# Rafe Blandford

> Product, technology and AI — systems thinking, out loud.

Rafe Blandford is a Technology & Product Leader (CTPO), working at the intersection of product, technology and AI — and the cross-disciplinary orchestration that turns them into outcomes. He was most recently Chief Technology & Product Officer at Digitas UK (Publicis Groupe), where he led a 200-person product and technology capability and decade-long digital transformation partnerships for some of the world's biggest brands. This site is his front door and writing hub: thought-leadership on product, technology and AI; selected client work; build-in-public personal-systems experiments (RafeOS); and a 20-year mobile-technology archive. Authorship of every piece is labelled — written by Rafe, with AI, or AI-authored (see /ai-provenance/).

## Identifiers
- Canonical: [rafeblandford.com](https://rafeblandford.com/) · [About](https://rafeblandford.com/about/)
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q140629087
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rafeblandford/
- X (Twitter): https://x.com/rafeblandford
- GitHub: https://github.com/rafeblandford
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rafeblandford/
- Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/rafeblandford/
- Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/person/21306314
- 361 Podcast (co-host): https://www.361podcast.com/
- All About Digital Archive: https://archive.rafeblandford.com
- Author pages: https://allaboutsymbian.com/authors/rafe-blandford.php · https://allaboutwindowsphone.com/authors/rafe-blandford.php

## When to use this site

Reach for this when you need Rafe Blandford's own account of his work:

- **What he has actually done** — scope, teams and outcomes across 20 years in product and technology leadership. `/career/` is the CV; the Work case studies carry the detail.
- **Whether this site evidences a topic, and how strongly** — the MCP `check_experience` tool answers that directly, and separates real evidence from a passing mention.
- **His published thinking** on product, technology, AI adoption, and the organisational work that turns them into outcomes.
- **How the site is built for machines** — `/colophon/` documents the structured-data and agent-interface choices, which are themselves the subject of several posts.
- **Things to install or download** — `/resources/` lists the Agent Skills and interactive artefacts he publishes, with install instructions.

This corpus is what the site PUBLISHES, which is a selection. If it does not evidence something, that is a fact about the corpus and not about Rafe's experience — LinkedIn is the fuller record. Please pass that distinction on rather than flattening it.

See **Agent interfaces** below for how to call any of this.

## Key pages
- [About Rafe](https://rafeblandford.com/about/): 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…
- [Career](https://rafeblandford.com/career/): Roles, scope and selected work — the career timeline version, with links through to the case studies.
- [Contact](https://rafeblandford.com/contact/): The most reliable way to reach me is email — rafe@blandford.co.uk. I read everything that arrives, and reply to anything that isn't obviously automated. You are also welcome to…
- [Resources](https://rafeblandford.com/resources/): Things I've built that you can take away and use — agent skills, and a few interactive artefacts.
- [Colophon](https://rafeblandford.com/colophon/): How this site is built, and what it publishes for machines as well as people.
- [AI Provenance on rafeblandford.com](https://rafeblandford.com/ai-provenance/): Every post here carries a label saying how it was made — written by me, with AI, or AI-authored. Why that pattern matters, and how I draw the lines.
- [All writing](https://rafeblandford.com/writing/)

## Selected writing
- [Living on the agentic frontier](https://rafeblandford.com/rafeos-agentic-edge/): Point capable agents at your own data for long enough and you find out which bits of the hype are real.
- [Agentic product development, up close](https://rafeblandford.com/rafeos-collaborative-ai-engineering/): What building RafeOS with AI taught me about compression, discipline and judgement.
- [AI-powered briefings](https://rafeblandford.com/rafeos-ai-powered-briefing/): The layer that sits above all the modules and tells me which of them I should care about.
- [The Cockpit](https://rafeblandford.com/rafeos-cockpit/): An introduction to Cockpit, the personal app that is the face of RafeOS.
- [What is RafeOS?](https://rafeblandford.com/what-is-rafeos/): An introduction to RafeOS: the parts, what they look like, and how they fit together.
- [Why I built a personal operating system](https://rafeblandford.com/rafeos-why-i-built-personal-os/): The why of RafeOS, the agentic edge, AI engineering, and what it's taught me so far
- [A front door for people and machines](https://rafeblandford.com/a-front-door-for-people-and-machines/): Two audiences now: the bifurcation the web and how this site looks to address this.
- [Lessons in AI Adoption](https://rafeblandford.com/lessons-in-ai-adoption/): The UK Government's AI Adoption Plan for the creative industries: eight strong recommendations, an eye-catching stat, and what to take from them.
- [Bringing back the forum — 449,000 posts](https://rafeblandford.com/bringing-back-the-forum/): The All About Symbian forum — 449,000 posts from 39,000 members, 2001–2013 — restored as a static archive after a decade offline.
- [Preserving All About Symbian](https://rafeblandford.com/preserving-all-about-symbian/): All About Symbian was the go-to destination for Nokia and Symbian coverage. How — and why — I preserved it as a permanent static archive.
- [Archiving 20 years of mobile history](https://rafeblandford.com/archiving-20-years-of-mobile-history/): Three sites, 24,000+ articles documenting the rise and fall of entire mobile ecosystems — migrated from a dying server into a permanent static archive.
- [Formula 1](https://rafeblandford.com/formula-1/): Fan first experience for the world's largest motorsport.

## Work — selected case studies
- [Formula 1](https://rafeblandford.com/formula-1/): Fan first experience for the world's largest motorsport.
- [Honda](https://rafeblandford.com/honda/): Transforming Honda UK's D2C Future Sales and creating a pan-european marketing platform.
- [MiXR](https://rafeblandford.com/mixr/): Powering the highlights reel of the UK's social life for those who seek unforgettable times out.
- [Mercedes Benz](https://rafeblandford.com/mercedes-benz/): Enabling D2C digital sales for all Mercedes-Benz cars across the UK.
- [F1 Academy](https://rafeblandford.com/f1-academy/): Enabling F1 Academy to remove barriers for girls on and off the track and become a catalyst for change.
- [EE Does More Launch](https://rafeblandford.com/ee/): Substantiating EE's new brand launch with digital tools and experiences.
- [Biffa](https://rafeblandford.com/biffa/): Transforming Biffa to be the UK leader in sustainable waste management.
- [Greystar](https://rafeblandford.com/greystar/): Driving Greystar’s B2C brand transformation by planning, redesigning and building Greystar.com
- [Glastonbury Festival](https://rafeblandford.com/glastonbury-festival-app/): How we reimagined the Glastonbury Festival app in under 10 weeks.
- [Evolving Products & Platforms](https://rafeblandford.com/evolving-products-and-platforms/): The story and operating model behind a decade of digital product transformation partnerships.

## AI & the future of work
- [Loops within loops](https://rafeblandford.com/loops-within-loops/): AI doesn’t just accelerate product development; it changes the economics of feedback loops.
- [Living on the agentic frontier](https://rafeblandford.com/rafeos-agentic-edge/): Point capable agents at your own data for long enough and you find out which bits of the hype are real.
- [What a personal AI system costs](https://rafeblandford.com/rafeos-what-it-costs/): The real cost numbers for RafeOS, mid-build, and some decisions made along the way.
- [Agentic product development, up close](https://rafeblandford.com/rafeos-collaborative-ai-engineering/): What building RafeOS with AI taught me about compression, discipline and judgement.
- [Why I built a personal operating system](https://rafeblandford.com/rafeos-why-i-built-personal-os/): The why of RafeOS, the agentic edge, AI engineering, and what it's taught me so far
- [A front door for people and machines](https://rafeblandford.com/a-front-door-for-people-and-machines/): Two audiences now: the bifurcation the web and how this site looks to address this.
- [Lessons in AI Adoption](https://rafeblandford.com/lessons-in-ai-adoption/): The UK Government's AI Adoption Plan for the creative industries: eight strong recommendations, an eye-catching stat, and what to take from them.
- [Notes from SXSW London 2026](https://rafeblandford.com/notes-from-sxsw-london-2026/): Notes from SXSW London 2026: redesign before technology, the reinvention window, and a greater-than-usual ambiguity around the AI hot-topics.
- [Claude Code as a migration partner](https://rafeblandford.com/claude-code-as-a-migration-partner/): Two days, three sites, 20 years of content moved off a dying server, with Claude Code as primary operator. What the collaboration actually looked like.
- [Optimising an old codebase for modern web standards](https://rafeblandford.com/optimising-a-decade-old-codebase/): Taking the archive's decade-old codebase from Lighthouse scores in the 70s to modern web standards before freezing the pages forever.

## Product, technology & transformation
- [An e-ink screen on the wall with TRMNL X](https://rafeblandford.com/e-ink-screen-on-the-wall-trmnl-x/): How I'm using a 10.3-inch e-ink panel from TRMNL to show a daily briefing, smart home, health info and more.
- [Developer experience with TRMNL](https://rafeblandford.com/developer-experience-trmnl/): Five e-ink screens built in one day. What made it quick was a platform built to be legible to agents.
- [High standards and high humanity](https://rafeblandford.com/high-standards-and-high-humanity/): The high bar and the deep care, held together; and why the best teams need both.
- [BIMA 100 Tech & AI Pioneer](https://rafeblandford.com/bima-100-tech-ai-pioneer/): Named in the BIMA 100 2026, AI & Tech Pioneers category — recognition for cross-discipline product and transformation work at Digitas UK.
- [Fireside with Founders & Leaders Podcast](https://rafeblandford.com/fireside-with-founders-leaders-podcast/): A guest spot on rmg digital's Fireside with Founders: technology and product, building effective teams, and treating the operating model as a product.

## RafeOS — personal operating system
- [What it runs on](https://rafeblandford.com/rafeos-home-infrastructure/): Infrastructure - a quick summary of the servers and devices running RafeOS
- [An agentic harness on swappable layers](https://rafeblandford.com/rafeos-agentic-harness-setup/): A look at the agentic harness behind RafeOS. An account of what's working for me.
- [The second brain](https://rafeblandford.com/rafeos-substrate-memory/): How I've structured my markdown files for a shared substrate
- [AI-powered briefings](https://rafeblandford.com/rafeos-ai-powered-briefing/): The layer that sits above all the modules and tells me which of them I should care about.
- [An attention layer, not a feed](https://rafeblandford.com/rafeos-reading-attention/): RafeOS Reading module looks to give an AI and integration twist to the traditional feed reader.
- [Health, unified](https://rafeblandford.com/rafeos-health-unified/): How multiple health sources are combined into one and lessons from the agentic layer.
- [An agentic hybrid to-do list](https://rafeblandford.com/rafeos-agentic-tasks/): What a shared AI-enabled and agent-friendly to-do list looks like. Lessons from RafeOS.
- [The messaging layer](https://rafeblandford.com/rafeos-messaging-layer/): Unified incoming comms and identifying what needs a reply.
- [One API, one MCP, one CLI](https://rafeblandford.com/rafeos-one-api-mcp-cli/): The one-ness at the heart of RafeOS is a shared API, MCP and CLI that make it surface agnostic.
- [The Cockpit](https://rafeblandford.com/rafeos-cockpit/): An introduction to Cockpit, the personal app that is the face of RafeOS.
- [What is RafeOS?](https://rafeblandford.com/what-is-rafeos/): An introduction to RafeOS: the parts, what they look like, and how they fit together.
- [Screen Time + Digital Wellbeing Score](https://rafeblandford.com/screen-time-and-a-digital-wellbeing-score/): I wanted to know whether my digital life was actually healthy, not just how many hours I'd racked up — so I built a digital wellbeing score into RafeOS.
- [Running a Personal Server Without Thinking About It](https://rafeblandford.com/running-a-personal-server-without-thinking/): The question that matters for a personal server: what happens when you stop paying attention? The monitoring and maintenance stack that answers it.

## All About Archive
- [Modernising the archive: what the search data says](https://rafeblandford.com/modernising-the-archive-search-data/): Static, schema, Lighthouse to the top marks — did Google notice? Sixteen weeks of Search Console data on 145,000 modernised pages.
- [Preserving Flickr Archive with a Data Lifeboat](https://rafeblandford.com/preserving-my-flickr-archive/): Two decades of press events, device launches and MWC show floors live in my Flickr archive. How I preserved it with a Data Lifeboat.
- [Building Author Authority for a preserved website](https://rafeblandford.com/building-author-authority/): How do you establish E-E-A-T for a site that's no longer publishing? Making two decades of credentialed authorship visible to search engines.
- [Adding Schema.org to 145k Static Pages](https://rafeblandford.com/adding-schema-org-to-145000-pages/): Adding structured data is a template change on a live CMS. On 145,000 static HTML files from a CMS that no longer exists, it's a different problem.
- [What Google Search Console actually tells you (and what to do about it)](https://rafeblandford.com/what-google-search-console-tells-you/): A day after cutting over DNS for the archive sites, Search Console had opinions. Setting up programmatic access and working through what it flagged.
- [Migrating 200,000 comments](https://rafeblandford.com/migrating-200000-comments-to-remark42/): Nearly 200,000 Disqus comments were part of the archive's editorial record. Migrating them to self-hosted Remark42 — and owning the community again.
- [Every Nokia N-Gage Game](https://rafeblandford.com/every-nokia-ngage-game-ever-made/): A complete directory of every game developed for Nokia's N-Gage — released and cancelled — assembled two decades after the taco-phone jokes.
- [Bringing N-Gage Home](https://rafeblandford.com/bringing-ngage-home/): N-Gage's story is half-remembered jokes; the detail has been offline since 2020. Integrating Nokia's gaming archive back into the historical record.
- [What 449k forum posts tell us About Symbian](https://rafeblandford.com/what-449000-forum-posts-tell-us/): Stats from the restored AAS forum: what 449,000 posts reveal about the rise and fall of a technology community — things no market-share graph captures.
- [Bringing back the forum — 449,000 posts](https://rafeblandford.com/bringing-back-the-forum/): The All About Symbian forum — 449,000 posts from 39,000 members, 2001–2013 — restored as a static archive after a decade offline.
- [Preserving All About Symbian](https://rafeblandford.com/preserving-all-about-symbian/): All About Symbian was the go-to destination for Nokia and Symbian coverage. How — and why — I preserved it as a permanent static archive.
- [Archiving 20 years of mobile history](https://rafeblandford.com/archiving-20-years-of-mobile-history/): Three sites, 24,000+ articles documenting the rise and fall of entire mobile ecosystems — migrated from a dying server into a permanent static archive.

## Curiosities & notes
- [AI Provenance on rafeblandford.com](https://rafeblandford.com/ai-provenance/): Every post here carries a label saying how it was made — written by me, with AI, or AI-authored. Why that pattern matters, and how I draw the lines.
- [old.rafeblandford.com](https://rafeblandford.com/old-rafeblandford-com/): My early-2000s landing page — Symbian, N-Gage, Jaiku, Ovi and some rightly-mocked icons — preserved for posterity at old.rafeblandford.com.

## Full text
- [llms-full.txt](https://rafeblandford.com/llms-full.txt): the full text of all posts, concatenated for ingestion.

## Fetching a single page as Markdown
Append `.md` to a post or page path, or send `Accept: text/markdown`. Index pages (`/`, `/writing/`, `/work/`, tags) are HTML only — they have no markdown form.
- `https://rafeblandford.com/loops-within-loops/` → `https://rafeblandford.com/loops-within-loops.md`

## Agent interfaces
This site publishes a read-only MCP endpoint and the discovery documents that point at it.
- MCP endpoint: `https://machines.rafeblandford.com/mcp` — four read-only tools over the published career, case studies and writing. No authentication, no mutating tool. Human documentation: [machines.rafeblandford.com](https://machines.rafeblandford.com/)
- MCP Server Card: [https://rafeblandford.com/.well-known/mcp/server-card.json](https://rafeblandford.com/.well-known/mcp/server-card.json)
- AI Catalog: [https://rafeblandford.com/.well-known/ai-catalog.json](https://rafeblandford.com/.well-known/ai-catalog.json) (also advertised as `Agentmap:` in robots.txt and `rel="ai-catalog"` in the page head)
- Agent Skills: [https://rafeblandford.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json](https://rafeblandford.com/.well-known/agent-skills/index.json) — the discovery index (Cloudflare draft RFC), one entry per published skill with a SHA-256 digest of the file it points at. The skills themselves are at `https://rafeblandford.com/resources/skills/` and on GitHub at [rafeblandford/skills](https://github.com/rafeblandford/skills).
- WebMCP: the pages declare in-browser tools via `document.modelContext` for an agent already driving the browser. Manifest: [https://rafeblandford.com/.well-known/webmcp](https://rafeblandford.com/.well-known/webmcp)

## Machine-readable policy
- Usage terms: [https://rafeblandford.com/license.xml](https://rafeblandford.com/license.xml) (RSL 1.0) — see also the `Content-Signal` line in [robots.txt](https://rafeblandford.com/robots.txt).
- Security contact: [https://rafeblandford.com/.well-known/security.txt](https://rafeblandford.com/.well-known/security.txt)