DAMA Adelaide: Human + AI Workshop

A New Paradigm for Organisational Knowledge and Learning What happens when AI can generate in minutes what once took skilled professionals days, weeks or months to produce? The answer isn't just about increasing productivity. It also transforms how organisations generate knowledge, learn, shape themselves, and adapt. For many years, building organisational knowledge has been a slow and fragile process—focused on workshops, strategy sessions, and documenting what we've learned. But then, change happens, knowledge becomes outdated, and important insights often stay locked within individuals, systems, or disconnected tools. Now, with the advent of generative AI, we're looking at a truly exciting shift: a continuous cycle where humans and AI collaborate in creating, challenging, learning, and renewing knowledge together. After years of research, reading two insightful books, and recent hands-on experiments, Rob Malcolm will share a new way of thinking—transforming organizational knowledge from a static collection of snapshots into a vibrant, ever-evolving system. At its centre is a deceptively simple principle: AI may generate at machine scale; humans validate at human scale, but only through engagement with reality. The implications for data professionals are significant. If AI can increasingly generate candidate capability models, data models, relationships, definitions and architecture at machine scale, the critical challenge shifts. The scarce capability becomes our ability to discover meaning, challenge assumptions, validate models against reality, govern knowledge and learn from what happens next. The session will explore: • Human-AI Knowledge Base Development and continuous organisational learning. • Why AI-generated knowledge must remain candidate knowledge. • Gemba and reality-grounded validation. • Conceptual data modelling as a means of negotiating organisational meaning. • The changing role of data professionals. • Adaptive Governance and Kanban Architecture. • What happens when machine-scale generation encounters human-scale learning. • Lessons emerging from current experimentation with enterprise architecture and data modelling. Rob Malcolm and Pulkit Verma will lead the session, with the presentation and interactive discussion at its centre. There will be substantial time for questions, challenges and audience participation. Any technology demonstration will be secondary to the main conversation and used only where it helps illuminate the ideas. This is not a presentation about AI replacing data professionals. It is a conversation about what data professionals can become in the AI era - and the role they can play in helping organisations build better knowledge, learn continuously and adapt.