Tom has been building content systems since 1977, starting with assembler code before the term "CMS" existed. He co-authored Superbase, an early database and content-management platform that shipped worldwide, and worked on the BBC's electronic newsroom system. That three-decade arc of infrastructure work - from assembler to Adobe Experience Manager to Edge Delivery Services - is the foundation behind the nickname "The AEM Guy".
His enterprise track record includes some of the world's largest AEM implementations: Technical Design Authority for EE's customer-facing website during the Orange / T-Mobile merger, architectural lead for what was at the time the UK's largest AEM deployment at Nissan-Renault (500 staff, 200+ websites, 30 languages, five brands), mentoring MediaMonks' AEM team whose Twitter client declared them the best AEM team they'd worked with, and advisory roles at Ford, Jaguar Land Rover, and the BBC.
Working with Adobe Edge Delivery Services over the past few years revealed something unexpected: the structure that makes content work for AI agents is mostly what every system needs. The patterns that fail for AI - hidden state, ephemeral feedback, incomplete metadata - also fail for humans with disabilities, high cognitive load, or unreliable conditions. That insight became Machine Experience (MX), an open standard for metadata that travels with a file and explains its provenance, context, and intended use.
Tom founded CogNovaMX to build commercial products on the MX standard and co-founded The Gathering, the community-led standards body that governs it. He has been writing publicly about the AI-native web since January 2024, two years before it became commercially urgent. Available for interim consultancy, advisory engagements, and strategic architecture reviews through Digital Domain Technologies Ltd.