AI keynote speaker in Jeddah.

Watch the showreel · 2 minutes

A feel for the room before you put me in front of yours.

Speaking in Jeddah

Rahim is speaking in Jeddah. If you would like him to speak to your organisation while he is in the region, get in touch.

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 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.

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 Jeddah. 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 gateway, and where the system starts

For most pilgrims the AI-mediated part of the journey begins before Makkah and before Saudi Arabia. SDAIA has deployed digital and AI-powered systems at 12 international airports across 8 countries under the Makkah Route initiative, including biometric registration workstations, so entry processing starts at the departure gate.

Jeddah is the arrival point for that system and the operational centre of gravity for the approach to the holy sites. It is also where SDAIA’s vice president gave the interview this page draws on.

Baseer, and the Tawaf

SDAIA operates Baseer, built with the Ministry of Interior, using AI algorithms and computer vision on live feeds to detect crowd density and distribution within the Grand Mosque, and to pinpoint overcrowded zones such as the Tawaf area, moment by moment. The stated purpose is to let authorities act swiftly to prevent overcrowding or stampedes. Companion platforms Sawaher and Sawaher Qiyada analyse live security camera feeds, coordinated from the Smart Makkah Operations Center.

The Ministry of Interior’s own account of the 1447 AH season describes predictive analytics used to anticipate and mitigate congestion and hazardous conditions before they occurred, through a framework intended to accelerate strategic decision-making and, in its own words, to support field commanders.

The same authority writes the rule and runs the system

SDAIA published Saudi Arabia’s AI Ethics Principles, which state that decisions which are irreversible or life-and-death should trigger human oversight and final determination, and which ask in the design checklist whether a system prevents overreliance on itself.

SDAIA also builds and operates Baseer. The authority that wrote the oversight requirement runs the system the requirement governs, in the setting where the consequence of getting it wrong is the highest anywhere. That is not an accusation. It is the sharpest available case of the question this research exists to ask, one a Jeddah audience already lives inside.

What nobody has measured

The verb in the state’s own account is support. So the question for the room is what happens to a commander’s own reading of a crowd once the prediction always arrives first, and on what basis that commander would ever override it. Nothing published measures the override rate, what follows when the prediction is wrong, or whether unaided crowd-reading skill is maintained.

Both sources here are graded operator account: a state news agency reporting a ministry on its own performance, and an interview with the vice president of the authority whose systems he is describing. They establish what is deployed and claimed. They establish nothing about whether the oversight works. The argument is at who supervises work they cannot do and what meaningful human oversight means.

The three keynotes a Jeddah 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: Riyadh · Cairo · Dubai.

Where these sessions happen in Jeddah, and when they can

Something worth saying plainly rather than papering over. Jeddah’s recurring business-conference calendar is thin next to Riyadh’s. Riyadh has LEAP, FII, Black Hat MEA and Money20/20; what recurs in Jeddah is trade exhibitions, one sporting fixture and a film festival. That makes Jeddah a city for a company’s own event rather than for a slot on somebody else’s agenda, and it changes what a keynote there is for.

The Ritz-Carlton, Jeddah

The largest hotel conference plant in the city: nearly 8,665 square metres across 22 event rooms, with Grand Ballrooms 1 and 2 at 1,851 square metres each seating 1,000 theatre or 600 for a banquet. Al Hamra district on the southern Corniche.

Jeddah Hilton

The biggest single ballroom on the Corniche. Hilton Hall is 3,605 square metres taking 3,500 for a reception, 2,500 theatre or 1,000 for a banquet, within 5,886 square metres of event space. The detail that decides an international board session is elsewhere in the spec: a private entrance, two hospitality suites and five simultaneous-translation booths.

Shangri-La Jeddah

The best-documented mid-size floor in the city. The ballroom is 952 square metres, 56 by 17 metres with a five metre ceiling, seating 850 theatre or 500 for a banquet, divisible into three.

Assila, a Luxury Collection Hotel

Twelve meeting rooms and a 386 square metre ballroom divisible in two, 1,118 square metres in total with a largest capacity of 250. Correctly sized for a leadership session rather than a conference.

Rosewood Jeddah

Board scale only, and worth being honest about. Al Hijaz Hall takes up to 100 people, Al Malaki Lounge up to 30, and six boardrooms take ten each. A room for a partnership conversation, not for a plenary.

Jeddah Superdome

Holder of a Guinness World Record as the largest semi-permanent free-standing geodesic dome with a continuous roof, 220 metres across and 46 metres at the midpoint. It publishes no seating capacity of its own, so the widely quoted figure is not repeated here. Its public events calendar is also about nine months out of date, so do not use it to check availability.

The genuine recurring fixtures are fewer than a listing site suggests. The Saudi Maritime and Logistics Congress runs 21 and 22 October 2026 at the Superdome and is the strongest business conference in the city. The Red Sea International Film Festival runs 3 to 12 December 2026 in Al Balad, which blocks the historic district and the luxury Corniche stock for the first fortnight of December.

Two to hold loosely. The World Economic Forum’s Global Collaboration and Growth Meeting in Jeddah, which was to be the city’s flagship international gathering, was postponed from April 2026 by the Ministry of Economy and Planning’s own announcement and has not been rescheduled. And Formula 1 has not published 2027 dates for the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, and has said the Saudi round will not sit in April, so any spring inventory assumption built on previous years is unsafe.

The part almost nobody publishes, and the part an organiser needs first. Two months of the Gulf year are effectively closed to a full-day conference.

Ramadan. In 2027 it is expected to run from about 8 February to 8 March, with Eid al-Fitr around 9 March. In 2028, from about 28 January to 25 February, with Eid around 26 February. Those are astronomical calculations rather than confirmed dates. Each country fixes the start by official crescent sighting, announced one or two days ahead, they run separate processes, and they can announce different first days from one another. Assume plus or minus a day and do not print it as fixed. Eid al-Adha adds a further multi-day break, expected around 15 to 16 May 2027 and 4 to 5 May 2028, which a spring date can walk into.

Saudi Arabia regulates Ramadan hours differently from the Emirates, and the difference changes a schedule. Article 98 of the Labour Law caps actual working hours for Muslims at six a day and 36 a week. Not a two-hour reduction applying to everyone, as in the UAE, but a hard cap on time worked, applying to Muslim employees. A six-hour statutory day and a full-day agenda are not compatible. Evening iftar and suhoor formats are the well-understood alternative, and they are a relationship format rather than a plenary one.

The summer. The Ministry of Human Resources bans outdoor work between 12.00 and 15.00 from 15 June to 15 September annually. As in the Emirates it targets labour rather than delegates, and as in the Emirates it is the state saying in its own instrument that the middle of the day is unsafe for a quarter of the year.

One process point specific to the Kingdom, and the one most often discovered late. Exhibitions, conferences and corporate conventions require registration and a permit from SCEGA, which also certifies venues. Build it into the timeline rather than finding it.

Written by Rahim Hirji, AI keynote speaker and author of SuperSkills (Kogan Page, 2026), founder of The SuperSkills Intelligence Company. The research is published openly with every source graded. Found an error? Tell me and it is corrected on the page.

Not every brief is a talk. A board that needs to settle which decisions a machine may make wants a board briefing, a review or a standing advisor, and the five formats are set out side by side with what each one is for.