Five Speakers. Four Keynotes. One question that deserves an afternoon: what will the next decade require of us?
On Wednesday 21 October 2026, Saxton Live returns to Sydney at The Landing by Two Good in North Sydney. Dr Sandra Peter and Dr Kai Riemer open with findings from their Skills Horizon research. Osher Günsberg, Katja Forbes and Matt Formston AM then each take one part of that research and build on it.
Last year’s Saxton Live Sydney brought together medicine, aerospace and entrepreneurship. In July, Saxton Live Melbourne moved through leadership, technology, impact and connection. This time the program is built as one argument, and each Keynote picks up where the last one finished.
What Is Saxton Live?
Saxton Live is Saxton Speakers’ client showcase. It is a curated afternoon for a small group of event organisers and corporate clients, with four of our Exclusive Speakers each delivering a condensed version of their best Keynote. You see how a Speaker lands with a live audience before you put them in front of your own.
There are no panels and no conference format. The ideas get the full stage. Places are limited and allocated by invitation, which keeps the room small enough for real conversation once the program wraps.
What Does the Next Decade Require of Us?
Every organisation is planning for a future it cannot fully see. AI is changing who does the work, who makes the decisions and, more and more, who does the buying. Leaders now have to work out which human capabilities will matter most once that change arrives.
Saxton Live Sydney answers that in four parts. The research comes first. Then three Speakers each take one capability and show what it looks like in practice: how we communicate, how we prepare for our future customer, and how we earn trust that holds under pressure.
Dr Sandra Peter and Dr Kai Riemer: The Skills Leaders Will Need Next
Dr Sandra Peter and Dr Kai Riemer spend their working lives with the people expected to lead through disruption, from heads of government to head chefs. As Co-Directors of Sydney Executive Plus at the University of Sydney Business School, they have upskilled thousands of Australian leaders across more than twenty industries and government in emerging technology and generative AI.
Their Skills Horizon report maps the skills leaders and executives will need over the next decade, and they open the afternoon with its findings. Everything that follows builds on their work: a clear, evidence-based picture of what it takes to stay ready.
Osher Günsberg: How We Communicate When It Counts
Osher Günsberg has spent thirty years building one skill: delivering when the moment arrives. He fronted Australian Idol and The Bachelor Australia. He also became the first Australian to host live prime time network television in the United States, presenting Live to Dance on CBS.
Live broadcasting gives you one take. Osher has spent decades learning how to hold a room, read it and bring it with him. His Keynote applies that experience to the workplace and looks at how leaders communicate when attention is scarce and the stakes are real.
Katja Forbes: Preparing for a Customer Who Isn’t Human
What happens to customer experience when the customer is an algorithm? Katja Forbes has built her work around that question. She specialises in Machine Customer Experience: a market where AI agents and autonomous systems buy on behalf of people, and increasingly act as economic players in their own right.
Katja is the author of Machine Customers: The Evolution Has Begun. She also created the Five Faces of Machine Customers, the Three Altitudes of Agentic Commerce and the MCX Maturity Model. Many boards and executive teams are asking whether their brand will even be visible to an AI buyer, and her session gives them a practical place to start.
Matt Formston AM: Earning Trust That Holds Under Pressure
At five, Matt Formston was diagnosed with a degenerative eye condition that would leave him with three per cent vision. Doctors told his parents he would never hold a job, keep a friend, play sport or live independently. His parents asked why not, and Matt has been answering that question ever since.
For fifteen years he ran two elite careers at once, as a senior executive at Optus by day and a world class athlete by night. In 2014 alone he became a cycling world champion and world record holder in Aguascalientes, Mexico, beat his sales target by 140 per cent and welcomed his first child. He has since competed at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games and won four Adaptive Surfing World titles.
His Keynote draws on his Business Trust framework and asks what it takes to build trust that still holds when conditions turn. He has tested that framework in boardrooms and in some of the biggest surf on earth.
The Room: The Landing by Two Good
The Landing sits in VicX Tower, above Victoria Cross Metro Station in North Sydney. Lendlease and Two Good Co created it together as a community hub and event space designed for connection and social impact. Two Good Co’s work centres on employing and supporting women who have experienced homelessness, domestic violence or complex trauma. That makes it a fitting place for an afternoon about what comes next.
