Bring AI to life on your stage.
Blake Harkness is an AI engineer and speaker who turns the hype around artificial intelligence into something your audience can actually use. Practical, high-energy talks for conferences and events across New Zealand and beyond.
See Blake on stage
A speaker who builds the future he talks about
An engineer first, speaker second
Blake builds and ships AI systems every week as a fractional AI engineer. Every talk is grounded in real, working examples - not recycled headlines.
A next-generation voice
A young engineer at the frontier of AI, bringing the perspective of the people actually building agents and automation today.
Backed by NZ’s AI community
Founder of Young Kiwis in AI, New Zealand’s largest young AI community, with meetups in 11+ cities. Blake is plugged into the conversations shaping AI in Aotearoa.
Tailored to your audience
From boardrooms to dev teams to students, talks are pitched to the room - technical depth or plain-language clarity, your call.
From mechatronics to the main stage
Blake is a mechatronic engineer turned AI engineer who fell for AI’s potential to change how people work - then made it his mission to help others get there. He runs Young Kiwis in AI, sits on AI advisory groups for the AI Forum NZ and Engineering New Zealand, and brings that real, current experience to every stage he steps on.
Talks your audience will act on
Hands-On with AI Agents, Claude & MCP
A practical, build-alongside session on modern AI tooling.
A workshop-style session for technical audiences who want to go beyond chat. Blake walks through AI agents, the Model Context Protocol, and automation patterns, with live builds and real examples teams can take straight back to work.
- How AI agents and MCP work in practice
- Automation patterns that save real hours
- A starting point teams can build on immediately
Building an AI-Ready Team
Turning AI anxiety into capability across your whole organisation.
Adopting AI is as much about people as technology. Drawing on running New Zealand’s largest young AI community and embedding as a fractional AI engineer, Blake shares how to build genuine AI capability and culture - not just buy more tools.
- How to move a team from fear to fluency with AI
- What an AI-ready culture actually looks like
- Where to upskill internally vs bring in expertise
Graduating into a World of AI
What it means to start your career when AI is rewriting the rules.
A talk for students and new graduates stepping into a workforce being reshaped by AI. Blake - a young engineer who did exactly this - shares how to stay valuable, which skills actually matter, and how to use AI as an unfair advantage rather than something to fear.
- How to future-proof your skills in an AI-driven job market
- Using AI as a force multiplier in your study and work
- Where the real opportunities are for the next generation
Recent speaking
AI in Engineering
Building AI systems that ship
Christchurch
Claude & MCP Evening
Hands-on with Claude and the Model Context Protocol
Christchurch
AI Talk, Hamilton
The next generation of AI
Hamilton
Young Kiwis in AI Meetups
Growing the AI community in Aotearoa
Auckland, Christchurch, Hamilton, Dunedin & OnlineBooking questions
Planning an event? Let’s talk.
Tell me about your audience and theme, and I’ll come back with how we can make your AI session the talk of the event.
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