive an Audit?

Every published number needs a source, a date and a named human approver. Most do not have one.

Why governance — not model choice — is what separates AI theatre from AI output. Drawn from getting this wrong first: a launch where our own number appeared at three different values across three of our own surfaces, and the gate that now prevents it. The fix was architectural rather than editorial. An agent wired to the system of record cannot invent a figure, because it has to go and fetch one.

A room leaves with

  • Why a single source of truth beats any amount of reviewing
  • The fact register, and why it costs nothing until you need it
  • Freezing the claim set before anything gets built against it
  • How to tell a governed AI programme from a demo, in one question

For boards, exec teams and risk-aware rooms

Fits: Forrester · CMO Alliance · ADMA · enterprise internals

04

Opening keynote · 30–45 min

Tech Seeking Human

Forty-one conversations with the people building AI — and the thing they all quietly worry about.

The state of AI with the hype taken out, drawn from interviews with Max Tegmark, Hannah Fry, Adam Cheyer and Marc Randolph on my podcast. Where the technology honestly is, where it is going, and why the human parts of work get more valuable rather than less.

A room leaves with

  • What the people closest to AI actually believe about the next five years
  • The difference between automation that compounds and automation that decays
  • Why the future-of-work question is really a what-stays-human question

For opening keynotes, summits and all-hands

Fits: Summits, all-hands and main-stage openers

Watch

Full talks, if you want more than the reel.

Dave Anderson on stage at CX Circle, presenting an AI sales agent demo

CX Circle by Contentsquare

3 continents

APAC · North America · EMEA

4,000+

at Dynatrace Perform, Las Vegas

30,000+

virtual audience, Perform 2020

Saxton

listed speaker, Australia & NZ

The measure of a keynote is not the applause. It’s how much of it the room takes a photograph of.

Also available to host

I interview people like this for a living.

Forty-one long-form episodes of Tech Seeking Human. If your event needs a mainstage interview, a fireside or a panel chair rather than a keynote, that is the same job and I’m happy to do it.

  • Magic Johnson

    Magic Johnson

    No intro needed

  • Marc Randolph

    Marc Randolph

    Netflix co-founder

  • Hannah Fry

    Hannah Fry

    BBC, Genius

  • Max Tegmark

    Max Tegmark

    Future of Life, Life 3.0

How to book

Two routes, depending on where the event is.

Worldwide

Email me directly

For events anywhere outside Australia and New Zealand — and for brief calls, availability questions or anything exploratory — email is the fastest route.

daveando@gmail.com
Australia & NZ

Saxton Speakers Bureau

I’m a listed speaker with Saxton. For events in Australia and New Zealand they handle availability, fees, contracts, travel and logistics end to end.

View my Saxton profile

Selected stages

Companies and conferences I’ve presented to.

Enterprises

  • Commonwealth Bank
  • NAB
  • Telstra
  • Contentsquare
  • Qualtrics
  • Lloyds Banking Group
  • Dynatrace

Conferences

  • AWS re:Invent
  • Red Hat Summit
  • Mobile World Congress
  • Shoptalk
  • CX Summit
  • CX Circle

Analyst events

  • Forrester Digital Summit
  • Gartner

From the road

A handful of keynotes I’m still proud of.

Dave Anderson closing a CX Circle keynote with a guitar, in a Socceroos jersey

Some rooms get the rap. Some get the guitar.

Twenty years of opening keynotes has taught me that the first ninety seconds decide whether a room is with you. Occasionally that means an instrument. Mostly it means knowing exactly what the audience came for and getting there faster than they expected.

Las Vegas · 2020

Dynatrace Perform

Grew Perform from a 500-person event into a 4,000+ attendee global conference — then pivoted to virtual during COVID, drawing 30,000+ attendees. Opened the 2020 mainstage with an original rap performance to set up the customer keynotes that followed.

London · Ongoing

Forrester Digital Summit

Keynote on how AI is remaking the marketing-and-technology stack — delivered to CMOs and CIOs across EMEA.

Sydney · 2015

LinkedIn Sales Summit — “Markesales”

The case for collapsing marketing and sales into one discipline, delivered to the top LinkedIn sales leaders across APAC. Awarded Best Presentation of the Summit.

NYSE · 2019

Dynatrace IPO roadshow

Lead writer of the Dynatrace S-1 narrative, investor deck and IPO roadshow story — the on-stage story that took the company public.

See more

Broadcast, press and podcast appearances — the off-stage story.

View the Media page →