Tom Cranstoun (UK)
Co-founder of Tityra
Writing the book on MX (Machine Experience) and founded The Gathering — an independent, open standards community focused on metadata that helps machines understand documents
People in the CMS world know him as “The AEM Guy”, where he spent over a decade deep inside Adobe Experience Manager, building content systems for the BBC, Twitter, Nissan-Renault and Ford
An active member in the CMS Experts community who loves to travel and is out and about in the world with his wife for about 6 months of the year
Meet Tom at:
Cambridge Summit 26
Presentation: TBD
Date: Tuesday, October 27
Tom on stage at CMS Summit 25 in Frankfurt
About Tom Cranstoun
People in the CMS world know Tom as The AEM Guy. He spent over a decade deep inside Adobe Experience Manager, building content systems for the BBC, Twitter, Nissan-Renault and Ford.
Today, Tom is no longer The AEM Guy. He is The MX Guy. MX stands for Machine Experience. It is what happens when you design the web not just for people, but for every machine that uses it — AI agents, crawlers, voice assistants, screen readers, and automation tools.
In January 2026, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Anthropic all launched AI agents that act in the real world. Shopping, booking, researching. Every single one reads websites that were never designed for them. They guess. They hallucinate. They get prices wrong.
Tom also founded The Gathering — an independent, open standards community focused on metadata that helps machines understand documents.
Tom works through CogNovaMX Ltd on advisory, consultancy, and implementation projects where experience and objectivity matter most.
In October 2026, Tom co-founded Tityra to help organisations make their websites and documents easier for software, including AI systems, to access, interpret and use. Tityra’s Machine Experience (MX) audits review how content is delivered and structured, and give technical and content teams evidence and prioritised recommendations for improvement.
About Tityra
Tityra is a York-based company focused on Machine Experience (MX): how well software and AI systems can read the content organisations publish. When machines miss important information, that content can show up incompletely or inaccurately in AI-powered tools and answers.
Its audits produce a report with documented findings and evidence that teams can act on, and they can be repeated to track progress over time. Tityra works with publishers, ecommerce businesses, SaaS companies and agencies, and offers everything from a free check of the first ten pages to in-depth expert reviews.
Blog posts with Tom
The AI Isn't the Problem. The Web Is (June 26)
The Invisible Users (March 26)
Websites That Work Perfectly - Until They Don't (January 26)
What a difference a year makes for the Adobe Universal Editor (June 25)
'How did I not know this?’ CMS Summit 25 changed my understanding of AI (May 25)
Bridging Open Source & Enterprise - AEM, Composability, and the Future of DXPs (March 25)
From Skeptic to Convert: Understanding AI's Role in Modern Development
(February 25)
From Commodore PET to DeepSeek-R1 (January 25)
What’s the impact of the new Robot-First Web? (January 25)
Gen AI prompting is just another programming language (2024)
Getting through the AI hype: Selecting an AI model that works for you (2024)
Introducing: The Universal Editor for Adobe Experience Manager (2024)
Previous conference appearances
CMScamp 26
Location: Palma
Dates: 23 - 25 September
CMS Connect 26
Presentation: Three things my radio won’t shut up about
Slides: Download as PowerPoint
CMS Summit 26
Presentation: The Web Has a New Audience
Slides: Download as PowerPoint
CMS Summit 25
Presentation: What are we missing from AI? (slides)