AI in Communications Boot Camp 2 - Switzerland

AI in Communications Boot Camp 2 - Switzerland

11-12 March 2027

Zurich

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AI in Communications Boot Camp 2 - Switzerland

11-12 March 2027, Zurich

About the Event

AI in Communications Boot Camp 2 - Switzerland

Certified. Practical. Built by Communicators Who've Already Done It.

Your leadership is asking what AI means for the comms function, your team is experimenting without a shared process, and your stakeholders are increasingly skeptical of anything that looks AI-generated. Most "AI in comms" events hand you theory and vendor pitches. This one doesn't.

We're back in Switzerland for a second time — and this year, the Boot Camp is certified: every attendee receives a Certificate of Attendance from the McMaster University Master of Communications Management (MCM) Executive Education program, backing two days of practical, in-house frameworks with academic credibility you can bring back to your team.

Who You'll Be Learning From

This isn't a stage full of AI vendors pitching you software. It's senior communicators who've already redesigned their own teams and processes around AI — sharing what worked, what didn't, and what they'd do differently.

  • ABB — on rebuilding a content team to work alongside AI, not around it
  • Bosch — on running 100+ AI use cases under a single global governance framework
  • Merck — on scaling AI from isolated pilots into a sustainable, function-wide practice
  • Syngenta Group — on adapting earned media strategy for AI-powered search (GEO)
  • BSH Home Appliances Group — on turning isolated AI pilots into team-wide process
  • Clariant — on keeping crisis response fast enough for an AI-accelerated news cycle
  • Daimler Truck AG — on scoping and building your first comms AI agent
  • Telefónica Deutschland — on reskilling comms careers, talent, and hiring for the AI transition
  • UBS — on why human judgment, not AI, is the real check on corporate content
  • IKEA — on how AI and data are turning communicators into strategic advisers

Day 2 is a hands-on workshop led by Dr. Alex Sévigny (McMaster University), where you'll apply the frameworks from Day 1 directly to your own team's challenges. You'll work through your own AI use case, GEO strategy, and process gaps with guided exercises, and leave with an action plan for your team, not just notes.

What You'll Walk Away With

  • A hybrid team blueprint. How to restructure a comms function around AI without losing what makes it work.
  • A GEO playbook. A practical approach to staying visible as search shifts to AI platforms.
  • A process, not a pilot. A framework for scaling AI use case by case into everyday workflow.
  • A crisis response built for machine speed. How to detect, assess, and respond before a story outruns you.
  • Your first AI agent, scoped. A practical starting point for building one inside your own team.
  • A talent roadmap. A clear-eyed view of which comms skills and roles are worth building for next.

Why Comms Professionals Register

  • You'll be ahead of your own organization, not catching up to it.
  • You'll hear from people who've solved your exact problem, not consultants theorizing about it.
  • You'll leave with frameworks and a plan, not just notes.
  • Day 2 is a hands-on workshop — you'll apply what you learned to your own team's challenges.
  • You'll leave certified, with a Credential from McMaster University's MCM Executive Education program.

Bringing Your Team?

Group discounts are available. If you're sending two or more delegates, get in touch with Rabije at [email protected]for team rates.

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Speakers

Bettina Weber

Syngenta Group

Laura Villaescusa

ABB

Jun Li

Daimler Truck AG

Alex Sévigny

McMaster University

Aferdita Kastrati

Merck Group

Kai Rolker

Clariant

Sarah Lehmann

BSH Home Appliances Group

Stefan Probst

BSH Home Appliances Group

Björn Nübel

UBS

Katja Roelants du Vivier

ABB

Simon Rieger

Telefónica Deutschland

Alexander Gligorijevic

IKEA

Dr. Michael Schmidtke

Bosch

Joao Asseiceira

Syngenta Group

Agenda

08.00

Registration and Morning Coffee

09.00

From Experimentation to Execution: Building AI-Ready Communications Processes

This case study will explore how communications teams can move beyond isolated AI experiments and build practical, AI-ready processes across their work. Sarah and Stefan will share lessons from the implementation journey, including how to identify the right use cases, redesign workflows, secure internal alignment, and establish the foundations needed to integrate AI responsibly and effectively into everyday communications.

Stefan Probst, Global Lead Tools & Data Strategy, BSH Home Appliances Group & Sarah Lehmann, Global Corporate Communications, BSH Home Appliances Group

09.40

Beyond the Pilot: Scaling AI Across the Communications Function

Most communications teams have run an AI pilot by now — the harder problem is what comes after. This session moves past isolated experiments to look at what it actually takes to scale AI into a sustainable, everyday part of the communications function. Aferdita will share perspectives on translating early AI initiatives into applications that hold up across teams and workflows, not just within a single use case, and what separates a pilot that stalls from one that scales.

Aferdita Kastrati, Head of Data & AI Strategy, Global Communications, Merck

10.20

Transitioning into a Hybrid Team: What We Learned

As AI capabilities matured, ABB's content and digital communications team faced a practical question: how do you organise a team to work alongside AI rather than around it? This session explores what it takes to transition into a hybrid team, where human expertise and AI tools work together across the content lifecycle. Laura will share how the team identified where AI could take on work, how roles and workflows shifted as a result, and the lessons learned along the way — including what worked, what didn't, and what she'd approach differently.

Laura Villaescusa, Group Head of Content & Digital Communications, ABB & Katja Roelants du Vivier, Group Senior Digital Communications Manager, ABB

11.00

Networking and Refreshment Break

11.20

AI in Comms: The Best of Bosch's Journey since 2017

This session traces Bosch’s path from the first AI pilot in 2017 to one framework for AI infrastructure, governance and content production. With more than 100 use cases across corporate comms, brand, and public affairs globally, Michael will share the most important and latest milestones: what’s actually been built with AI infrastructure, what governance and enabling it requires, how content production changed with AI, and how audiences worldwide are responding to it. He’ll also take a closer look at Agentic AI as the next frontier, implementing AI further into major workflows of a comms function.

Dr. Michael Schmidtke, Vice President Content Flow and Digital Channels, Bosch

12.00

Building Your First Comms AI Agent

This session walks through what it actually takes to build a working AI agent for a communications function — from scoping the first use case to getting it embedded in daily work. Jun will go beyond the initial pilot to focus on what's proven most valuable since: redesigning and optimizing the processes an agent sits inside, so it holds up as AI capabilities keep evolving. Attendees will leave with a practical framework for scoping their first agent and the process changes needed to make it stick.

Jun Li, Lead AI Solutions & Data Analytics, Global Communications, Daimler Truck AG

12.40

Lunch for Speakers and Delegates

13.20

Winning the AI search: One Company, One AI Footprint

When someone asks an AI assistant about a company, the answer does not come only from the communications team.

The response is influenced by a much wider digital footprint than most organisations realise, pulling information from corporate, marketing, HR or third-party content.

Yet the teams behind those signals often work in silos, each focused on its own channel and no team sees the full answer that AI gives. This session shows why one function alone cannot own Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

In this session, Bettina and Joao will share a behind-the-scenes look at how Syngenta Group is connecting the dots, breaking down silos and bringing business units together around a more coherent AI footprint.

Join them to discover what changes when an organisation starts seeing its story through the eyes of AI.

Bettina Weber, Senior Digital and AI Strategy Communications Manager, Syngenta Group & Joao Asseiceira, Commercial Analytics Lead, Syngenta Group

14.00

Crisis at Machine Speed: Responding When AI Accelerates the News Cycle

When a story can spread, mutate, and go global within minutes of breaking, the traditional crisis communications playbook is no longer fast enough. This session looks at how AI is compressing the news cycle and what that means for how communicators detect, assess, and respond to a crisis in real time. Kai will share how his team is adapting its crisis response processes to keep pace with AI-driven speed — from early-warning monitoring to decision-making under compressed timelines — and what a crisis-ready communications function needs to look like going forward.

Kai Rolker, Head of Group Communications, Clariant

14.40

Text Got Cheap. Responsibility Didn't.

AI can produce polished corporate text in seconds. This session is about the part that got harder and more valuable.
In October 2025, one of the Big Four published a report on agentic AI with 45 citations. Five of them checked out. Most of the rest pointed at something real, under a title nobody had ever written. The report stayed online for eight months, and four of the organizations it named as success stories said the claims about them were wrong.
Björn takes that failure apart and draws out what it costs to verify a claim, to own a decision, and to still sound like your own organization. Human judgment isn't the final check on AI-generated content. It's the work.

Björn Nübel, AI Communications Strategist & Editor, Group Corporate Communications, UBS

15.20

Networking and Refreshment Break

15.40

Possible Futures of the Communications Function in an AI-Driven World

This session explores how AI could reshape not only how we communicate, but the purpose and value of the communications function itself. Alexander considers how communications could evolve towards sense-making, intelligence, digital products and strategic decision support, and the AI, data and governance literacy this will require across both communications and management. Rather than predicting a single future, the session asks how we can prepare the function to create value across several plausible AI-driven futures.

Alexander Gligorijevic, Foresight, Insights and Impact Leader, Global Corporate Affairs, IKEA

16.20

Reskilling the Comms Profession: Careers, Talent, and the AI Transition

As AI reshapes what communications work actually looks like, the profession faces a harder question than which tools to adopt: what skills, roles, and career paths still hold up, and which need to be rebuilt from scratch. This session will unpack how AI is changing the talent equation for comms teams — from the skills now worth hiring and developing, to how career paths in the profession are shifting, to what teams and individuals should be doing now to stay relevant through the transition. This session is a candid, forward-looking conversation about where the profession's talent pipeline needs to go next.

Simon Rieger, Senior External Communications Manager, Telefónica Deutschland

17.00

End of Day One

Full-Day Workshop: AI-Ready Communications: Smarter Workflows, Stronger Strategy, Measurable Results

This full-day, professional-level training equips you with practical, immediately applicable skills to integrate generative AI into communications and marketing work. The focus is on moving beyond experimentation toward safe, strategic and measurable use of AI—understanding how modern AI tools work, where they add the most value, where they should not be trusted, and how to manage risks including hallucinations, confidentiality, accuracy, and brand voice drift.

What You’ll Learn

You’ll develop a clear, practical understanding of how generative AI fits into modern communications environments, including:

  • How modern generative AI tools work—and where their limitations matter
  • How to identify the communications tasks and workflows where AI can deliver the greatest value
  • How to manage AI-related risks including hallucinations, confidentiality issues, accuracy, and brand voice drift
  • How to combine AI capabilities with human judgment to protect credibility, reputation, and trust

Applying AI to Real Communications Work

The training is hands-on and grounded in communications workflows you already use, including:

  • Turning transcripts and meetings into executive briefs, summaries, and action logs
  • Extracting insights, trends, and potential storylines from datasets
  • Using AI as a strategic and contrarian thinking partner to challenge assumptions, strengthen messaging, and support better decision-making

High-Value AI Use Cases for Communicators

You’ll explore advanced and emerging applications of AI that are increasingly shaping communications work, including:

  • Avatar-enabled video workflows
  • Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to strengthen visibility and discoverability in AI-driven search and summaries
  • Advanced structured prompting using JSON/XML to create more consistent, controlled, and reusable outputs at scale

Capstone Build

You’ll design a practical CustomGPT or Copilot-style assistant tailored to a real communications task, such as:

  • Brand voice and compliance checks
  • Press release-to-social content kits
  • Issues and reputation triage
  • Executive briefing generation

What You Take Back to Work

You’ll leave with:

  • Practical templates and reusable prompt libraries
  • A clear 30-day implementation plan for integrating AI into your communications work
  • Practical skills and workflows you can begin applying immediately

Alex Sévigny, Professor (Tenured) of Communications Management and Communication Studies, McMaster University

Partners

Venue

Crowne Plaza Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

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Crowne Plaza Zürich
Badenerstrasse 420, 8004, Zürich, Switzerland

The Crowne Plaza Zurich by IHG is a contemporary 4-star hotel in Zurich’s lively Aussersihl district, just a short walk from the Letzigrund Stadium. Refurbished in early 2026, it offers 365 modern rooms and suites, several on-site restaurants and bars, and direct access to the 2,000 m² Holmes Place Health Club, with an indoor pool, sauna and fitness area. With 11 flexible meeting rooms for up to 420 guests and one of the largest hotel car parks in the city, it is well suited to business travellers and event attendees, while frequent tram connections take you to the city centre in around 15 minutes.

Crowne Plaza Zürich
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Want This Program for Your Team?

This program can also be delivered as a tailored in-house training for your organization. We adapt the content to your industry, objectives, and level of maturity, focusing on real challenges your teams face and the decisions they need to make. In-house formats allow your people to align on a shared approach, work through relevant scenarios, and build skills they can apply immediately.

If you’re exploring an in-house option, tell us a bit about your team, priorities, and timing, and we’ll recommend the right format.

Contact us about in-house training

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