About Rafe
I've spent my career at the meeting point of innovation, creativity and people. First as a creator, journalist, and founder; then as a mobile tech consultant; and now as a tech and product person creating and leading teams around digital transformation.
One belief runs through all of it:
High standards and high humanity get you to great outcomes.
Most cultures quietly treat these as a trade-off: drive hard for the work, or be kind to the people doing it. I think that's a false choice, and holding both at once, consistently, is harder and rarer than it sounds. When you get it right they compound: high standards give people work worth committing to; high humanity gives them the safety to do it well.
The journey
I got here the long way round. In 2001 I founded All About Symbian, which grew into a family of independent mobile-technology publications — All About Symbian, Windows Phone and Mobile, running to more than 24,000 articles over 10+ years. I wrote close to 5,000 of them myself, and became one of the more recognised voices of the dawn of the smartphone era. It also gave me an insider's perspective on being part of, and living through, a major tech-driven change.
That also led into consultancy around mobile tech, acting as a strategic advisor for mobile developers, startups, and industry giants. Along the way I also co-hosted the 361 Podcast with Ewan MacLeod and Ben Smith, a long-running conversation about where mobile technology met culture and change.
From 2014 I carried a founder's and system-thinker's mindset into over a decade of executive-level digital agency leadership, most recently as Chief Technology and Product Officer (CTPO) at Digitas UK, part of Publicis Groupe — leading and directing teams for the “product and platforms” capability and delivering for a varied client portfolio across transformation, digital products and marketing experiences.
Some select highlights include:
- Building the first mobile products for National Trust, E.ON and Hastings Direct
- Long-running, scaled, digital product and transformation programmes for F1 and Honda
- Customer experience and marketing transformation for EE and Stonegate
- Tech for Good for Battersea Dogs & Cats and CV Anonymisation
- Capability building, including lean methods, and, more recently, AI adoption
- Long-standing advocacy for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, including board member of VivaWomen! and partnership with Next Tech Girls.
Selected clients I've worked with at Digitas.
View the full record, with roles, selected work, and timeline.
Today
I still sit at the intersection of product, technology and AI. Currently, there's a focus on how AI is changing the way we think, work and lead, but at the core it's still about using product-thinking and technology to deliver purposeful outcomes and meaningful transformation.
There are also some personal projects like RafeOS, an agentically powered personal "operating system", and the All About Digital Archive, a 2026 project to archive and preserve the All About sites from the earlier chapter of my life.
Here on rafeblandford.com is where I write it all down: essays, thoughts, working notes, and the curiosities I collect along the way. My own front door – for people and machines.
What's next
I'm deliberately choosing what comes next: an executive product and technology leadership role, CTPO, CPO, CTO, Transformation or equivalent, where product, technology and transformation come together, and where I can shape the direction and outcomes of a business.
I'm drawn to organisations with something real to build or change – a product or platform at the heart of the business, or a transformation where the technical and the human have to move together – and to cultures where high standards and high humanity get to compound.
If that sounds like something you're building, I'd like to hear about it: get in touch or find me on LinkedIn.