Vibe coding, business defensibility and the future value of human judgement will take centre stage on Day Two of humAIn 2026, with Tara Iwamoto and Julia Vargiu joining the workshop program, and Four Pillars Gin co-founder Matt Jones named master of ceremonies for Day One.
humAIn has announced two new practical workshops for the second day of its 2026 program, extending the conference conversation from what AI is changing to what marketing, creative and business leaders can actively do about it.
Tara Iwamoto, co-founder of Vibe Coding Lab, will lead Marketing’s Fifth P: Prototype, a hands-on session designed to give marketers and creatives a new kind of agency: the ability to turn an idea into a working product, app or website without traditional coding skills.
The workshop introduces delegates to vibe coding and takes them through the process of building and testing a prototype using AI.
“Marketers have traditionally been able to influence product, price, place and promotion, but making something new has required specialist technical resources,” humAIn founder Cat McGinn said.
“AI changes that equation. Prototype is becoming a capability marketers can have for themselves. The point isn’t that everyone should become a developer; it’s that the distance between having an innovative idea and being able to test it has now collapsed.”
Iwamoto co-founded Vibe Coding Lab to teach women and underrepresented builders how to make real products with AI, with no coding experience required. Its most recent event saw 30 women ship working apps in a single afternoon.
She brings 12 years of operations and creative leadership experience, including roles at Google, WPP, oOh!Media and POPSUGAR Studios, where she scaled the content studio from 20 people to more than 100.
Also joining Day Two is Julia Vargiu, director Australia at SI Global and founder and MD of New Business Methodology, who will lead Build a Business AI Can’t Commoditise: What Buyers Will Value in Three Years.
The workshop tackles the other side of AI-driven abundance: what happens to enterprise value when capabilities become cheaper, faster and easier for competitors to reproduce.
Leaders from agencies, consultancies, SaaS and technology-enabled businesses will assess where AI is creating value and where it may be eroding differentiation, drawing on the questions increasingly being asked by investors, private equity firms and strategic buyers.
Participants will examine which parts of their businesses are genuinely defensible and where human strengths including judgement, trust, creativity, relationships and sector expertise may become more valuable precisely because production is becoming easier.
“AI can improve margins and create entirely new sources of value, but it can also make yesterday’s competitive advantage available to everyone,” McGinn said.
“We wanted a workshop that forces leaders to look beyond productivity and ask a harder question: if AI makes much of what you sell easier to replicate, what will somebody actually pay a premium for three years from now?”
Vargiu has spent 25 years advising creative, marketing and technology businesses across Australia, APAC and the US on strategic growth, scale and exit readiness. Born in Silicon Valley and sharpened in New York before settling in Sydney, she works with business leaders to ensure their organisations are both fit for scale and fit for sale.
humAIn has also named Matt Jones as master of ceremonies for Day One of humAIn 2026, the main conference program on 13 October.
Jones is the co-founder of Four Pillars Gin, the Australian spirits business acquired by Lion in 2023, and founder of strategic advisory firm Think Story Experience.
A former political speechwriter turned brand strategist, Jones works at the intersection of technology, business transformation and storytelling. He is also a keynote speaker, host of the StoryWork podcast and author of Lessons From Gin.
“When Cat McGinn asked me if I’d be interested in MCing humAIn this year, I jumped at the chance. For me, the most interesting conversations today are happening at the intersections of technology and humanity, possibility and responsibility, digital productivity and human creativity, and AI and leadership. I can’t wait to help join the dots,” Jones said.
The new sessions form part of humAIn’s expanded focus on practical AI capability alongside its examination of what remains distinctively human as artificial intelligence becomes embedded across marketing, media, creativity and business.
Rather than treating AI literacy as simply learning to use a new generation of tools, Day Two will give delegates opportunities to build, experiment and interrogate how AI changes the sources of competitive advantage themselves.
Further workshops and program announcements will follow.
