Issue 01

Dispatch Newcastle w/ Virgin

An evening programme

An invitation-only evening for a small, curated room of operators: the people who own the P&L and carry the risk. Two talks about real-world AI: what was shipped, the real numbers, what broke. Then networking.

Running order

Times provisional

1. Doors and drinks 6.00pm
2. Welcome from LevelFive 6.20pm
3. Beyond the pilot: running AI across a family of brands 6.30pm

   Michael Barber, Innovation Lead, Virgin.

4. Underwriting the future: how AI agents are rewriting commercial lending at Atom Bank 7.00pm

   Dr Russell Collingham, Head of AI and Data Science, Atom Bank.

5. Networking 7.30pm

   Drinks, and time with the speakers

6. Close 8.15pm

The speakers

• 

  Michael Barber

  Innovation Lead, Virgin

  Michael is Innovation Lead at Virgin Management, where he leads applied AI across the Virgin group. He works with Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Voyages, Virgin Red and Virgin Hotels to turn emerging technology into working products, from Virgin's first OpenAI-powered tool to agentic customer service, AI visibility and synthetic audience research.

  With a background spanning data, software, product and marketing, he's particularly interested in where AI and commerce meet.

• 

  Dr Russell Collingham

  Head of AI and Data Science, Atom Bank

  Russell is Head of AI and Data Science at Atom Bank, based in Newcastle, where he leads AI adoption to improve the banking experience for staff and customers.

  Before Atom Bank, he spent over five years as Head of Engineering at hedgehog lab, a Newcastle-based digital agency, leading technical development for mobile, web and cloud products. He also spent 15 years as a software consultant, working with organisations such as the MoD, Ringo, Harveys Furniture and Bensons for Beds.

  He spent 11 years at the University of Durham, earning a BSc in Computer Science and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence, then working in research and as a lecturer there until 1997.

Nobody pitches, not us, not Virgin.