Date & Time
Wednesday, October 21, 2026, 5:00 PM - 9:00 PM EDT
About Event
Join LISUG for a practical, high-signal evening with Pascal Polverini on two subjects that are quickly becoming inseparable: modern software testing and AI-assisted development. As delivery speed increases, teams need better ways to measure risk, prove quality, and keep change under control. This event connects the business case for automation with the engineering discipline required to use AI responsibly.
Pre-Session: ROI of Software Testing: Manual Versus Automated
Software testing is a critical phase in the software development lifecycle. It ensures that software is reliable, functional, and aligned with requirements. This session explores the return on investment of automated testing compared with manual testing, with a clear focus on the metrics leaders and practitioners actually care about: time delays, efficiency loss, bug fixing, downtime, human resources, trust and credibility, regulatory compliance, and overall ROI comparison.
Main Session: Small Steps, Automated Proofs: A New Programming Paradigm with AI
Artificial Intelligence is not replacing programmers; it is redefining their role. AI can generate large amounts of code at unprecedented speed, but that speed introduces risk. AI-generated code can be incomplete, subtly incorrect, or misaligned with real-world constraints. This session shows why the programmer's role is shifting from writing every line to directing, constraining, and validating AI output. Pascal will walk through a safer methodology built on strict supervision, tight feedback loops, and comprehensive automated testing, where AI is guided through small, incremental steps that are fully understood, reviewed, tested, and reversible before teams move forward.
If your team is trying to increase delivery speed without sacrificing confidence, this event will give you a sharper framework for making automation measurable and AI output trustworthy. Expect practical takeaways you can apply immediately to testing strategy, engineering workflow, and modernization planning.
Schedule
Pre-Session
ROI of Software Testing: Manual Versus Automated
Networking & Cocktail Hour
Connect with fellow members and enjoy our open bar.
Dinner & Q&A
Interactive discussion over dinner.
Main Session
Small Steps, Automated Proofs: A New Programming Paradigm with AI
Session Ends
Wrapping up with final takeaways and community conversation.
What Will You Learn?
Testing ROI That Holds Up
See how manual and automated testing compare across time delays, efficiency loss, bug-fix cost, downtime exposure, staffing pressure, compliance, and business credibility.
How to Keep AI on a Leash
Learn a disciplined AI programming workflow where every change is incremental, reviewable, reversible, and backed by automated proof before the next step begins.
Trust Through Automation
Understand why automated testing is becoming the trust mechanism for modern teams using AI to accelerate delivery without losing control of correctness and risk.
Keynote Speaker

Pascal Polverini
CTO at Polverini & Partners
With thirty years of professional experience in North America, Europe and Australia Pascal Polverini has strong expertise in digital transformation, strategy roadmap and planning, end-to-end software architectures. With expertise in DB, programming languages, communication protocols and UI he received the IBM Champion nomination in "DATA and AI". Co-author of the IBM i Modernization Redbooks, he is an expert in cross technologies. An active member of the IBM i ISV Advisory Council since 2005, he has also been an individual associate of the OpenPOWER foundation since 2014. He is a senior speaker at IT events (in English, French, and Italian) and occasionally writes for IBM Systems Magazine and other publications. Pascal is deeply involved in solutions to merge or cross different technologies and innovations, including AI technologies. He focuses on project governance and quality results, paying particular attention to the added value in a business approach to the client needs and market extensions. Since 2020 Pascal has focused on expertise in testing automation to help the IBM i community and customers to leverage the platform to accelerate development ROI, TTM, DevOps and AI integration. Since 2024 he has been working on methodologies and frameworks to secure code expectations from AI LLM processes.