Architecture begins with the terrain, not the tool.
Technology leadership for decisions that cross systems, teams, and operations.
25 years 13M+ sites 50+ talks
- 01
Read the terrain
Map the systems, incentives, and constraints already shaping the decision.
- 02
Mark the fault line
Name the trade-off the organisation is actually making.
- 03
Choose the route
Turn direction into a sequence teams can own.
Field notes
Recent thinking
- Using Bento Components in Gutenberg Blocks A CloudFest Hackathon build that mapped seven Bento web components into eleven Gutenberg blocks. How the editor's edit/save duality lets React run the backend and lightweight web components run the frontend — plus honest findings on nesting, developer experience, and performance. 8 min
- The Cost of Contribution The script behind a WordCamp US 2019 lightning talk on why open-source burnout traces to one root cause: cost. How the helper's high, social comparison, and unspoken norms push volunteers to overspend their time — and why destigmatising the money conversation is the sustainable fix. 5 min
- Application <=> Server Management Protocol (ASMP) WordPress can auto-update its own code but stays blind to the PHP and MySQL versions underneath it. A proposal, drafted with core contributors at WordCamp Europe, for a bidirectional protocol that lets applications query server capabilities and request infrastructure changes hosts stay free to honour or refuse. 4 min
On stage
Signature talks
- The AI-First WordPress Site: Crawler to Citation What changes if you design a WordPress site for an AI agent as the primary reader, not a retrofit afterthought? The architectural shifts — content modelling, addressability, provenance — that separate sites cited in the agentic era from those crawled over silently. WordCamp Europe 2026
- WordPress's AI Roadmap: What the Industry Needs to Know Two decades of web dominance gave WordPress a training-data moat; the next two years turn on whether it builds for the AI agents handling content discovery and site management. The trajectory from that moat to the Abilities API, MCP adoption, and AI Building Blocks — and what the industry must work out before 7.0. CloudFest 2026
- The Agentic SEO Stack: Context over Prompts Engineering-minded SEO teams can move past one-off AI prompting to production-grade agentic workflows. How context engineering and a coding agent like Claude Code turn complex SEO objectives into repeatable, multi-step systems that scale an agency's expertise — instead of leaning on clever prompts. brightonSEO
Start a conversation
Bring the terrain into view.
If the decision crosses systems, teams, and operations, start with the context. I'll help identify the fault line and the route forward.
- Technical leadership (CTO / Principal Architect level)
- Agentic architecture design and advisory
- Conference keynotes and talks
- Technical due diligence