# craftscale

> Technology and innovation consultancy led by Ian Smith, blending Design Thinking with pragmatic cloud and AI architecture to help clients better serve their customers.

craftscale Ltd is a UK-based consultancy led by Ian Smith. Ian works with clients as a fractional CTO and product-development partner. Current engagements include Squadify, where he is fractional CTO, providing senior technology direction to the leadership team and leading the AI work — the AI Insights engine and new LLM-driven coaching workflows. He also trains teams on LLMs and AI coding agents, and speaks regularly on AI, design, and the future of technology. The site hosts his writing and podcasts.

## About craftscale
- [About](https://www.craftscale.uk/about): Ian Smith is the founder of craftscale Ltd — a fractional CTO with a hands-on AI practice. Currently CTO at Squadify. Behind that, 30 years tackling thorny technology problems, 23 of them at IBM.
- [Services](https://www.craftscale.uk/services): Three offerings, all rooted in AI-fluent technical leadership: senior fractional CTO engagements, hands-on AI product development, and training and speaking on LLMs and AI coding agents.

## Blog
- [The Third Reader: Making your site agent-ready](https://www.craftscale.uk/blog/agent-ready-site): Four small changes that made craftscale.uk easier for AI agents to read: a site summary at /llms.txt, serving plain markdown to agents that ask for it, advertising the site's other resources in HTTP headers, and a robots.txt that explicitly welcomes the AI crawlers.
- [Think first, AI second: Using AI in Design Thinking](https://www.craftscale.uk/blog/using-ai-in-design-thinking): AI has a role in creative work — but only if we use it with intent. Here's how to bring AI into each stage of Enterprise Design Thinking without letting it do the thinking for you.
- [Lightning Talk: Press Record and Hope](https://www.craftscale.uk/blog/press-record-and-hope-talk): My talk on what it's like to be a podcaster, delivered at the Ilkley Arts lightning talks event in December 2024.
- [Talk: Building with LLMs](https://www.craftscale.uk/blog/building-with-llms-talk): Summary of the talk I gave in November 2024 at the Mindstone AI meetup in London.
- [Working in the Metaverse](https://www.craftscale.uk/blog/working-in-the-metaverse): Revisiting 3D virtual environments for work — from IBM's Second Life experiments in 2006 to trying Horizon Workrooms in 2022. Why VR still feels like a significant future for remote teamwork, even if today's metaverse isn't quite there yet.
- [How To Edit Your Podcast](https://www.craftscale.uk/blog/podcast-editing): A walkthrough of my six-stage podcast editing process — from assembling audio in Ferrite Recording Studio, through strip silence and review passes, to final audio engineering. A starting point for building your own editing approach.
- [Using Notion to Manage Your Podcast](https://www.craftscale.uk/blog/managing-podcast-with-notion): How to use Notion databases to manage a podcast's production — tracking episodes, guests, recording and release dates, and editing status across calendar, table, and status-board views.
- [How to do a Lightning Talk](https://www.craftscale.uk/blog/lightning-talks-howto): A practical guide to putting together and delivering a 90-second lightning talk, using a three-part context, story, and call-to-action structure you can prepare even on the day of the event.

## Podcasting
- [Podcasting](https://www.craftscale.uk/podcasting): What A Lot Of Things is Ian's technology podcast with Ash Winter — tech talk from a human perspective. The page features the latest episode, the full archive, and subscribe links.

## Feeds and sitemaps
- [Blog RSS feed](https://www.craftscale.uk/rss.xml): Subscribe to new blog posts.
- [Sitemap](https://www.craftscale.uk/sitemap.xml): Machine-readable index of all pages.

## Optional
- [Privacy Policy](https://www.craftscale.uk/privacy): Privacy policy for craftscale.uk - what data we collect, how we use it, and visitor rights under UK data protection law.