Oct 20, 2026 · 1 hr 1 min · 17 segments
In this week's episode of The CTO Lens, David is back from holiday and Sophie is fresh from the London Tech Leaders Summit, as they tackle a familiar challenge for technology leaders: dealing with…
Sophie ValentineHostSo whilst I was sunning myself, you were sweating your little heart out at the London Tech Leaders Summit.
How did that go for you? Was it good and exciting? And how did you get on with the little mini podcast stage that you ran?
I really enjoyed a couple of days of live podcasting sessions and discussed with some really fantastic tech leaders, everything from accessibility to managing the board to building a kind of AI native team structure through to...
Used to run a team of three and a half thousand and was down to being sort of a founder and hands-on, which is great.
But I'd love to share with you a few of the bits that actually we didn't put in the podcast last week.
We had a conversation about how tech leaders seem to be returning to hands-on.
So less sort of supporting teams from a distance, but really rolling up their socks and wading knee-deep into the nitty-gritty.
I had a great session with Craig Smiley from PlanDeck, which was all about how can we actually understand how our teams are doing and measure how our teams are doing.
And of course, the wonderful Harold Carver, who gave a great conversation about how to actually understand AI and everything that's going on.
I believe all of this stuff is going to be put on YouTube at some point, so definitely worth catching up with.
And then on day two, more podcasts and a conversation about the impact of AI on businesses all the way through from How are we recruiting people? How are we training people down to what are the actual business metrics that are moving that we care about? And then we had a great, we had a wonderful conversation on bridging the gap, basically working with Gen Z and making the most of them.
And our wonderful Donna Wayman, who's part of the London Tech Leaders Advisory Group, unfortunately was unwell.
So the wonderful Richard Fry raised his hands as the panel started and he joined us on stage, which was fantastic.
So whilst I was sunning myself, you were sweating your little heart out at the London Tech Leaders Summit.
How did that go for you? Was it good and exciting? And how did you get on with the little mini podcast stage that you ran?
I really enjoyed a couple of days of live podcasting sessions and discussed with some really fantastic tech leaders, everything from accessibility to managing the board to building a kind of AI native team structure through to...
Used to run a team of three and a half thousand and was down to being sort of a founder and hands-on, which is great.
But I'd love to share with you a few of the bits that actually we didn't put in the podcast last week.
We had a conversation about how tech leaders seem to be returning to hands-on.
So less sort of supporting teams from a distance, but really rolling up their socks and wading knee-deep into the nitty-gritty.
I had a great session with Craig Smiley from PlanDeck, which was all about how can we actually understand how our teams are doing and measure how our teams are doing.
And of course, the wonderful Harold Carver, who gave a great conversation about how to actually understand AI and everything that's going on.
I believe all of this stuff is going to be put on YouTube at some point, so definitely worth catching up with.
And then on day two, more podcasts and a conversation about the impact of AI on businesses all the way through from How are we recruiting people? How are we training people down to what are the actual business metrics that are moving that we care about? And then we had a great, we had a wonderful conversation on bridging the gap, basically working with Gen Z and making the most of them.
And our wonderful Donna Wayman, who's part of the London Tech Leaders Advisory Group, unfortunately was unwell.
So the wonderful Richard Fry raised his hands as the panel started and he joined us on stage, which was fantastic.
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