Machine Experience: The Handbook - a book launch with Tom Cranstoun

By Janus Boye

Practical details

  • When:
    Wednesday, 27 May 2026
    15:00–15:30 Aarhus / 9:00 Toronto

  • Where: Online

  • Format: 30 minutes conversation + Q&A

  • Free registration below

The web has a new audience: machines.

AI agents, search assistants, summarisers and retrieval systems are already reading, interpreting and re-presenting what organisations publish. Sometimes they get it right. Sometimes they guess. And when they guess badly, the wrong answer may still carry your brand.

In this member call, we’ll explore Machine Experience — MX — and what it means to design digital content and platforms so machines can read, trust and act on them reliably. The session draws on Tom Cranstoun’s new book, Machine Experience: The Handbook, which frames MX as a practical discipline for making the web work for AI agents and everyone else.

Tom Cranstoun on stage at CMS Summit 26

This is not about chasing the latest optimisation trick. It is about a deeper shift in what digital quality means: from content that can be found, to content that can be understood, verified and used across pages, PDFs, datasets, APIs and whatever agents read next.

Tom Cranstoun is the founder of The Gathering, a new community championing open standards for MX and he has spent decades building digital products and platforms. A long-standing member of the CMS Experts community, he brings a practical perspective to the question of how content systems need to evolve as AI agents become part of the audience.

What we’ll explore

  • Why AI agents are becoming an important new audience for digital content

  • Where SEO, accessibility and GEO stop short — and where MX begins

  • What machines need to know: provenance, ownership, freshness, permissions and trust

  • How CMSs, DXPs and enterprise content platforms might need to adapt

Sign up below and we’ll send you the calendar invite within 24 hours. If you can’t make it, we will record the session so that you can enjoy it later. Everyone who has signed up will get notified when the recording and summary is published.

Finally, feel free to share this call invitation with a colleague or friend who’d enjoy it too.

Free registration for the 27 May call on machine experience

The conversation continues

If reading and being a part of an online call is not enough, you’re very welcome to join us more actively. Our community is built around learning together, comparing notes, and exploring how theory meets practice across roles, industries and regions.

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