Coverage, interviews and stages
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MIT Project NANDA · preliminary, not peer-reviewed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 shared question

All five start from the same distinction: coordination can be replaced, judgement cannot. Each topic works as a keynote, panel, guest article or podcast. Length and depth depend on 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 what role the leadership layer plays in that.

What the audience takes away
  • Why most pilots fail on the organization rather than the technology
  • Three questions to test your own knowledge foundation
  • The difference between the documented ideal case and the lived exception
Format20 to 45 min keynote, live demo optional. English or GermanEnquire
30%
of the workforce retires by 2036 · Destatis

Retired boomers: when experience leaves the building

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 disappearing at the same time.

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 to 45 min keynote, workshop optional. English or GermanEnquire
8.7×
greater impact under active leadership · Gallup

Technology is not the bottleneck, the layer below is

Best forBusiness summits, C-level forums, congress main stages
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Middle management decides whether an AI rollout reaches the wider organization. In German companies roughly one fifth of employees experience active support from their own manager. The talk explains why this is not a question of attitude.

What the audience takes away
  • Why the effect is multiplicative rather than additive
  • Why cutting layers is not the same as redesigning them
  • A metric that changes behaviour faster than training does
Format20 to 40 min keynote, fireside optional. English or GermanEnquire
19%
employment gap for 22–25-year-olds · Stanford
New

The severed supply line

Best forHR congresses, education formats, business press
+

The market is looking for juniors with senior judgement, while having stopped training them. You cannot buy judgement when nobody provides the years in which it forms.

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

When throughput rises and review disappears

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 actually made.

What the audience takes away
  • Why slowness also worked as a safety mechanism
  • The list that exists in no org chart and takes two weeks to build
  • Why the rejection rate says more than the adoption rate
Format20 to 40 min, also as a fireside. English or GermanEnquire
Clips

Excerpts from talks

Sixteen short passages from talks in 2025 and 2026. Click to play with sound.

Recorded at Handelsblatt “Work in Progress” and the Accelerate Tomorrow AI SummitRequest the full talk →
Stage & Press

Talks and coverage

In chronological order, most recent first. Talks, trade articles and podcast conversations from 2025 and 2026. Most coverage is in German.

HandelsblattHandelsblatt
Frankfurter Allgemeine ZeitungFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
WirtschaftsWocheWirtschaftsWoche
HaufeHaufe
Mannheimer MorgenMannheimer Morgen
PersobloggerPersoblogger
VersicherungsboteVersicherungsbote
Basic ThinkingBasic Thinking
SAATKORN08/2026
SAATKORN · WorkTech Talk · in German
How does knowledge management with AI actually work?
↗Handelsblatt07/2026
Handelsblatt · Master Class
Work in Progress, Düsseldorf
↗Accelerate Tomorrow AI Summit06/2026
Accelerate Tomorrow · Future Stage
AI Summit, Berlin
↗WirtschaftsWoche10/2025
WirtschaftsWoche · Feature · in German
How AI could preserve the knowledge of the boomer generation
↗Klartext HR10/2025
Klartext HR · Podcast · in German
Rethinking knowledge management
↗New Work Chat10/2025
New Work Chat · Podcast · in German
The intelligent organization. Capturing knowledge with AI.
↗Haufe09/2025
Haufe · Personalszene · in German
HR Innovation Award winners and the German Mittelstand
↗Handelsblatt07/2025
Handelsblatt · Master Class
Work in Progress, Düsseldorf
↗Handelsblatt06/2025
Handelsblatt · So klingt Wirtschaft · in German
When experts leave: how companies rescue hidden know-how
↗
Further stages on request — talk, master class, panel, workshop
Full overview: omnora.com/en/press
Voices from the audience
“
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
About

Background and position

Sebastian Walker
Sebastian Walker
Founder and CEO of Omnora · Platform for AI-augmented intelligence management

For more than fifteen years Sebastian Walker has worked on one of the most critical resources in any company: the knowledge held by its people and experts.

As founder and CEO of Omnora he works on making internal know-how systematically accessible, across teams, at scale and machine-readable. Not as an archive, but as a basis for decisions. For humans and for AI systems.

His clients are mid-sized companies and corporates that have realised tool rollouts fizzle out without usable knowledge, and that efficiency gains appear where people and machines work with the right information.

On stage and in podcasts he is a sparring partner for decision-makers who value plain speaking. His contributions are practical and come without promises of salvation.

What he stands for
  • AI readiness through structured knowledge transfer
  • Productivity instead of tool overload
  • Resilient organizations through secured expert knowledge
  • A clear position against AI hype without substance

“Plenty of companies invest in AI, but almost none make sure the systems are working with the right knowledge.”

Sebastian Walker
What the audience leaves with

A distinction

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

A question for your own company

Where does a sign-off currently sit with someone who cannot judge the content?

A metric

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

Request a talk

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