Keynote Speaker

Sebastian Walker

On organizations getting flatter — and who inside them can still tell whether something actually holds.
“Coordination gets cheap. Judgement gets expensive.”

For decades companies paid for two different things under one word. AI makes one of them nearly free and the other scarce. What that means for structure, leadership and risk — with data, not forecasts.

Sebastian Walker · CEO and founder of Omnora. Works with industry, corporates and mid-sized companies to turn experience inside people's heads into usable context. For humans and for AI.
Check availabilitySee topics
Featured inHandelsblattFrankfurter Allgemeine ZeitungWirtschaftsWocheHaufeMannheimer Morgen
Sebastian Walker, Work in Progress 2025
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Sebastian Walker, Work in Progress 2025Talk on demographics and knowledge retentionAudience at Handelsblatt Work in ProgressWork in Progress, DüsseldorfSebastian Walker portraitSpeaker at Accelerate Tomorrow AI Summit
Handelsblatt “Work in Progress” 2025, Düsseldorf · Keynote
The starting point
Three numbers that show up in almost every talk — including their weaknesses.
95%

of studied GenAI pilots produced no measurable bottom-line effect. The models did not fail. The organizations around them did.

MIT Project NANDA · preliminary, not peer-reviewed
8.7×

more often employees confirm their organization works differently when their manager actively backs AI. In Germany, 21% experience that.

Gallup · US survey and German Engagement Index
19%

longer experienced developers took with AI — while believing they were 20% faster. They discarded more than half the output.

METR · randomized trial, snapshot of 2025
Topics & Talks

Five topics. One thesis.

All five hang on the same distinction: coordination can be replaced, judgement cannot. Each topic works as a keynote, panel, guest article or podcast — length and depth to fit the occasion.

95%
of GenAI pilots without measurable effect · MIT

Why AI scaling fails without Organizational Intelligence

Best forAI and digital conferences, strategy days, CDO forums
+

AI initiatives fail on missing organizational context, not on the model. The talk shows how to tell that your knowledge foundation will not hold — and why one fifth of teams decides whether any of it lands.

What the audience takes away
  • Why 95% of pilots fail on the organization, not the technology
  • Three questions to test your own knowledge foundation
  • The gap between documented ideal case and lived exception
Format20–45 min keynote · live demo optional · EN / DEEnquire →
30%
of the workforce retires by 2036 · Destatis

Retired boomers: when experience walks out

Best forHR and people conferences, CHRO formats, leadership summits
+

Demographics as an operational risk. How organizations identify critical roles and secure experience before the calendar decides — and why the layer where judgement forms is being cut right now.

What the audience takes away
  • Which roles tip first — and how to spot them
  • Why documentation shows the ideal case while reality is made of exceptions
  • What a knowledge transfer must deliver to avoid ending up in a folder
Format30–45 min keynote · workshop optional · EN / DEEnquire →
8.7×
greater impact under active leadership · Gallup

Technology is not your bottleneck. The layer below you is.

Best forBusiness summits, C-level forums, congress main stages
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Middle management is the amplifier of every AI rollout. In German companies that amplifier is switched on in roughly one fifth of teams. The talk explains why this is not an attitude problem — and what to do instead.

What the audience takes away
  • Why the effect is multiplicative, not additive
  • Cutting is not rebuilding: the most expensive mistake of the year
  • Evidence instead of training — the metric that changes behaviour
Format20–40 min keynote · fireside optional · EN / DEEnquire →
19%
employment gap for 22–25-year-olds · Stanford
New

The severed supply line

Best forHR congresses, education formats, business press
+

A market hunting for juniors with senior judgement it stopped producing itself. You cannot buy judgement when nobody provides the years in which it forms.

What the audience takes away
  • Where the supply path is cut twice — at the bottom and in the middle
  • Why the numbers are early indicators, not causal proof
  • How to rebuild entry roles around evaluation instead of support work
Format20–30 min · also as a panel · EN / DEEnquire →
56%
of AI output discarded by experienced developers · METR
New

There is no harmless incompetence left

Best forBoard retreats, risk and compliance formats, roundtables
+

A person's error rate does not change with AI. Their throughput does. Approving fifty drafts a day without being able to judge one means making fifty decisions you never made.

What the audience takes away
  • Why slowness was a safety mechanism now being removed
  • The list that exists in no org chart — and takes two weeks to build
  • Rejection rate instead of adoption rate: the metric nobody tracks
Format20–40 min · also as a fireside · EN / DEEnquire →
“
We have twelve pilots running and none of them at scale. After the talk it was clear we had been asking the wrong question — it was never about the model.
Attendee · Handelsblatt “Work in Progress” 2026
Stage & Press

Recently on stage — and recently talked about.

Two consecutive appearances at the Handelsblatt conference “Work in Progress”, a Future Stage slot at the Accelerate Tomorrow AI Summit — plus a steady stream of interviews in business media, HR trade press and podcasts. Most coverage is in German.

HandelsblattHandelsblatt
Frankfurter Allgemeine ZeitungFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
WirtschaftsWocheWirtschaftsWoche
HaufeHaufe
Mannheimer MorgenMannheimer Morgen
PersobloggerPersoblogger
VersicherungsboteVersicherungsbote
Basic ThinkingBasic Thinking
2025
2026
Handelsblatt “Work in Progress”
Düsseldorf · Keynote
2026
Accelerate Tomorrow AI Summit
Berlin · Future Stage · June
Handelsblatt06/25
Handelsblatt · in German
When experts leave: how companies rescue hidden know-how
↗WirtschaftsWoche10/25
WirtschaftsWoche · in German
How AI could preserve the knowledge of the boomer generation
↗SAATKORN08/26
SAATKORN · in German
How does knowledge management with AI actually work?
↗Haufe
Haufe · in German
HR Innovation Award winners and the German Mittelstand
↗New Work Chat10/25
New Work Chat · in German
The intelligent organization. Capturing knowledge with AI.
↗Klartext HR10/25
Klartext HR · in German
Rethinking knowledge management
↗
Further stages on request — keynote, fireside, panel, workshop
Full overview: omnora.com/en/press
What the audience leaves with

A distinction

Coordination and judgement were never paid for separately. Now they have to be thought about separately.

A diagnosis

Where in your own company does a sign-off sit with someone who cannot judge the content?

A metric

Rejection rate instead of adoption rate — measurable from next week, without budget.

Planning a stage where substance matters?

Every keynote is tailored to the occasion, the audience and the intended effect. Also available as a guest article, feature or podcast conversation. A prep call is always part of it.

Request a date
German and English · On site and remote · Keynote, fireside, panel, workshop
Omnora
Sebastian Walker · CEO Omnora