Most people are solving the wrong problem.
The conversation about technology almost always starts in the same place: which platform, which tool, which system. It's the wrong starting point. The right question is what your people need to do better and what's getting in the way of that. Once you know the answer, the technology becomes obvious. Start with the technology and you'll keep asking the same question every two years.
Background
I've been inside enough of these businesses to know where the problems hide.
Twenty-seven years working in independent media and events. A significant part of that launching and running independent exhibition and conference groups, as well as working for some of the largest events businesses in the world. During that time I launched four B2B events, each reaching seven-figure revenue. I've run wholly digital operations. I've sat in the room where technology decisions get made and watched the same mistakes happen in different buildings.
I also ran the Software Marketing Forum where I met Geoffrey Moore. His work on technology adoption is still the clearest thinking available on why good technology so often fails to land inside established organisations. That lens has proved useful ever since.
What that background gave me is pattern recognition. The problems independent media and events businesses face with technology are not unique. They repeat, reliably, and they are solvable. Usually without the wholesale platform change that gets proposed first.
The AI experiment
I needed to know what was actually possible. So I built it.
In 2023, I paused consulting work to go deep on AI, not to follow the conversation, but to find out what it changes operationally, at the level of real work, inside a real business. I built Digitising Events as the test bed: a full publishing operation, covering the events technology sector, run entirely by one person with AI-augmented workflows throughout.
It's live. It publishes consistently. It has a growing audience. And it raises a question how can one person be more productive with AI, and what would that mean for a team?
That question is the point. And the answer changed how I approach every business I work with.
40+ AI agents and assistants built. 150+ processes automated. A publishing operation that proves the model in public every day. These are not targets. They are outputs of a methodology that starts with people, not platforms.
Visit Digitising Events →How I work
AI works when it makes your talent more capable. Not when it replaces it.
The methodology is called Symbiotic AI. The principle is straightforward: every AI-enhanced process has to start with a human outcome. What does this person need to do? What would make them dramatically better at it? The technology serves that answer. It doesn't substitute for it.
Most businesses adopting AI are doing it the other way round. They're fitting people around tools and wondering why adoption stalls. The businesses that get this right redesign how their people work, then build the AI in. The result is a team that's more capable, not a team that's been automated around.
That's the practical difference between AI that 'moves the needle' and AI that produces a better first draft.
Get a sense of how I think
Before we talk, if you want to.
If you want to get a feel for the point of view before booking anything, the best places to do that are LinkedIn and YouTube. The LinkedIn feed is where I think out loud about AI adoption. The YouTube channel goes deeper on methodology and process.
Ready to talk?
If that sounds like the conversation you need.
I work with a small number of clients at a time. Independent media and events businesses that know something needs to change and want to work with someone who has been inside businesses like theirs, not just advised at them from the outside.
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