Designing your bright AI-enabled future
Tips for engineers from ANZ’s AI adoption journey, by Adelle McDonald
I’ve had the opportunity to attend a couple of Data & AI days recently and the standout themes from them were humanity, culture, community and education. At ANZ, we’ve embraced this community ethos of AI wholeheartedly.
The most obvious manifestations of this are our AI Immersion Centres. We have three AI Immersion Centres - one each in Australia, New Zealand and India – and they’re hubs that encourage dialogue, raise awareness, and support people as we navigate the landscape of AI augmentation.
The centres symbolise not just a move towards technological integration, but a commitment to maintaining and strengthening the bonds within our communities. They do this by facilitating the sharing of knowledge and using AI to solve everyday problems like finding more hours in the day, unearthing new opportunities to help customers, and optimising painful processes.
This knowledge sharing and problem solving builds trust and confidence in using AI products like Microsoft and Github Co-pilot as a useful work partner. With so many engineering products now enabled with natural language, these communities and everyday interactions with AI prepare people to actively design their future.
Our commitment to building communities around AI is a testament to the idea that no matter how advanced our tools become, the need for human connection remains a foundational pillar of life and work. As we connect across our organisation, it becomes increasingly clear that the future will look vastly different to today and tomorrow. Yet, in this evolution lies exponential growth and innovation, driven by the simple fact that we can achieve much more together.
As humans, our greatest advancements don’t just come from the technology itself. It’s the ways in which we connect and collaborate with one another that ensures opportunities enhance and augment our lives for the better.
Having AI Immersion Centres is beneficial to upskilling employees and building engaged communities around AI, but there’s a broader educational component to consider. The ANZ Academy – a suite of learning tools designed to give employees the skills they need for the future – meets this need and drives education and knowledge enhancement for our engineering teams and internal AI interest groups.
At the intersection of the Immersion Centres and the ANZ Academy lives a place where creativity thrives, and the possibilities are vast! We’re seeing some amazing and supportive discussions around the exploration, learning and support for seemingly insurmountable obstacles here. The different perspectives brought to our AI conversations and the approaches to challenges that are teased out from them is invigorating!
That all sounds nice I hear you say, but not everyone is lucky enough to work for a company with the resources to build an Immersion Centre and launch a learning academy. What about people doing business directly with their customers in small teams without the support of specialist functions? How do they connect to a community of likeminded people looking to explore how AI can enhance their future and strengthen their engineering community?
Firstly, I’d like to invite you to subscribe to ANZ’s Engineering Way Blog as here you’ll find our engineering teams communicate openly and frankly about navigating engineering under regulation and with rapid change. It’s a free resource and written by technology professionals who want to share their knowledge. (Plus, it’s free – so why not?)
I’ve spent a lot of time collating communities from across Australia that’re open to individuals and small businesses to help them connect, build their own AI communities, and adopt and navigate the impending AI-driven changes.
If you’re new to meet ups and mash ups you can take a friend with you, they don't have to be a tech expert as they’ll be there for moral support. Aside from learning you can use these catch ups to network and help others by sharing what you’re doing. I honestly think that regardless of your reason for attending, being with your community will give you plenty of things to think about and try. You might even find your next AI/ML developer there! You’ve got nothing to lose.
Communities
Here are some communities to investigate (Google them or look them up through the meetup app):
AWS Data Community Meetup
AI Meetup – Gen AI, LLM’s and ML
Global AI Bootcamp
Google
TechConnect
Melbourne AI Developers Meetup
Obviously, in today’s busy world you can’t attend every meetup! So, here’s my top tips for making the most of them.
Top meet-up tips
Selecting the right meetup for you
Define your goals and identify what you want to achieve. Do you want to:
Learn a new skill?
Connect with others? Build your network, find collaborators, or socialise with people who are working on projects that interest you.
Research and evaluate the opportunity:
Read the meetup’s description
Check the organiser’s profile
Assess the group’s activity level
Ensure the topics align to what you are hoping to achieve
Consider the community:
Look for meetups with a welcoming and inclusive atmosphere
Assess the diversity of the group and whether it fosters a sense of belonging
Location and timing:
Choose meetups that are conveniently located and fit your schedule
Factor in travel time and potential conflicts
Be prepared
Review the event details and if there’s any pre-reading try and do this as it’ll most likely be the hot topic of the night (and be a great way to break the ice with people).
Prepare an elevator pitch to introduce yourself. Doing this will also help you to clarify what you want to get out of it, and if you are at the right event.
Make sure you can connect with your LinkedIn profile via a QR code (or bring business cards if you have them).
Be on time
Arrive on time to avoid missing introductions or key information. If you anticipate being late, notify the organiser so they can assist in filling in the gaps for you.
Be curious
Go to the meet up with an open mind and be prepared to meet people with different backgrounds and opinions. Be curious and listen as much as you speak (or maybe even more).
Regardless of the situation at your workplace and the people and infrastructure resources immediately available to you, the most important way to have a fulfilling and meaningful AI enabled future is to take the plunge and connect with others to build a community of curious and likeminded people.
The destination mightn’t be known, and may never fully be, but the journey will almost certainly be more interesting and exciting when done in the company of others. And your AI skills and expertise will be so much better for it.
Adelle McDonald is the Assisted Servicing Technology Lead at ANZ. She specialises in technology transformation, complex distributed workflow design and engineering, problem solving, cloud solution architecture, and complex hybrid cloud implementations. Her most recent focus is on advanced generative AI.
Adelle has over 20 years of experience in the field of technology transformation and has worked for Goldman Sachs JBWere, McKinsey & Company, Dell, National Australia Bank (nab), and Insurance Australia Group (IAG).
She is an adaptive leader with a high degree of commercial acumen. To help people reach their next level and deliver customer-centric regenerative technology solutions, Adelle follows a four-step methodology: empathise, empower, execute, be efficient.
This article contains general information only – it does not take into account your personal needs, financial circumstances and objectives, it does not constitute any offer or inducement to acquire products and services or is not an endorsement of any products and services. Any opinions or views expressed in the article may not necessarily be the opinions or views of the ANZ Group, and to the maximum extent permitted by law, the ANZ Group makes no representation and gives no warranty as to the accuracy, currency or completeness of any information contained.