Australian Digital Workplace Conference 2026 Recap

I’m sitting at Melbourne Airport, reflecting on this weeks Australian Digital Workplace Conference (DWC). I’ve come away with new tools in my toolkit, new perspectives on things relevant to me and inspired by presenters and attendees. Thank you everyone for all the contributions and conversations!

What is it that makes in-person events like this so important? I think Debbie Ireland answered this in her welcome message. Today, more than ever, it is connection that is important. In our busy work lives, it is very easy to jump from meeting to meeting, respond to messages digitally and hide ourselves away, without making time to truly connect. What do we lose if we don’t connect?

Last night, talking to friends over a drink at one of Melbourne’s groovy bars I shared a bit of the origin story of Stratos Technology Partners (the company I co-founded 15 years ago) and how, in difficult times, people I had connections with, not only helped me, but many of my work colleagues when the company we had worked for collapsed, a few weeks after the devastating Canterbury Earthquake. Those connections were far more valuable than I ever imaged.

One of the things I love about DWC is talking to people and hearing their perspectives, challenges and questions. The people in the room bring a diverse range of experience, come from all kinds of organisations and come from different generations. We all have one thing in common, the desire to learn more, so we can create better workplaces (not just digital). Our thinking is challenged, our horizons lifted and we built connections!

What did I learn?

The conference was filled with good practical things to take away. Here are some of the highlights for me.

Heather Cook shared a great tip and drilled into how to create a “Team Agreement”, to guide how we work with each other in the digital world. The key is the agreement between people in the team.

Sharon Connolly explained how to do somethings in PowerPoint that have frustrated me for years. Did you know you can make a perfect circle by holding down SHIFT when you select the oval shape!? I do now!

Matthew Gilbertson asked us to think about why after Billions of investments in AI tools, why has productivity continued to decline in Australia when we were promised better productivity?

Kirsty McGarth did a high paced session on Copilot prompting which was a great reminder on why crafting a better prompt will vastly improve the results you get from Copilot.

Loryan Strant explained why usage analytics for Copilot don’t really tell us much at all. Opening Copilot enabled apps counts as usage, but was it?

Lisa Crosbie demonstrated Copilot Cowork live helping with everyday tasks like reorganising her Outlook calendar by prioritising different types of meetings and automatically communicating the changes to other meeting attendees.

Andrew O’Young gave a great talk on the things you should consider when using AI Agents in M365. Lots of great security tips and recommendations.

Sutter Schumacher reinforced the importance of governance that’s more than a box ticking exercise and backed it up with some real examples that should grab everyone’s attention.

Andrew Pope gave some fantastic tips on how to make work “less crap” by learning to work together better.

Cairo Walker and Shelley Van Hoos talked us through delivering a new Intranet in just 21 days. The key is getting the focus and time of key stakeholders and being ruthless on content. Deliver what matters first and create a framework to build on. For the record, most Intranet projects take around 3 months for an initial phase, longer usually indicates the scope is too big and risks death by committee.

Liza Tinker presented a case study that demonstrated the importance of getting your content ready for an AI future. A really good piece of work, with great practical advice.

With 30 presenters, there was something for everyone and many other takeaways I’ve stored away in my memory bank (the OneNote I made over the two days). That’s the value to listening to the experiences of others.

My presentation

I presented a session demonstrating the latest AI in SharePoint features from AI generated sites to page content, FAQ webparts and how to create a simple agent.

The key message I wanted to get across is that AI can help us create content that is more consumable by using those lengthy and very dry policy and procedure documents we produce as a source for short guides, news posts and FAQ’s. We’re all far to busy to spend time reading a 30-page policy.

I started my session by building a site completely with AI. No clicking on the Cog icon, no manual configuration, just an AI prompt. The process takes 8-10 minutes. Here is a 2 minute highlight of AI site creation in SharePoint in action creating a site for Senior Leadership.

One of my demos failed, reinforcing that both humans (in this case me) and Copilot aren’t perfect. It’s also a reminder to proof the content you generate with AI before publishing. It will make stuff up or find old content if your SharePoint is like a junk draw!

Several people made very good suggestions about authoring content including your own notes to make them easier to discover later. Give descriptive titles, include something to indicate when it was taken, key topics etc. You’ll thank yourself later!

What will I change?

In the conference close, we were all asked, “what is one thing will you change when you are back at work next week?”. As tempting as it is, I won’t use Copilot Cowork to clear by calendar, but I will use it to help me prepare and be more organised.

Something I am already doing that I must do more of is experimenting with AI, focusing on the Skills and Cowork features to do everyday tasks. How can Copilot and AI in SharePoint help me? I’m developing a very long list!

I will also finding new ways to make stronger connections with the people I work with to create stronger human connections.

Photos for the event

Getting ready for the Keynote

Debbie Ireland setting the scene on why a human centred future is essential

This resonates with me on every level

Debbie nailed it with this slide. We are the last generation to know the world without AI, we must make the right decisions now for the future generations. It is up to us!