Speaking in Riyadh
Rahim is speaking in Riyadh. If you would like him to speak to your organisation while he is in the region, get in touch.
Saudi Ramadan hours cap what a full-day agenda can hold, so the day is built around them rather than trimmed to fit afterwards. 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 Riyadh. 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 one instrument in the Gulf that names over-reliance
SDAIA’s AI Ethics Principles, version 1.0 of September 2023, carries an assessment checklist covering the system lifecycle. At the plan and design stage it asks: Does your AI system design prevent overconfidence in or overreliance on the AI system with necessary human intervention mechanisms? That is the argument of these keynotes, written into a national governance document.
Three qualifications travel with the quote. The over-reliance language sits in a checklist annexe rather than in the principle text. The instrument is guidance, not statute: the Kingdom had no binding AI law as of August 2026, only a draft responsible AI policy put out for consultation on 2 April 2026. And version 1.0 dates from September 2023, so whether the language survives into a later version is not something this research can confirm.
The only real AI statistic in the Gulf
The General Authority for Statistics reports 33.1 per cent of establishments using AI technologies, up 20.0 per cent on 2024, with information and communication at 61.1 per cent, financial and insurance at 52.9 per cent and education at 51.0 per cent. The methodology is stated as aligned with UNCTAD standards.
Two things about that number matter more than the number. The companion household survey for the same year contains no AI indicator at all, so the Kingdom measures firms and leaves citizens unmeasured. And neither the UAE nor Qatar publishes any official AI statistic whatever, so every adoption percentage quoted for those markets is vendor-produced.
Training measures completion, not capability
Saudi Arabia is also the one Gulf state where training throughput can be tracked against a stated national target. The SAMAI programme passed one million citizens trained in November 2025 on the Ministry of Education’s own figures, of whom 52 per cent were women and 70 per cent already employed. By June 2026 the state news agency reported 1,563,983 beneficiaries including 14,495 specialists and experts.
The point worth putting to a room in Riyadh is that a throughput figure measures delivery. Whether a person could still do the work unaided is a different measurement, and nobody in the Gulf is taking it. The method is at how you assess capability rather than output, and the full regional picture at AI and work in the Gulf.
SDAIA's word for the problem
SDAIA's principles call over-reliance a defect, and GASTAT publishes an official adoption figure in its 2025 release. Together they let a Riyadh leadership team measure the risk my talks are about. My book SuperSkills, endorsed by Karim Lakhani of Harvard Business School and Alnoor Bhimani of the LSE, gives that measure a method, and EtonX had customers in the Gulf, so I know how fast programmes move here. You come away with a capability measure that sits next to your completion rates in the next board pack.
Box of Amazing has tracked emerging technology every week since 2017. Rahim's Riyadh keynotes and advisory engagements put that record to work. Keynotes · Advisory · Box of Amazing
The three keynotes a Riyadh 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: Jeddah · Manama · Doha.
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.
SDAIA's principles treat over-reliance as a design defect. That gives a Riyadh executive team official language for drift, and a reason to review where staff already lean too hard on the system.
We Are Superheroes
We Are Superheroes: AI is the suit. The human decides.
Vision 2030 sets targets that touch every job. Big Picture Thinking leads here, judged by what people can do rather than by courses completed.
WTH (What the Human)
WTH (What the Human): a live test of a board's own judgement.
GASTAT publishes a real adoption figure, so a Saudi board can see how fast use is growing. The three acts ask whether the directors' judgement has kept pace with it.
Where these sessions happen in Riyadh, and when they can
Riyadh has the busiest conference calendar in the Gulf and the least reliable published capacity data, which is an awkward combination. Three of the Kingdom’s largest events have moved venue in the last year.
- KAFD Conference Center, King Abdullah Financial District
- The banquet hall is 1,215 square metres taking 800 standing or 600 seated, with an outdoor plaza of 4,000 square metres for up to 2,000 and Al Wadi for up to 3,000. The district is 1.6 million square metres, 95 office towers, PIF-owned. Booking here says new Riyadh and Vision 2030 rather than legacy corporate, and for a board-level session it is the one place where the address and the room are the same decision.
- Riyadh Front Exhibition and Conference Centre
- Four halls of 9,250 to 10,400 square metres each, 39,350 in total, with ten metres of clear height and a 1,000 square metre VIP lounge. Work from the capacity chart: the homepage’s own summary block is broken template filler and states a one metre ceiling.
- Hilton Riyadh Hotel and Residences
- The Riyadh Grand Hall is 3,833 square metres seating 4,200 theatre or 4,000 for a reception, described by the hotel as the largest pillar-free ballroom in the Middle East, within 10,561 square metres of event space.
- Four Seasons Riyadh at Kingdom Centre
- 7,247 square metres of meeting space, with the Kingdom Ballroom at 4,113 square metres taking 3,000 for a banquet. Olaya, which is the established corporate spine: banks and family conglomerates rather than the Vision 2030 register.
- The Ritz-Carlton, Riyadh
- 5,962 square metres across ten event rooms, with Ballroom A and Ballroom B at 1,850 square metres each, seating 1,000 theatre or 800 for a banquet, and five boardrooms from 26 to 72 square metres. Close to the Diplomatic Quarter without being inside it, which is usually what a protocol-sensitive brief actually wants.
- Riyadh Exhibition and Convention Centre, Malham
- Where LEAP, Black Hat MEA and Money20/20 Middle East have all moved. It publishes no venue website and no capacity figures of its own. Every capacity in circulation for Malham is Riyadh Front’s specification sheet with a different name attached, so none is repeated here. The only defensible indication of scale is Black Hat’s own statement of 53,000 square metres of sold-out exhibition space there in 2025.
Three venue moves, all confirmed by the organisers. LEAP runs 12 to 15 April 2027 at RECC Malham, having left Riyadh Front. Black Hat MEA runs 1 to 3 December 2026, also at Malham. And Money20/20 Middle East is a Riyadh event rather than a Dubai one, running 14 to 16 September 2026 at Malham. FII10 runs 26 to 29 October 2026 at the King Abdulaziz International Conference Center.
One to leave out of a plan. The Global AI Summit names its venue but publishes no dates anywhere on its own site, with programme and speakers still marked as coming and a 2024 copyright in the footer. Anything you have seen for it comes from a listing rather than from the organiser.
A Saudi-specific point on process: exhibitions, conferences and corporate conventions require registration and a permit from SCEGA, which also certifies venues. Build that into the timeline rather than discovering it.
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.
