Conversations Roadshow by CTO Craft
No slides. No panels. Just real conversations with fellow tech leaders.
- 15th October, 2026
- Blique by Nobis, Stockholm
What is the Conversations Roadshow?
The Conversations Roadshow is a half-day gathering for senior technology leaders who want practical insight rather than surface-level talks.
While the format remains consistent at each stop — small-group roundtables and peer-led discussion — every event is shaped by its local context. Attendees, facilitators, and discussion topics differ from city to city, ensuring each gathering reflects the challenges and opportunities CTOs are experiencing in that region.
Each session is designed to create space for honest conversation, shared problem-solving, and connections that continue beyond the day.
Small group discussions
12-15 CTOs and senior tech leaders per table, creating space for real exchange.
Peer-led conversation
Interactive roundtables and deep-dive sessions built around shared challenges and experience.
No slides, real conversation
No long keynotes or sales pitches. Just open, honest dialogue and practical insight.
Is this event right for you?
Conversations is built around one thing: the quality of the room.
Peers at similar stages, with similar-shape teams and similar problems on their desks – guided by facilitators who’ve held the role themselves. The conversations work because everyone is operating at the same level, and because someone experienced is steering.
It’s intended for senior engineering leaders who:
- Hold a senior engineering leadership title – CTO, VP Engineering, Head of Engineering, Director of Engineering, or equivalent
- Currently lead an engineering team of around 10 or more
- Are in role at a single company, or recently between roles
If that’s you, you’ll get a lot out of it. If it’s not quite, but you think the room is a fit, get in touch.
Agenda
12:00pm – 1:00pm
Arrival and welcome
1:00pm – 1:15pm
Welcome remarks
1:15-2:15pm
Pick your table. Choose from our roundtables, each exploring a different leadership challenge. Bring your questions, share your experiences, and learn from peers who’ve been there.
Vibes at Machine Speed: Securing AI-Written Software
AI is accelerating software delivery to machine speed, but security and governance remain human-paced. In this executive roundtable, we’ll discuss how AI-generated applications introduce repeatable vulnerability patterns, especially broken access control, hardcoded secrets, and unsafe agent workflows, and why traditional AppSec controls are struggling to adapt.
Together, we’ll explore how leaders are measuring and communicating this emerging risk, exchange real-world experiences, and compare the practical guardrails CTOs and engineering teams are putting in place to safely scale AI-driven development.
Mackenzie Jackson - Developer Advocate @ Akidio
Address Tech Debt Before the Table Flip
One of the biggest failure points in tech strategy isn’t a lack of ideas — it’s a lack of clear leadership alignment on priorities and what success actually looks like. Without that clarity, strategies quickly become long “laundry lists” that dilute focus and slow execution. This session explores how to co-create a practical, working tech strategy by starting with the most critical business and product challenges, deliberately aiming for a version that is actionable rather than perfect, and making priorities, trade-offs, and value explicit early before iterating through feedback and learning. Attendees will leave with practical frameworks to avoid analysis paralysis, align leadership and engineering early, and turn strategy into a living, evolving artefact — with clear next steps to tackle tech debt before it becomes a blocker to progress.
Cecilia Borg - CTO @ Acast
Culture Map in practice: decision-making under difference
Cultural differences rarely show up as overt “culture problems”; instead, they emerge as slow decisions, unclear ownership, and friction within senior teams. This session uses the Culture Map as a shared reference point for an open discussion on how differences in communication, feedback, and authority shape decision-making at senior levels. Participants will share real experiences and collaboratively reflect on strategies that help leaders address these differences early, before ambiguity seeps into systems, processes, or organizational structures.
Alisa Tikhova Senior Engineering Leader @ eyeo -
2:15pm – 2:45pm
Networking Break
2:45pm – 3:45pm
Pick your table. Choose from our roundtables, each exploring a different leadership challenge. Bring your questions, share your experiences, and learn from peers who’ve been there.
The Hidden Cost of Micro-Decisions: Building Scalable Decision Pipelines for Technology Leaders
Technology leaders face an unrelenting stream of micro-decisions that quietly erode focus, judgment, and strategic capacity. This session explores how decision fatigue and cognitive overload emerge in fast-moving engineering organizations, and why they have become one of the most overlooked contributors to leadership burnout and execution risk. Participants will examine their own recurring operational and leadership decisions, learning how to distinguish which choices should be automated, delegated, standardized, or deliberately retained as human judgment. Through collaborative design and scenario-based stress testing — covering incidents, delivery pressure, and hiring constraints — leaders build practical decision pipelines that improve consistency, resilience, and speed of execution. The session addresses the critical question: how can CTOs systematically redesign everyday decision-making so that leadership time and cognitive capacity are preserved for the decisions that truly matter?
Becki Wordsworth - CTO @ Meela
Maintaining High Performance During Economic Strain: Leadership, Culture and AI
Leaders are expected to maintain clarity and purpose as priorities shift, making pragmatic, data-informed decisions with limited resources while preserving morale, ownership, and accountability without relying on financial incentives. This means upholding technical standards and team cohesion under pressure, balancing performance with cost through smart build-vs-buy choices, and making strategic trade-offs between internal teams and external partners — all while using AI to enhance productivity without eroding human responsibility.
Kamil Dziublinski - CTO @ Xapo Bank
3:45pm – 4:15pm
Networking Break
4:15pm – 5:15pm
Pick your table. Choose from our roundtables, each exploring a different leadership challenge. Bring your questions, share your experiences, and learn from peers who’ve been there.
Human Relationships: The Best Team You’ve Ever Been Part Of — and What Made It Work
People remember great teams with surprising clarity, even years later — not the company, methodology, or tech stack, but the human experience. The leader who gave you a chance before you were ready. The meeting where someone said, “I was wrong,” and it shifted the room. The deadline that turned colleagues into a true team.
Ask any senior leader about the best team they’ve been part of and they rarely talk about process; they talk about what it felt like to be there. What’s striking is how seldom leaders are asked this question — yet when they are, the patterns are consistent: early trust, welcomed honesty, and a shared sense that everyone was better because of each other.
Bring your best team story. You’ll leave with ten more — and likely a few things you’ll want to try with your own team the very next week.
Nazli Sahin - Director of Security, Risk + Compliance @ Accedo.tv
Reducing Drag: Leadership, Friction, and Team Efficiency
Teams rarely struggle because people are lazy or incapable. More often, delivery slows because of invisible friction, unclear ownership, mismatched expectations, or leadership habits that no longer scale. In this facilitated CTO conversation, we will explore what team efficiency really means in startup and scale-up environments, and why predictability often breaks down even when everyone is working hard. Together, we will surface common patterns across people, process, and systems, and discuss where CTOs have the greatest leverage to reduce friction without adding unnecessary complexity. This is a reflective, peer-led discussion designed to help participants recognise shared challenges, exchange perspectives, and leave with clearer ways of thinking about their own teams.
Adam Horner, CTO, Syonva Technology
Your facilitators
Adam Horner
Alisa Tikhova
Becki Wordsworth
Kamil Dziublinski
Paul Lunow
Ready to join the Conversation?
Venue
Blique by Nobis
Gävlegatan 18, 113 30 Stockholm
We’ll be gathering at Blique by Nobis, a modern boutique hotel in the heart of Stockholm. With its light-filled spaces, contemporary Scandinavian design, and relaxed atmosphere, it provides the perfect setting for focused discussion and meaningful connection. Easily accessible from the city centre, Blique offers a comfortable, stylish environment to spend the afternoon in conversation with peers — and to continue discussions over drinks as the day winds down.
Registration is now open!
What your ticket includes
Facilitated small-group leadership roundtables
Practical peer discussion on real challenges (no slides, no panels)
Access to a curated room of senior tech leaders
Insights you can take straight back to your organisation
Refreshments throughout the afternoon
Drinks reception
Due to the intimate nature of this event, availability is extremely limited.
Our event partners
Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm