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Deon Basson is an extreme endurance athlete and a seasoned executive and board member operating at the intersection of AI, leadership, and human performance. With more than 35 years of experience in technology, strategy, and high-pressure decision environments, his career has spanned technical roles, sales, sales leadership, executive leadership, CEO and Chairperson responsibility.
This breadth gives him a full-spectrum view of how AI strategy translates into commercial and organisational reality. He serves as Chairperson of Spatialedge, the largest AI company in Africa, and is the founder of reCInate, a structured communication framework built to strengthen leadership judgement when complexity, data overload, and time pressure are high. His work centres on a critical truth: AI changes systems quickly, but people still make the decisions that determine success in complex, fast-moving, and high-stakes organisational environments.
His perspective is shaped by what he calls The Munga Mindset, drawn from competing in The Munga, a five-day, 1,148-kilometre ultra-endurance mountain bike race across extreme and unforgiving terrain in South Africa. Riders must make continuous decisions while fatigued, uncertain, and under sustained
stress, where small mistakes compound rapidly and consequences escalate quickly over time. This mirrors AI-driven environments, where leaders face accelerating information, incomplete visibility, competing priorities, and constant change.
In both contexts, outcomes are shaped by the same capabilities:
Deon works with leaders and teams navigating AI transformation to improve how they think, decide, and align under pressure. His focus is not on technology alone, but on the human decision-making that sits around it. He integrates systems thinking, data awareness, and emotional intelligence to help leaders
remain clear, consistent, and effective when stakes are high and conditions are uncertain and evolving.
Through this work, Deon shows organisations how structured communication and sound judgement ensure that AI investments translate into real performance, rather than confusion or misalignment. When pressure increases and the margin for error narrows, it is the quality of human decisions and alignment that determines whether AI delivers its promised value. His work reinforces the principle that while AI can enhance capability, leadership clarity and communication remain the decisive factors in sustained success over time and at scale.
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Richard Poplak is an award-winning author, journalist, and filmmaker. He has become one of the most widely read and controversial political journalists in South Africa, editing at large for the Daily Maverick. Poplak has reported from over 25 developing countries, for the Financial Times, Atlantic Monthly, The Guardian, among others. He was recently part of a team that won the prestigious Global Shining Light award for investigative journalism.
Richard has worked as a freelance journalist and writer since 2005. His work has been anthologized numerous times, and he frequently appears on Al Jazeera, BBC, CBC, and elsewhere as a commentator on topics that range from world events to sport: he is considered a go-to voice on the burgeoning Sino-African relationship; on South African politics; and on international cycling.
Richard Poplak is a former Rockefeller Fellow, and a recipient of the Bookmark Award for the best journalist in South Africa. He is also a contributor in the innovative global investigative journalist collective Deca Stories.
As a member in the Gupta Leaks team, Richard Poplak helped break one of the biggest stories in South African media history. The journalistic consortium won the Taco Kuiper Investigative Journalism award, Vodacom Journalist of the Year, and was cited for a Nat Nkasa Bravery in Journalism award. In 2019, the team won the prestigious 2019 Global Shining Light award, the highest honour in investigative journalism.
Before Richard Poplak became a journalist, Richard trained as a filmmaker and fine artist at Montreal’s Concordia University (1992-1995) and has produced an directed numerous music videos, television commercials, and documentary films. He is the co-director of a documentary feature film on the public relations firm Bell Pottinger, called Influence, which is premiering in competition at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020.
Keynote Topic
INFLUENCE: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS PUBLIC RELATIONS COMPANY
Synopsis
The feature-length documentary film INFLUENCE charts the recent advancements in weaponized communication by investigating the rise and fall of the world’s most notorious public relations and reputation management firm: the British multinational Bell Pottinger.
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