Tech Talks

In 2020, every bar and restaurant shut, and the social media marketing business Tom Shaw had built for them went with them. With no clients left to answer to, he decided to learn to code. Today, as a tech content creator with 400,000-plus Instagram followers, he gets behind the security at data centres, labs and Formula E’s broadcast operation.

But his sharpest lesson isn’t about access. One of his videos hit six million views and won him roughly 1,000 followers; another reached a million and won 40,000. For any leader reporting on reach, that gap should sting.

David and Tom unpack why AI has removed the barrier to building but not the risk of shipping, why tech moves faster than society, and why counting watchers is the wrong metric. Press play if your numbers look great and still feel empty.

Tech Talks is powered by Harvey Nash, the leading global provider of technology and talent solutions. Click here to learn more about our services.

The music on Tech Talks is created by London artist Lemzi.

Justin Pagano was on a phone call when he opened his investment app, and a banner appeared: we’re not calling you, and we’d never ask for this. No block, no extra step, just a nudge at the exact moment a scam would land. It’s a small thing that raises a big question for every tech leader: when does protection help people, and when does it just get in their way?

Justin, Senior Director of GRC Engineering at Vanta, argues that most governance still runs on PDFs and point-in-time snapshots that can’t keep pace with cloud-scale systems or AI. We unpack why risk rarely lands with the business, how layered defences work like seatbelts and airbags, what’s lurking in your shadow AI inventory, and why fixating on risk for its own sake can quietly wreck the outcome you were protecting. Press play if your controls look fine on paper.

Tech Talks is powered by Harvey Nash, the leading global provider of technology and talent solutions. Click here to learn more about our services.

The music on Tech Talks is created by London artist Lemzi.

David grabs Will Morgan, Principal Data Scientist at the Rajasthan Royals, on the floor at Data Decoded in Manchester, the day before they share a stage.

Will went from 12 years in academia, with a PhD in atmospheric science, to building a year-round analytics function for one of the founding teams of the Indian Premier League (IPL). He explains why data culture in a traditional sport has to come from the top down. That starts with an owner who has a tech background and runs through head coach Kumar Sangakkara, who makes sure the models are part of every recruitment and selection decision.

David would love you to complete our Digital Leadership Report. To do that, just click ⁠⁠here⁠⁠.

WhatsApp us your comments and questions on +447392087344

Tech Talks is powered by Harvey Nash, the leading global provider of technology and talent solutions. Click ⁠⁠here⁠⁠ to learn more about our services.

The music on Tech Talks is created by London artist ⁠⁠Lemzi⁠⁠.

You watch an ad and wince. It’s clumsy, it’s cringe, and you can’t imagine it converting anyone. Then it racks up 300 million views and converts brilliantly. For Ada Mockute Jaime, Chief Marketing Officer at Nordcurrent, moments like that settled the argument: she is not the customer, and her taste is not the strategy.

The stakes reach well beyond gaming. AI now produces ads for a couple of euros each and pushes thousands of new games out every day, so attention goes to whoever reads their audience best, not whoever has the best taste. We unpack how social listening revealed that players felt nostalgia where marketing was selling speed, how one fast-fingered player with a modest following opened up Indonesia, and why she hires for curiosity over specialist skill. If your instincts have ever overruled your data, press play.

Tech Talks is powered by Harvey Nash, the leading global provider of technology and talent solutions. Click here to learn more about our services.

The music on Tech Talks is created by London artist Lemzi.

What happens when a prediction lands on a board slide and everyone treats it as a fact? Recorded live at Data Decoded, David sits down with transformation leader and founder Lucy Goudie straight after her talk. Her argument is that truth and untruth now move at the same speed, so organisations that outsource decisions to data are really outsourcing accountability.

Lucy explains why uncertainty has to travel with every prediction. She shows how a single unchallenged number can become someone’s ceiling, and why human doubt should be treated as a data point. She also uses David’s Garmin VO2 max to make a point about business: you can’t work on outcomes like time to market directly, only on the behaviours that drive them.

David would love you to complete our Digital Leadership Report. To do that, just click ⁠here⁠.

WhatsApp us your comments and questions on +447392087344

Tech Talks is powered by Harvey Nash, the leading global provider of technology and talent solutions. Click ⁠here⁠ to learn more about our services.

The music on Tech Talks is created by London artist ⁠Lemzi⁠.

A few weeks before this conversation, a global hotel group believed its AI agents were under control: registry, governance, real-time token tracking. Then millions of visits hit its website that nobody could identify. They were personal AI agents, acting for real guests, searching and booking rooms. Turning them away wasn’t an option. The team had 24 hours to decide what to control.

Wei Manfredi, SVP of AI and Architecture at IHG Hotels & Resorts, takes David inside that scramble. When an agent scrapes the wrong rate and the booking collapses, who answers to the guest? Why do agents scrape web pages when an API sits ready? And why is so much of what we call AI risk really poor engineering? We also unpack how to turn staff who fear replacement into builders. If agents are already shopping on your site, this is your early warning.

If you’re heading to Web Summit and looking for a different way to meet attendees, we’re hosting a breakfast run club on Tuesday November 10th at 7am. Come and meet some new, friendly faces: https://luma.com/mpv6bmso 

Tech Talks is powered by Harvey Nash, the leading global provider of technology and talent solutions. Click here to learn more about our services.

The music on Tech Talks is created by London artist Lemzi.

Eight years ago, Janine Luk was teaching herself to code at night and at weekends while working in marketing. The job she does now didn’t exist.

Today, plenty of young people hesitate to start, convinced AI will replace software engineers before they get a foot in the door, and most leaders can’t tell them which skills will still matter. Janine, a Senior Software Engineer at Datatonic, has a blunter answer: treat technical skill as the baseline, because everyone applying for your job already has it. The edge is explaining what you built, selling it, and knowing how it makes the business money.

We unpack why junior and mid-level engineers miss that, how golf got her into rooms engineers rarely reach, what male allies actually do that helps, and why she posts and walks away. Press play if you hire engineers, or you are one wondering what’s left.

WhatsApp us on +447392087344!

If you’re heading to Web Summit and looking for a different way to meet attendees, we’re hosting a breakfast run club on Tuesday November 10th at 7am. Come and meet some new, friendly faces: https://luma.com/mpv6bmso 

Tech Talks is powered by Harvey Nash, the leading global provider of technology and talent solutions. Click here to learn more about our services.

The music on Tech Talks is created by London artist Lemzi.

Somewhere in a port right now, a cargo document is being stamped by hand. By the figures Steve Hemmings has seen, between 60% and 80% of global maritime trade is still on paper. That’s not because the technology doesn’t exist, but because people trust the paper. That trust gap is the real story. The industry carrying the global economy is putting serious money into AI that stalls at prototype, because the foundations underneath it (governance, data and change management) were never built. David sits down with Steve Hemmings, Client CTO at Insight, to unpack three things: why maritime fell behind, what shipping could learn from how airlines move your luggage, and his “cart to market” model for spotting who is pulling your transformation forward and who is dragging it back. If you’ve ever bought another tool because nobody used the last one, press play.

If you’re heading to Web Summit and looking for a different way to meet attendees, we’re hosting a breakfast run club on Tuesday November 10th at 7am. Come and meet some new, friendly faces: ⁠https://luma.com/mpv6bmso⁠ 

Tech Talks is powered by Harvey Nash, the leading global provider of technology and talent solutions. Click ⁠here⁠ to learn more about our services.

The music on Tech Talks is created by London artist ⁠Lemzi⁠.

Is AI safety really about existential risk, or about the here-and-now? David Savage reconnects with Gaia Marcus, now Director of the Ada Lovelace Institute, five years after they first spoke while she was working on the UK’s National Data Strategy.

Gaia shares findings from I Love It, But I Hate It, the Ada and Nuffield Foundation research with 50 young people aged 14–24. The digital-native generation is bucking the usual trend: they are more wary of AI, not less. She also explains why fluency with interfaces is no substitute for social maturity.

They discuss the hidden costs of putting AI into real workflows. Ada’s research on social workers using AI transcription found strong enthusiasm, but also inconsistent use, hallucinated records and unresolved questions about liability. They also cover why individually sensible decisions to cut entry-level hiring could create a sector-wide talent crisis.

On regulation, Gaia explains the “Swiss cheese” model of layered defences and why middle powers can still set conditions for access to their markets. She also describes how surprised the public is that chatbots aren’t regulated already. She closes with advice for 20-year-olds: critical thinking, broad skills, and an experiment that shows how much human knowledge AI models simply can’t see.

David would love you to complete our Digital Leadership Report. To do that, just click ⁠⁠here⁠⁠.

WhatsApp us your comments and questions on +447392087344

Tech Talks is powered by Harvey Nash, the leading global provider of technology and talent solutions. Click ⁠⁠here⁠⁠ to learn more about our services.

The music on Tech Talks is created by London artist ⁠⁠Lemzi⁠⁠.

What happens when an AI-first mindset meets critical national infrastructure?

David is joined by Berian James, a machine learning and AI product leader whose career runs from payments at Square to supply chain transformation at Maersk, energy trading, and now tem, where he’s helping rebuild how UK businesses and generators buy and sell energy.

Berian makes the case that “move fast and break things” simply doesn’t apply when the energy grid is at stake. He explains why risk management, done well, is an engine for growth rather than a cost to be controlled, and how pricing fixed contracts three years out depends on deep regulatory and domain knowledge, not just clever models. David presses him on a question every buyer of AI should be asking: if your provider runs on agents, how can you trust today’s price in two and a half years?

They also tackle the jobs question head-on. With graduate roles down by a third since ChatGPT launched, Berian argues that AI-native graduates may actually have a head start, and that today’s shift in engineering is the next leap in abstraction, much like the move from assembly to compilers.

David would love you to complete our Digital Leadership Report. To do that, just click ⁠here⁠.

WhatsApp us your comments and questions on +447392087344

Tech Talks is powered by Harvey Nash, the leading global provider of technology and talent solutions. Click ⁠here⁠ to learn more about our services.

The music on Tech Talks is created by London artist ⁠Lemzi⁠.