A half-day working session on the foundations of AI governance, facilitated by Canoe AI in partnership with SIDEKICK Venture Studio

AI Governance Foundations Workshop

Businesses are increasingly being asked to show how they control their use of AI. As new EU legislation takes effect, the firms that treat AI governance as a genuine discipline — rather than something to address if and when a client or regulator asks — will be the ones best placed to compete.

This half-day session, facilitated by Richard Gray of Canoe AI in partnership with SIDEKICK Venture Studio, is designed for exactly that purpose.

It is not a lecture. It is a working session, and you should expect to leave with your own thinking on the page rather than a set of someone else's slides. Over the course of the morning, you will work through where AI genuinely sits in your business today, where the real risk lies, where the real opportunity lies, and what a proportionate governance approach looks like for a team of your size. The aim is a plan you can act on the same week, not a framework that sits in a drawer.

As part of the session, SIDEKICK Venture Studio will introduce exclusive access to two of their current “in-stealth” startups, built for firms where regulatory oversight is not optional. Attendees will see them ahead of their public launch at the H&W Business Expo.

The session is aimed at business owners, partners, and senior managers with responsibility for how AI is adopted and overseen in their organisation. No technical background is required or expected; this is a session about business decisions, not about the technology itself.

Details

Date: Friday 16 October 2026

Time: 10:00am – 1:00pm (BST)

Location: Dodo Works, The Bottle of Sauce, 7 Ambrose Street, Cheltenham, GL50 3LH

Numbers are kept deliberately small to keep the session a working one, so early registration is recommended.

Description supplied by the event organiser.