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David Jones, Canva and other Australian organisations are due to discuss agentic AI, orchestration and enterprise governance at Workato’s World of Workato in Sydney on 13–14 October 2026. The event is a preview of planned discussions—not evidence that the listed speakers have deployed production AI agents or achieved specific agentic-AI results.

What the Sydney event is set to cover

Workato’s World of Workato is scheduled for 13–14 October 2026 at the Pyrmont Theatre, ICC Sydney. iTnews estimates around 600 customers, prospects and partners will attend; that is an estimate, not a confirmed attendance figure.

The preview names speakers from David Jones, Canva, St John WA, AsureQuality, Burbank Group and Village Entertainment. Its themes include agentic AI orchestration, enterprise governance, and connecting AI to business processes and data. It does not specify what deployments those speakers will describe or report results from them.

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Two named speakers

  • Rahul Anhal, Head of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure at David Jones.
  • Samantha Garrett, AI & Automation Platform Team Lead at Canva.

What is established about Canva’s automation

A separate Workato customer story, published on 24 June 2026, describes Canva’s workflow automation program. Jessica Newton, Business Platform Lead at Canva, said that in less than two years 110 Canvanauts had been certified in Workato and the company had rolled out 56 recipes across order-to-cash, procure-to-pay and hire-to-retire. These are Workato-reported figures about automation, not a count of AI agents.

Workato says the workflows replaced more than 8,000 hours of manual work annually. Its story also reports that Canva processed more than 100 vendor assessments in one to two months, eliminating 75 hours of manual labour, and shortened expense reimbursement from two weeks to two days. These figures are the vendor’s account of Canva’s automation outcomes; the story does not identify them as savings produced by agentic AI alone.

Workato’s account says Canva planned to apply embedded AI capabilities to business process management. That stated plan does not establish that Canva completed or deployed an AI-agent system. Michael Denari, Canva’s Global Head of IT, described Workato as helping put innovative technology in employees’ hands “in a governed way,” with the IT team accelerating the impact.

David Jones’s “super-agent” remains an exploratory signal

An earlier iTnews report described a David Jones AI “super-agent” as an opportunity under exploration. That supports describing the idea as exploratory at the time of that report; it does not establish a production rollout. The scheduled appearance of a David Jones representative at the October event is not, by itself, evidence of a change in status.

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How to assess claims about enterprise AI agents

The event’s themes point to practical questions for any organisation evaluating agentic AI. A compelling demonstration is not enough: the system must fit actual work, connect to relevant applications and data, operate within appropriate controls, and produce outcomes that can be measured.

  • Integration: Which existing applications and business data can the system access, and how reliably?
  • Governance: What permissions, safeguards and human oversight apply to the agent’s actions?
  • Process fit: Does the automation connect to a real business process, rather than simply provide a chat interface?
  • Evidence: Are reported gains tied to a specific workflow, time period and baseline—and are they attributable to AI agents rather than broader automation?
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What remains unknown before the event

As of 7 October 2026, the conference is still upcoming. The available preview does not establish what its speakers will present, whether new deployments or results will be announced, or how many people will actually attend. Canva’s published workflow figures and the earlier exploratory David Jones report provide useful context, but they should not be mistaken for confirmed agentic-AI deployments.

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