How a session in Helsinki is put together
Every keynote is tailored after a briefing call, and the larger engagements start before the day rather than on it: a diagnostic of the client's own people, so the room hears its own evidence rather than somebody else's. What the room leaves with is written down.
What that has looked like: about 1,500 people joining a session run hybrid from central London at short notice, for a technology business changing AI tools faster than its people could absorb, which became executive coaching for the transformation lead; and an agency business convening Asia, Asia-Pacific, EMEA and North America into one event, where the work was naming the recurring situations nobody had vocabulary for, and the company took that wording into its strategy.
Six of the seven engagements published on this site produced further work after the session rather than at it. The seven are set out in full at case studies, each with a line saying what it does not show.
How to read these examples. They are published to show how the work is put together, not as a client list for Helsinki. Most engagements are covered by confidentiality and are described without naming anyone; where a client is named anywhere on this site, it is with their agreement.
One sentence, and it is the whole argument
Finland’s Administrative Procedure Act gained a new chapter on automated decision making by act 487/2023, passed on 23 March 2023 and in force from 1 May 2023. The test it sets is a single clause. An authority may decide a matter automatically only where the matter contains no elements requiring case-by-case discretion.
No other European instrument reviewed for this page puts it that plainly. The EU AI Act runs to hundreds of articles and requires oversight without defining what would make a decision unsuitable for a machine in the first place. Finland defined it in a subordinate clause, and it is the same line this keynote spends an hour arriving at.
Two more provisions in the same chapter are worth carrying into a room. The Act defines automated as reaching an outcome without a natural person checking and approving it, which forecloses the argument that a rubber stamp counts. And an appeal against a decision may not itself be decided automatically. Whatever a machine did the first time, a person has to do it the second. The companion act adds the accountability layer: a named individual responsible for each system, a published deployment decision, and records that must allow anyone to reconstruct for five years at which stages a natural person took part.
How Finland got there, which is the better half of the story
A statute that clean does not appear from nothing. On 20 November 2019 the Deputy Parliamentary Ombudsman found the Finnish Tax Administration’s automated decision making unlawful. The reasoning is what makes it useful on a stage: official accountability had become indirect. Nobody had done anything wrong; there was simply no longer a person to whom the decision belonged. The system was issuing on the order of fifteen million decisions a year.
Parliament then legislated, in 2023. And in April 2025 the Chancellor of Justice applied the new law against Kela, the social insurance institution. A finding, a statute, and an enforcement action: four different bodies, over six years, arriving at the same conclusion about the same problem. Most countries have one of those three. Finland has the sequence.
That sequence is the honest answer to the question every board asks, which is whether any of this ever becomes real. It becomes real slowly, through somebody noticing that no human was answerable, which is the subject of the invisible work of oversight.
What Finland has measured, and it is the number Tokyo made famous
Finland sits second in the European Union on enterprise AI use, at 37.8 per cent against an EU average of about 20, on Eurostat’s 2025 reference year. Only Denmark is higher.
The more useful figure is the one about people rather than firms. The ministry of economic affairs and employment published its 2025 working life barometer on 9 March 2026. 45 per cent of Finnish employees say AI is used at their workplace, rising to about 70 per cent in organisations of 200 or more and 68 per cent in central government. Among those, 18 per cent say it has replaced work tasks.
A national employee survey, not a vendor panel, and it belongs beside the Japanese and Korean figures on the Asia pages as one of the few places a government has asked its own workforce rather than its own employers.
The part Finland is late on, said plainly
Finland’s strength here is administrative law rather than AI law. On the AI Act it is behind: the August 2025 deadline for designating national authorities passed unmet, the second phase has slipped into 2027, and there is no sandbox and no national high-risk register yet.
Saying that on a stage in Helsinki costs nothing and buys a great deal, because the room already knows. A speaker who quotes only the flattering half of a country’s record has told the audience how much of the homework was done.
Helsinki also runs a public AI register, launched jointly with Amsterdam in September 2020, listing the city’s own systems with a supervision field on each entry. Two cities deciding at the same moment that the public should be able to see what the municipality is automating.
Who books this in Helsinki, and who should not
Boards and executive committees, public sector and municipal leadership, technology and industrial companies, and the conference circuit around Slush and Nordic Business Forum. Finnish audiences tend to ask the evidence question directly and early, which suits a talk whose sources are published and graded.
He is the wrong choice for a tools demonstration, a vendor showcase or a technical AI briefing, and for any brief that needs an optimistic message with the difficult part removed. If that is the brief, the guide to choosing an AI keynote speaker names four other kinds of speaker and when to pick each.
The three keynotes a Helsinki room can book
Keynotes run 30 to 90 minutes, in person or virtual. A 30-minute main-stage version of each talk is available for conferences; the full argument needs 40 or more. The sector examples change for the room; the argument does not. All three, with the showreel, are at keynotes, and the programme copy is at the speaker pack.
Drift versus Design
Drift versus Design: why most organisations hand their judgement to AI without deciding to, and how to design your way through instead.
Most organisations are adopting AI by drift: a thousand reasonable decisions that add up to judgement nobody chose to give away. Rahim Hirji, author of SuperSkills, shows leaders which mode they are running, where AI sharpens judgement and where it weakens it, and hands them the controls.
We Are Superheroes
We Are Superheroes: AI is the suit. The human decides.
AI makes everyone faster, stronger and more capable. It does not decide; people do. Through a family story across four generations and three continents, Rahim Hirji hands the audience the seven human skills that grow more valuable as the tools spread. They arrive thinking AI is the story and leave knowing they are.
WTH (What the Human)
WTH (What the Human): a live test of a board's own judgement.
Business is being rewired as AI arrives, and human judgement is leaving with it. In three acts, Rahim Hirji shows a board what AI is changing in how organisations run, then ends with a live test of the board's own judgement, in the room and in real time. Nobody forgets the result.
Where these sessions happen in Helsinki
One geographical point first, because it changes the logistics and organisers outside Finland get it wrong. Keilaniemi and Otaniemi are in Espoo, a separate municipality, not in Helsinki. The metro takes about ten minutes from Helsinki Central, so it is a short journey and a different address. Ruoholahti, Kamppi and Kluuvi are Helsinki.
- Messukeskus, Helsinki Expo and Convention Centre, Pasila
- 58,000 square metres, seven adaptable halls, 40 convertible conference spaces and the Amfi hall at 4,400 seats. The Areena grandstand in hall 7 takes up to 7,500. The only building in Finland at trade-fair scale, and where Slush and Nordic Business Forum both happen. Note the Solar extension: the new entrance opens autumn 2026 and the building completes autumn 2027, with the venue stating operations continue throughout.
- Finlandia Hall, Töölö
- Reopened on 4 January 2025 after three years of renovation. The main auditorium seats 1,672, Congress Hall A seats 600 and A and B combined 900, with the Piazza foyer taking 1,000 for a reception. The default Helsinki congress house and the right building for a plenary that has to feel like an occasion.
- Scandic Marina Congress Center, Katajanokka
- Up to 1,800 guests, with Fennia I and II seating 700 and Europaea 630, then a full ladder down to twenty-person rooms, and a hotel attached. The most practical building in the city for a conference that needs a plenary and eight breakouts.
- Clarion Hotel Helsinki, Jätkäsaari
- Thirteen meeting rooms, the largest taking 700, up to 1,000 across the venue, with 425 hotel rooms in the building. Waterfront and modern.
- Kaapelitehdas, the Cable Factory, Ruoholahti
- 56,000 square metres of former industrial space. Merikaapelihalli takes up to 2,870 across 3,147 square metres on two levels; Puristamo 450; Valssaamo 150 to 200. Rented empty, so the production cost sits with the organiser. Character rather than convenience.
- Veikkaus Arena, Pasila
- Fully renovated in 2025 and now stating a capacity of up to 15,500. An arena rather than a conference centre: general session and awards, with no published breakout inventory.
The Helsinki calendar, from organisers’ own pages. Nordic Business Forum runs 16 and 17 September 2026 at Messukeskus, with the organiser stating over 8,500 business leaders from more than 50 countries. Slush runs 18 and 19 November 2026, also at Messukeskus, with 17 November as its official Day 0 and an organiser figure of 12,000-plus attendees. Arctic15 returns 16 and 17 June 2027 at Kaapelitehdas.
Two things to know before a list is drawn up. Junction is in Espoo, not Helsinki. And there is no event called Helsinki Tech Weekly; the similar name in the region is Nordic Tech Week, which is Stockholm.
