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Belgium 01-10-2026 Squad Only Virtual english

Letting Teams Build Safely with Low-Code, No-Code, and AI Tools. ; How to enable business-led development while keeping security, architecture, and support under control.

Low-code, no-code, and AI tools are giving business teams more ability to build solutions themselves. The challenge is setting the right boundaries before fast local solutions become important operational assets. Three pressure points need attention. - Boundaries must be clear: teams need to know what they can build alone and what requires IT, security, or architecture review. - Supportability matters when a quick solution becomes business-critical. - Risk control remains necessary around data access, compliance, security, process dependency, and maintenance. The working question is simple: how do we enable business-led development while keeping security, ownership, and support under control? If you are trying to enable this safely, let’s compare approaches with others facing the same balance.

Belgium 06-10-2026 All Members Physical english

The Token Trap: Reclaiming Control of Enterprise AI

As enterprise AI transitions from experimental Proofs of Concept (POCs) into real implementations, digital leaders are encountering a shared challenge: consumption-based public cloud token billing models do not fit neatly into traditional IT budgeting. Daily token consumption can rise unexpectedly, pushing expenses through the roof while arbitrary caps quickly kill momentum for innovation. For many CIOs, this raises an open strategic question: How do we keep costs under control while further stimulating innovation? During this interactive CIONET roundtable, we will explore among peers how to navigate AI tokenomics. Rather than treating public cloud LLMs as the default path, we will investigate how different execution environments, ranging from hybrid cloud setups and targeted on-premise models to specialised edge hardware, can help balance cost with performance. This session is intentionally designed as an open peer-to-peer exchange; a space to compare notes, challenge current ways of working and architectural setups, and discuss practical approaches to building predictable, scalable AI models.

Belgium 08-10-2026 All Members Physical english

The Permanent (R)evolution

Every large organisation has been through a major transformation, and most through several. The word transformation is misleading because it suggests a beginning and an end. But organisations that do well are the ones that have given up on the idea of arriving and realise that constant change has become the new norm, and missing a single cycle leaves you permanently behind. This evening, two leaders will share how they think about this, coming from opposite directions. John Porter led Telenet through a sustained period of reinvention spanning the pandemic, a full reorganisation into tribes, M&A, and a shift to a performance driven culture. Along the way, the IT department was dissolved and technology was embedded inside autonomous tribes that run as small businesses. There is no CIO at Telenet. It is Telenet Group’s purpose to become a digital-first, customer-centric organisation. To deliver on this ambition, it has embarked on a transformation journey built on three pillars: (i) the implementation of a scaled-agile operating model (organisation), (ii) the acceleration of digitisation and automation underpinned by optimised IT systems, platforms, and strategic technology partnerships (digitisation), and (iii) a performance leadership culture focused on accountability, ownership, and a change mindset (culture). Kris Vervaet, on the other hand, has just become CIO at KBC, the bank whose mobile app has been ranked best in the world three times and whose AI assistant Kate now handles 70% of customer queries on its own. But Kris is no ordinary CIO: he ran DPG Media Belgium as CEO, and KBC went looking for someone who has led transformation rather than someone who manages technology. So while one organisation got rid of the CIO role, the other reinvented it, and both are thriving. The conversation will range across organisational and IT redesign, the rise of digital-first customer experience, the impact of AI on how every business is run, and the harder questions of culture, talent and leadership. The question for every leader in the room is what that tells you about your own role, your own operating model, and the pace at which you are prepared to keep evolving.

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Nordstrom Analytical Platform and Enhancing the Customer Experience

Nordstrom develops the Nordstrom Analytics Platform (NAP), which uses AI-powered analytics to personalize the shopping experience through deeper customer insights and predictions.

Chief Technology Officer, Edmond Mesrobian, recently participated in a conversation with VentureBeat's Hari Sivaraman, discussing the role of data infrastructure to enhance the customer experience. Focusing on AI-powered analytics, Edmond described the journey of building the Nordstrom Analytical Platform (NAP) to leverage deeper insights and predictions for a personalized experience. See highlights from their conversation below.

With our Nordstrom Analytical Platform (NAP), we are improving on our ability to provide personalized product discovery and service.

When we think about analytics as opposed to data reporting, timing is the most precious commodity, and making the timeliest decisions required us to build a platform. Whether it's stores, fulfillment centers or online, we built and translated those signals through models and actions. It's difficult to buy that type of solution off-the-shelf because you need to wire your enterprise. We asked, can we generate a prediction cost-effectively and translate that into a customer benefit and service? That's where we started, and we realized we needed to create it as opposed to buying it.

We embarked on this journey to get the business aligned so that we can capture events and stream them in real-time or near real-time into our analytical platform. We then layered analytical models of a variety of forms to translate into predictions—today's predictions are the new KPIs. Our goal was not to be technology providers for the components, but rather stitch it together to create the kind of analytical platform that we can then robustly drive machine learning. What we call our one-hop engine essentially translates our business events into something that could then be activated through a model. And so that's the special sauce—how we put the business events together, how we transformed them from one hop into our models and then generated predictions on the other end.

Our goal is to make the digital experience personal by offering our customers curated product choices on an individual level.

There are over a hundred AI models that we leverage daily at Nordstrom—a significant portion of them are backward-facing capabilities from inventory control to fulfillment and how to route orders to the nearest store and more. Customers will experience those capabilities indirectly in terms of getting orders shipped and delivered on time. Our mission and holy grail from a digital perspective is delivering the capability of discovery. Taking what we know about our customers we can deliver personalized products and better selection—through improved Looks, style boards and more. We are using AI in a more robust way to drive product discovery and personalization.

We are also focused on what we call our fashion map. The fashion map essentially takes a natural language-based approach with deep learning to interpret images and information from social networks—this allows us so to get to know customers through a natural language conversation, as opposed to keyword searches that are very taxonomy driven and hardcoded. We are continuing to work on achieving AI discovery to get closer to our customers in a personalized way.

See the full conversation below.

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CIONET Business Circles

Cyber Circle

CIONET’s Cyber Circle: a new three-event programme exclusively focusing on the most urgent, complex, and high-impact challenges in cybersecurity today. Launched in 2026, this initiative brings together CISOs, CIOs, and senior IT executives with a strong interest in cybersecurity for three curated gatherings each year. As part of CIONET’s trusted executive community, the Cyber Circle provides a confidential, peer-driven environment to exchange insights, share real-world experiences, and address evolving cyber threats. Each session is designed to foster strategic dialogue, strengthen resilience, and elevate cybersecurity as a core driver of business value.

Telenet Business Leadership Circle

The Telenet Business Leadership Circle powered by CIONET, offers a platform where IT executives and thought leaders can meet to inspire each other and share best practices. We want to be a facilitator who helps you optimise the performance of your IT function and your business by embracing the endless opportunities that digital change brings.

Les Rencontres

Découvrez la dynamique du leadership numérique aux Rencontres de CIONET, le programme francophone exclusif de CIONET pour les leaders numériques en Belgique, rendu possible grâce au soutien et à l'engagement de nos partenaires de programme : Deloitte, Denodo et Red Hat. Rejoignez trois événements inspirants par an à Liège, Namur et en Brabant Wallon, où des CIOs et des experts numériques francophones de premier plan partagent leurs perspectives et expériences sur des thèmes d'affaires et de IT actuels. Laissez-vous inspirer et apprenez des meilleurs du secteur lors de sessions captivantes conçues spécialement pour soutenir et enrichir votre rôle en tant que CIO pair. Ne manquez pas cette opportunité de faire partie d'un réseau exceptionnel d'innovateurs numériques !

Female Leadership Circle

CIONET is committed to highlighting and celebrating female role models in IT, Tech & Digital, creating a leadership programme that empowers and elevates women within the tech industry. This initiative is dedicated to showcasing the achievements and successes of leading women, fostering an environment where female role models are recognised, and their contributions can ignite progress and inspire the next generation of women in IT. Our mission is to shine the spotlight a little brighter on female role models in IT, Tech & Digital, and to empower each other through this inner network community.