How a session in Hong Kong 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: a survey of fifty of a client's own people run BEFORE the session, to find where judgement had already been handed to tools they had built themselves, read back to the executive team in their own words, then a workshop in which they named four or five of their own processes and rebuilt them; and a division of a very large company permitted exactly one AI tool, which after the constraint was examined moved to a multi-tool sandbox with different functions choosing different models, then repeated across further divisions.
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 Hong Kong. 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.
The measurement gap, stated precisely
The Census and Statistics Department's business survey of IT usage, released 27 February 2026, was read in full including all thirty tables. Artificial intelligence appears nowhere in it. The survey measures cloud computing at 98.1 per cent, QR codes at 37.6 per cent, RFID at 20.3 per cent, internet of things at 7.4 per cent, and augmented or virtual reality at 1.5 per cent.
Three companion publications, including the household IT survey and the flagship information society compendium, contain no AI content either. The consequence for anyone quoting a Hong Kong AI adoption figure is straightforward: it came from a private survey with a self-selected sample, and it should be introduced that way.
On strategy the position is similar. Hong Kong has published no consolidated territory-wide AI strategy. That is not an inference. The government was asked in the Legislative Council in October 2025 to map out strategies and set phased targets, and again in April 2026 to formulate a comprehensive AI development blueprint. Neither reply announced a document. The April 2026 answer was that initiatives are ongoing and being consolidated.
The regulator has done better work than the government
Hong Kong's privacy regulator is the exception. Its 2024 model framework requires that personnel exercising oversight remain aware of the tendency to over-rely on the output produced by AI, and states that human oversight should not be merely a gesture. That is a sharper formulation than most national frameworks manage.
Deskilling appears in none of the five Hong Kong instruments examined. The territory addresses whether the human starts competent, and whether they over-trust the machine in the moment. It does not address whether capability degrades through sustained use, which is the question at capability debt.
What that means for a Hong Kong board
A market that is not measured is a market where every organisation is running its own uncontrolled experiment and comparing itself to numbers produced by vendors. The absence of an official figure is not a reason to relax. It is a reason to measure internally, because nobody else is going to do it for you.
The practical version of that is at how do you measure AI adoption properly, and the full Hong Kong account, document by document, is at AI and work in Asia.
Practical
Boards, financial and professional services, regional headquarters, chambers and association conferences. Delivery is in English. Keynotes run 30 to 90 minutes, with workshop and board-session formats. Rahim travels from London, and where travel is not practical the same session is delivered online. He can travel to the region or deliver virtually across all time zones.
Three keynotes, all versions of one argument. Drift versus Design is the signature talk for boards and executive teams. We Are Superheroes covers the seven human skills that grow more valuable as the tools spread. WTH, What the Human is a live judgement test for boards, run in the room, December to March only. Full descriptions are at keynotes.
What the census leaves out
A February 2026 Census and Statistics Department survey counts AR and VR at 1.5 per cent and skips AI entirely. Nobody official is going to measure this for a Hong Kong board. The HKMA and SFC have done more careful work, and they expect boards to keep up. I have addressed leadership at Barclays and advised companies across the UAE, Europe and the US. The session uses your numbers: your board leaves with one measure it can track each quarter, and the name of the person who owns it.
Hong Kong boards get Rahim's advisory experience across three regions and the habit of reading behind Box of Amazing, his free weekly letter. Keynotes · Advisory · Box of Amazing
The three keynotes a Hong Kong 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, and the full talk runs 45 to 60 minutes. 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 is built from your room. Your audience answers five anonymous questions beforehand, their answers shape the talk, and afterwards you get a one-page readout with the three decisions to look at first.
Also speaking nearby: Shanghai · Singapore · Seoul.
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.
Hong Kong's statistics office counts AR and VR adoption at 1.5 per cent and does not ask about AI. Executive teams learn to measure their drift when the official numbers stay silent.
We Are Superheroes
We Are Superheroes: AI is the suit. The human decides.
Big Picture Thinking matters most where official statistics show only a sliver, such as that 1.5 per cent. Finance and education audiences in Hong Kong learn to see the whole system.
WTH (What the Human)
WTH (What the Human): a live test of a board's own judgement.
The HKMA and SFC have done more careful work on AI than government has. A board tests whether its judgement meets the standard its regulators already expect.
Where these sessions happen in Hong Kong, and when they can
- HKCEC Grand Hall, Wan Chai
- 3,880 square metres with a 27 metre ceiling, a permanent 408 square metre stage and a built-in LED wall 20 metres wide by 5.5 high, seating 3,800 theatre. The wall is an asset and a constraint at once, because your set has to work around it. Not divisible, so tracks come from the meeting rooms elsewhere in the building.
- HKCEC Convention Hall
- 1,819 square metres, 1,700 theatre, divisible into three. The 7.7 metre ceiling is low for a heavy rig, but the room splits: plenary in two thirds, two tracks after the break.
- HKCEC Theatre 1
- 637 maximum across 507 square metres, and the only purpose-built RAKED room in the building. Fixed tiers, so every seat sees the stage without a riser, at the cost of being unable to rearrange or cater in it. The right room for a board-level session.
- AsiaWorld-Expo, Chek Lap Kok
- The Arena is 10,880 square metres with a 19 metre ceiling and 12,500 theatre, rising to 14,000 with standing. The only room in the territory where a plenary above ten thousand is real. It is a flat floor, so you build the rake. At the airport, so nobody sleeps on site and everybody shuttles.
- Kai Tak Arena
- 10,000 with retractable tiered seating, pillar-free. A raked bowl or a flat floor from the same room, which is rare. But the operator publishes no dedicated convention centre at Kai Tak, so the breakout floor is thin.
- Grand Hyatt and Island Shangri-La
- The Grand Hyatt ballroom is 1,185 square metres for 1,300 and is walkable to the HKCEC. The Island Shangri-La ballroom is 682 square metres seating 650 and splits three ways, and its shape is worth noting: 14.3 by 47.7 metres is long and narrow, so watch the back rows.
Art Basel Hong Kong runs 25 to 27 March 2027, the single largest compressor of the calendar. It takes the convention centre halls plus roughly a week of build and break either side, and five-star room nights across Central, Admiralty and Wan Chai, with satellite fairs and auction weeks stacked around it. Treat mid to late March 2027 as closed for an Island corporate conference, or move to AsiaWorld-Expo or Kai Tak where the contest is different.
The Observatory states in its own words that the tropical cyclone season is roughly June to October and that activity affecting the territory is most active July to September. That the city stops at Signal 8 is general practice, and no written cancellation or force-majeure clause was found on either major venue’s own site, so get one into the contract rather than relying on the norm.
One to leave off a plan. RISE is dormant: its own site carries no dates, no venue and no ticket sale, and its speakers section is headed past speakers. Listings claiming a July edition are quoting cached pages from before 2020.
