A few thoughts and highlights from Boye Aarhus 26 – a conference full of interesting perspectives, inspiring people and plenty of food for thought.
I had the pleasure of delivering a short lightning talk called “Is it a behavioural challenge?… Probably.”
My argument was simple: many of the challenges organisations face are, at their core, behavioural challenges.
Read moreIn Germany, a child is injured or killed by car traffic every 20 minutes.
If Deutsche Bahn did the same, it would be forbidden.
Last week, I delivered my keynote speech in Aarhus on a conference organized by Boye & Company - Janus Boye.
Here are some facts from the talk:
Less than half of German children play outside every day.
“A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make management decisions.”
Thomas Dugaro put that IBM line on the screen in our Employee Experience track at Godsbanen in Aarhus last week. It’s 47 years old, and it landed in the room like it was written last month.
Much of what I heard and felt at the Boye Aarhus 26 conference was about humanity. Of the three talks in my track, none led with AI. Even Steven Pemberton’s keynote on vibe coding, from a man who helped design the language Python is based on, came back to us as humans and how we stay in control.
Read moreLast week in Aarhus I presented live Agentic Teammates at work. Everyone was excited to see them in action. But can organizations adopt them easily?
The setup was simple. Three agents and two humans collaborating in a channel to create a new offer for ACTUM Digital’s website. The virtual members checked GA4 and Search data to identify where and why people come while another one created ideas for offers and drafted content changes for the site. As a human I mostly just watched them work waiting for my approval moment.
Read moreBoye 2026… as both a speaker and a participant. I’m leaving with plenty of questions about where our industry is heading.
My session explored what happens when experience, capability and seniority no longer develop at the same speed.
At 22, speaking about this to a room of people with very different levels of experience felt like a big step and big thanks to Janus Boye and Peter Dahlstrøm Andersen for giving me the push. Also it’s not easy to come up with original topic when everybody talks AI…
There's much more to a good conference than what happens in the meeting room.
Think back to the conferences you've attended over the years. Chances are, you've forgotten most of the slides, but you still remember the people you met, the conversations over dinner and the experiences you shared. Some of those encounters may even have turned into lasting friendships.
Our community has never been just about the conference programme, and this weekend in Cambridge has been a wonderful reminder.
Read moreOrganisations have spent years investing in content management systems, yet much of their content remains difficult to reuse, maintain and interpret outside the context in which it was originally published.
AI is exposing the consequences. Information that works perfectly well on a website may be much less useful when retrieved by an AI assistant, combined with other sources or delivered through an API. The words are available, but their meaning and relationships are not always explicit.
As Zoltán Lehóczky put it during our recent members call:
“AI does not magically understand messy content. It rewards content that already has shape.”
Read moreOrganisations are producing more content than ever, yet much of what makes them credible remains difficult to find.
This is becoming a bigger challenge as AI changes how organisations are discovered and evaluated. Marketing teams can optimise content for search engines and AI-generated answers, but they cannot manufacture the independent credibility that makes an organisation worth recommending.
Matt McQueeny, our North American peer group leader, calls his approach Earnfluencing. It brings together earned media, storytelling and influencing, with an emphasis on building trust rather than buying attention.
Read morePeople working in similar roles often face similar challenges, yet rarely have a place where they can discuss them openly.
Inside their own organisations, conversations are shaped by internal priorities, reporting lines and expectations. At conferences and networking events, there are opportunities to exchange ideas and make connections, but often limited time to explore a difficult question in depth.
For many years, we've brought professionals together in Boye & Co groups to learn from one another. We've also spent years trying to find the right words to describe these gatherings. As meetups have become increasingly common, I've questioned whether that word captures what actually happens in our groups.
Read moreYou can now join the Boye & Co community through a new digital membership. It gives you access to our highly rated members' calls and a space to stay connected with peers between meetings and conferences.
We launched it last week, and we've already welcomed new members from Canada, France, Germany and the UK.
I remain a big believer in meeting face to face. It is still a big part of what Boye & Co is about.
But over the years, I've met many people who would like to be more involved, and whose budget, location or travel commitments make regular group meetings difficult. Digital membership offers them another way to take part: to learn with peers, bring their questions, and keep conversations going.
Read moreAI is already part of many content workflows. The harder question is whether, where and how its involvement should be disclosed.
New transparency requirements under the EU AI Act have prompted strong reactions, new tools and plenty of uncertainty. The rules are narrower than some headlines suggest, while important practical questions remain unresolved: Should the label apply to a paragraph, a page or an entire website? What about translated or AI-assisted content? And when is human editorial oversight enough?
Article 50’s disclosure requirements have applied since 2 August 2026. For content teams, this makes disclosure a current publishing question: which content falls within scope, how is it reviewed and who takes responsibility for publication?
In a recent members’ call, Martin Michalik, CPTO at Kontent.ai, helped bring some perspective to the debate.
Read moreThere are powerful, solemn moments when our personal and professional lives intersect. When the darkness of grief finds a counterweight in the brilliant light of celebration, and gratitude fills our cup.
I had the privilege of working with Jon Panella while serving on the executive advisory board for the MACH Alliance. We met in person at numerous conferences, but most of our connection was through screens. Even when separated by great distances, his force was undeniable.
When Jon passed away suddenly in March of this year, his loss was felt far and wide. He was a respected leader in our industry, but more than that, a kind and generous soul. He was the sum of our best parts, a pioneering explorer who pushed this MACH experiment from possibility to promise. He was a giant in our small corner of the tech world, and I often marveled at his quiet ability to shape the air in a room with charged positivity.
Read moreFor the first time, I’ve received an award for building communities and connecting people.
Yesterday in Amsterdam, I became the first recipient of the Jon Panella Award from the MACH Alliance. I’m proud, grateful and still taking it in.
The award honours someone whose work has advanced open, composable and connected technology across the wider industry through building, teaching, connecting or advocating. It recognises the people influenced, the projects enabled and the ideas shared.
Everyone is asking whether AI actually delivers.
I met with two leadership groups in Hamburg over the past two weeks, and nobody really has the answer to who owns what happens after.
We met for Boye & Company’s Digital Leadership group at Vattenfall, followed by our Employee Experience group at HafenCity Hamburg GmbH.
Very different rooms. Definitely more overlap than I expected.
Four new colleagues since early June.
Emma Elaine Brown, Katrine Villadsen, Rostislava Kenebas and Peter Dahlstrøm Andersen have all joined Boye & Company over the past few months.
Yesterday, we spent our team day co-working around Aarhus. We visited Banken and Porter’s, the city’s new jazz venue, where we spent time with Jens Hofman Hansen and the Aarhus UX community. We also fitted in a walk across the new High Line bridge and a team dinner with past Aarhus conference speaker and ethical design expert Martin Michael Frederiksen.
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