Connective Community Events · February 2027

Data Foundations
for AI

Why your AI pilot failed, and what has to happen underneath it

25 February 2027 11:00 – 14:00 Cape Town Invitation-Only · Complimentary for end users
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Data Foundations for AI · 25 February 2027 · Cape Town · AI Readiness · Invitation-Only · Data Foundations for AI · 25 February 2027 · Cape Town · AI Readiness · Invitation-Only · Data Foundations for AI · 25 February 2027 · Cape Town · AI Readiness · Invitation-Only ·
60%

of AI projects will be abandoned through 2026 because they are not supported by AI-ready data.

Source: Gartner

About this event

The pilot was never the hard part.

Almost every organisation has now run an AI pilot. Far fewer have moved one into production and kept it there. The reason is rarely the model — it is the data underneath it, the architecture around it, and the governance nobody wanted to fund.

This is a room for the leaders who have been through it. An honest conversation about what has to be true before AI works at all, and what it actually costs to get there.

End-user delegates personally invited by the CCE team · Never open registration · Always complimentary for end-user delegates

The event

A morning about the unglamorous half

Two practitioner voices, a full-room discussion under the Chatham House Rule, and space for the conversation that rarely happens on a conference stage — what broke, what it cost, and what you would do differently.

11:00
Arrival & welcome
Guests arrive and connect over a relaxed welcome. Informal introductions encouraged.
11:30
Setting the scene
Host welcome and framing: why the capability gap between architecture ambition and architecture reality is where AI value goes to die.
11:45
What we found underneath
A practitioner's account of the data readiness work nobody budgeted for — quality, lineage, ownership, and the discovery phase that doubled the timeline.
Talk · 20 min · open discussion follows
12:10
Funding the foundation
How to make the business case for work that produces no visible feature, and how to sequence it so the organisation stays patient.
Talk · 20 min · open discussion follows
12:35
Group discussion
A full-room facilitated conversation. Where is your data foundation weakest, and what is that costing you right now?
13:15
Host close
Closing remarks, community context, and next steps from the CCE team.
13:30
Private partner lunch
Invited delegates and event partners continue the conversation over a relaxed lunch. By invitation.

How we handle what is said in the room

The discussion runs under the Chatham House Rule. You are free to use what you hear — nothing is attributed to a person or an organisation. CCE publishes an anonymised summary after each event and may quote a delegate by name only with their written permission. Sponsors are named; delegates are not.

Who attends

Invitation-only. End-user delegates only.

Every delegate is personally invited by the CCE team. There is no open registration. Attendance is complimentary for end-user delegates.

CIOs & CTOs
Senior technology leaders accountable for AI delivery and the architecture decisions that determine whether it works.
Heads of Data & Analytics
Data leaders owning quality, governance, lineage, and the platforms everything else depends on.
Enterprise Architects
The practitioners holding the map, and the ones who knew about the gap before anyone asked.
Heads of Digital & Transformation
Executives accountable for demonstrating measurable return on digital and AI investment.

The CCE calendar

A room every quarter.

CCE runs curated, invitation-only gatherings on a quarterly cadence. Every event is complimentary for end-user delegates and funded entirely by category-exclusive partners — one brand per sector, no competitors in the room.

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Categories are allocated on a first-committed basis. Partners hold first right of refusal on their category for the following year. Enquire about a category →

"The right room changes everything — so I built one."

Vineshia Petersen · Founder, Connective Community Events

For delegates

Request an invitation

This event is complimentary for end-user delegates and invitation-only. Tell us about yourself and we will be in touch.

Complimentary for end users · By invitation