Thought leadership
Writing, analysis, and perspective from 25 years in the engine room of digital strategy, AI, and organizational change.
Somewhere around my 200th keynote, I stopped calling it “thought leadership.” The phrase had been hollowed out by a decade of LinkedIn posts and agency decks, so I started calling it what it actually is: writing. Analysis. Perspective. Sometimes a rant. Occasionally something I had to get out of my head at 11pm in an airport lounge in Singapore or Austin or Brussels.
I am Danny Devriendt, Managing Director of OmnicomMedia Spec Ops and, before that, a long stretch through IPG and IPRA. I have spent 25 years in IT and digital, working from Aalter, Belgium, and from conference stages in more countries than I can neatly list. My daughter Tara has sat across from me at breakfast while I tried to explain agentic AI to a nine-year-old. (That experiment worked better than most board presentations I have attended.) I write about AI strategy, leadership, organizational change, and the personality of a strategist who travels too much and reads too many books and drives the wrong cars. I also speak; the keynotes are real and they sell out.
This site exists because I got tired of scattering ideas across LinkedIn and Medium and X. Everything I think about seriously lives here now, organized into five pillars. You may arrive via search, or because a chatbot surfaced one of my posts, or because someone forwarded a piece and said “you should read this guy.” All three routes land in the same place.
Five pillars organize what I write. Pick the one that matters to you.
The five pillars
Each pillar is a sustained body of work, not a category tag. They connect: an AI governance crisis is also a leadership crisis is also a communication failure. But they have distinct audiences and starting points, so I keep them separate.
AI as a strategic force: what boards miss
Boards are making AI decisions with incomplete maps. I have been inside those rooms (or, more precisely, presenting to those rooms) long enough to see the pattern: the vocabulary arrives before the understanding, the slide deck gets approved before anyone asks what the organizational cost actually is. This pillar covers AI governance, board-level AI literacy, agentic systems, and the gap between what the press release says and what the rollout actually looks like. If you advise executives, sit on a board, or are trying to explain to the C-suite why their AI roadmap has a structural problem, start here. The writing is direct and it does not pretend the problems are smaller than they are.
Leadership, communication, and change
Change fails in the communication layer. Almost every time. I have watched restructurings announced with beautiful internal memos that nobody believed, cultural transformations that never left the strategy workshop, and executive teams that confused a press release with a change program. This pillar covers the mechanics of exec comms, the psychology of organizational change, and what it actually takes to move an institution from one state to another. The audience is leaders who are in the middle of something difficult and need a perspective that is not cheerful.
100,000 Miles: the rolling book
I drive. A lot. And I use those miles as a sourcing project: conversations in cars, in airport lounges, in hotel lobbies at conferences, in small restaurants where the wifi is terrible and the food is good. Tara occasionally joins. The 100,000 Miles project is a rolling book I am writing in public, one trip at a time. It is about travel as a thinking practice, about what you learn from being in motion, and about the places and people that shift your frame. Not a travel blog. A sourcing journal, filed in real time.
SXSW chronicles: 16 years of field notes from the future
I have been going to SXSW in Austin for 16 consecutive years. Not as a tourist. As a field reporter tracking what moves from the fringe to the mainstream, from the startup booth to the policy memo, from the panel nobody attended to the thing everyone was talking about three years later. The SXSW Chronicles are exactly what the name says: field notes. Dates, names, sessions, conversations, patterns. If you want to understand how early signals actually propagate into industries and institutions, this is the body of work that shows the methodology in real time.
The personality layer
Watches. Cars. Books. Photography. The things a strategist pays attention to when the strategy work is done, and what those things reveal about how the person actually thinks. I find that the most interesting people are legible through their periphery, through what they collect and read and notice. This pillar is an honest account of mine. It is also, quietly, a counterargument to the idea that professional credibility requires scrubbing your personality from your public output. The analyst and the person who cares about a 1969 Alfa are the same person.
On stage
I give two keynotes, and they are sequenced deliberately.
ODIN is the arrival keynote: what AI actually is, where it came from, and what it means for an organization that has been mostly watching from the sideline. It runs 45 to 60 minutes, adapts to boards, executive offsites, and large conferences, and gets delivered in English, French, or Dutch. ODIN is for the audience that still needs the honest orientation before the strategy conversation can happen.
Ragnarok is the sequel. The reckoning keynote. ODIN tells you the fire is coming; Ragnarok tells you what to do when it is already here, when the restructuring decisions are on the table and the board is asking questions nobody has clean answers to. Ragnarok is harder, more specific, and assumes the audience has moved past the “what is AI” stage.
Both keynotes have full riders and logistics documentation. Book via the keynote-speaker page or write directly to danny@heliade.net.
Where to start
Three doors in, depending on why you are here:
- If you came for AI strategy, the work is at AI as a strategic force, and the ODIN keynote page at /odin/ has the full picture of how I bring that to a stage.
- If you came for the speaker bio, the rider, or the booking form, go directly to /keynote-speaker/.
- If you just want to know who I am before reading anything, the about page has the bio and The personality layer has the human behind it.
Frequently asked
Who is this site for?
Executives and board members trying to think seriously about AI and organizational change. Strategy consultants who want a perspective that is not a product pitch. Conference organizers looking for a keynote speaker who has done this for 25 years. Curious people who found something on SXSW or 100,000 Miles and want to go deeper.
Do you take consulting clients?
Selectively. OmnicomMedia Spec Ops is the primary professional vehicle for advisory work. If you have a specific brief, the fastest path is danny@heliade.net with the context.
How do I book a keynote?
The keynote-speaker page has full details on both ODIN and Ragnarok, plus the technical rider and availability. Direct inquiries go to danny@heliade.net. Response time is typically 24 to 48 hours.
Do you write in French and Dutch?
Occasionally. Most of the pillar content is in English because the primary SEO audience is English-speaking, and because writing about AI governance in three languages simultaneously would be a reliable way to publish nothing. I do speak all three on stage.
What is the difference between ODIN and Ragnarok?
ODIN is the orientation keynote. It maps where AI is now, what boards are missing, and why the gap between the press release and the reality is so consistent. Ragnarok picks up where ODIN ends: the decisions that have to be made once the arrival is no longer theoretical. They work as a pair for multi-session formats; either stands alone.
What is “100,000 Miles”?
A rolling book project. I am accumulating miles, conversations, and observations from drives, flights, and field trips, and writing them up in real time at 100,000 Miles. The eventual book exists in pieces on this site. Tara is in some of them.
Can I republish your work?
With attribution and a link back. If you want to republish a full piece somewhere with reach, drop me a note first. danny@heliade.net.
How often do you publish?
Irregularly and without apology. When I have something worth saying, I say it. The cadence is roughly one or two longer pieces per month across the pillars, with shorter notes from travel and conferences filling the gaps.
Pick a pillar. Read something. Come back when something changes.
