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12:00 - 12:30  Data Engineering, Integration & Automation Theatre

What We Learned Scaling AI At Carwow and Some Mistakes We Made Along The Way

Tuesday 13th October 2026

About

AI changed how the data team works at Carwow: roles became wider, planning horizons got shorter, and maintaining high quality became harder. Six months ago we were stuck and realized we couldn’t mandate AI adoption – we needed to change our approach. We shifted to a person-centric approach: we built tools to make using AI easy and fun, and we invested in a proper harness to keep the pace. Join this session to learn about the mistakes we made and how we fight ‘Clauded Dashboards’.

Key Takeaways:

  • AI adoption is a people challenge, not a mandate: roles broadened and learning accelerated, so adoption works best when tools make experimentation easy, practical, and engaging.
  • AI quality depends on data foundations: inconsistent definitions, stale data, and inaccessible systems lead to unreliable outputs and “Clauded dashboards.” A semantic layer and clear guardrails improve consistency.
  • Scale through governed self-serve access: composable tooling can remove data-team bottlenecks, let teams build audiences themselves, and activate the same trusted data across channels.