Signal and Cipher

Signal and Cipher is the Future Decoded. We are an innovation and change management firm dedicated to helping the most impactful companies in the world navigate, operationalize, and monetize the impact of AI to drive the future of work.

From Hollywood studios to tech darlings and CPG, our clients are looking for ways to build the future today.

Keynote Speaker

I speak frequently on the future of work and the impact of rapid change on enterprises, employees, consumers, and the global economy.

Keynote Platforms: 
Billion Dollar Teams: The Future of an AI-Powered Workforce
Future Forward: Navigating Exponential Change
Creative Machines: AI and the Future of Creativity

Recent keynotes include Deloitte, Microsoft, Synchrony, Puig, SXSW, Adobe, Febraban, Icatu, Totvs, and Itau.

I have also given guest lectures on leadership and AI at several universities, including the University of Chicago, Northwestern, Loyola, DePaul, UIC, and IIT.

International Keynote Speaker

DeFiance Media

I write and produce the Future Report segment as a part of Defiance Daily on the Defiance Media Network, using Hour One's powerful synthetic media platform. Each news segment is delivered by an AI version of me - a Deepfake.
You can catch the segment at https://defiance.media or streaming on over 100MM devices and smart TVs worldwide.

AI Correspondent - Synthetic Host of "Future Report"

Coastal Spritz

Interim Fractional CMO

Update Beverage

Caffeine is obsolete. It’s time for an Update. Crush procrastination with a smart energy drink that's more advanced than caffeine. Now available at www.drinkupdate.com

* Rebuilt the brand from the ground up after two prior agencies failed to design a distinctive brand for this new beverage category
* Built a nimble team of freelancers to establish a visual identity, brand guidelines and design system, including an extensive library of 3D assets, and feature animations
* Defined core value propositions and key demographics for launch
* Lead launch strategy and execution 
* Worked with bleeding-edge tech platforms like Unreal Engine 5 and LightTwist to develop immersive brand experiences

Head Of Brand + Futurist in Residence

Cocktails For Hope

•  Successfully lobbied for the legalized sale of Cocktails-to-go in Illinois - providing bars and 
    restaurants a revenue lifeline during Covid
•  Built a team of 50+ volunteers, including some of the world's biggest names in hospitality
•  Co-wrote legislation that received overwhelming bi-partisan support 

Cocktails For Hope is an initiative that advocates for the temporary sale of pre-mixed cocktails in containers sealed by on-premise license holding establishments in the State of Illinois. Cocktails For Hope is committed to creating necessary cash flow to bars and restaurants throughout the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic to allow them to remain in business. The initiative also seeks to create an open line of communication with lawmakers for continued conversations as the hospitality landscape evolves over time.               Visit us at: www.cocktailsforhope.org

Co-Founder

SWAPP PROTOCOL (NFT Marketplace, Decentralized Exchange, Data Monetization)

Advising Swapp on 
- Implementation of structure and process needed to scale effectively
- Marketing and communications strategy

NFT Marketing and Operations Advisor

XR Founders

We are a collective of over 15,000+ interdisciplinary voices sharing ideas to shape the future of XR. Together we explore new capabilities, diversity, ethical design, accessibility, sustainability, and social impact within the industry. 

Join us on Clubhouse every Thursday and Sunday at  5PM ET.

Cohost

Hawkeye

Epsilon agency is now part of Hawkeye!

We’re a one-of-a-kind human experience agency.

We orchestrate experiences for people across their customer journey— leveraging human insight, the world’s best data, empathic creativity and the most powerful technology available. We do all this to deliver business results for our clients and to create more meaningful connections between humans and brands.

We call these Connections Designed to Matter™.

VP, Group Director: Digital Strategy + Innovation

Epsilon

Established the Creative Technology group to explore, prototype, and deploy new technologies in service of solving client business challenges.

Digital Strategy Practice Lead
Executive Development Program Graduate

Vice President, Digital Strategy

Decoding the future of work with the technologies of tomorrow | Futurist | Speaker

I help executives (including C-Suite and NEDs), and marketing teams understand the impact of AI on their organizations and augment the power of their teams with AI and reimagined workflows. 

For over a decade I've helped companies do mind-bending things with new and emerging technologies by showing them how to create, monetize and scale with bleeding-edge tech when few best practices and instruction manuals exist. At Signal and Cipher, we're focused on decoding the future of work for our clients.

My mission as a futurist and speaker is to inspire people to take ownership of their role in shaping the future, participate in building the world they want to see, be the wrong person asking the right questions, and approach the future with wonder, curiosity, and hope, not fear and confusion. The future is ours to shape, but you don't win by being as a spectator. 


_____

Considered one of the top voices in AI and the future of work, Ian is a trusted advisor to the world's most innovative companies. His firm Signal and Cipher transforms companies into AI-ready organizations with training, workforce reengineering, design, and development, resulting in meaningful routes to innovation that impact the bottom line, inspire cultural change, and create new products and ways of working.

Previously responsible for P&Ls and innovation departments at the largest agencies in the world, Ian is known for making bleeding-edge technology understandable and monetizable. Brands he has advised over the last decade include Samsung, Intel, Coca-Cola, Google, Microsoft, Nike, and dozens more.

Ian has pioneered a digitally immersive presentation style that brings artificial intelligence and extended reality to life so audiences can understand the future of technology in actionable ways. Ian is also the co-owner of a production studio designing virtual worlds and the first person ever to host a news segment as a synthetic human, streaming to over 100 million devices around the world.

A classically trained musician, Ian understands the magnitude of AI's coming impact on human creativity. As a strategist and speaker, he strives to educate stakeholders on the real-world implications of emerging technologies so they can make informed decisions that positively shape our world and advance humanity. In a rapidly evolving world that some consider dystopian, Ian remains a steadfast optimist and offers what everyone needs now: hope.

Specialties:  AI • Machine Vision • Emerging Technology • Digital Strategy • Process Engineering • Prototyping • Systems Thinking • Team Leadership

Ian Beacraft

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Senior Solutions Architect, Global Financial Services

BDO USA, LLP

* Direct influence over $3M+ yearly revenue as both pre-sales engineer and technical architect, with daily oversight of the team's pipeline and project delivery staffing
* Impacted over 50% YoY Azure cloud consumption growth since 2017 by acting as the Azure Cloud Services Provider (CSP) Evangelist internally and with strategic customers. Currently leading efforts to gain Azure Expert MSP certification and further drive cloud conversions.
* Established and leading the Advanced Networking + Storage engineering community, serving as the main source of information for well-architected frameworks and best practices for our team of cloud and infrastructure consultants

Experienced Manager

SWC Technology Partners

* Key member of small ISG Strategy group acting as pre-sales engineering, architecture and delivery lead across all infrastructure and cloud technologies.
* Acted as one of two Partner Cloud Solutions Architects (P-CSA) with Microsoft, engaging with customers in Immersion Experiences that focused on cloud technologies and strategies for Azure/O365 migrations.
* Developed framework of and delivered on Cloud Economic Assessments for customers looking to migrate to Azure, building cost models, cloud model benefit analysis and high-level migration strategies.

Effective January 17, 2020, SWC Technology Partners combined with BDO’s Technology
& Business Transformation Services Practice to form BDO Digital.

Principal Consultant

* Focused on architecture and implementation of Microsoft Unified Communications solutions around Lync, Skype for Business and Exchange.
* Championed network reference architectures for UC projects, with a focus on proper end-to-end packet prioritization, queueing and Edge QoS.
* Delivered early datacenter migrations to public cloud services like Azure and AWS, and designed and implemented BGP-based cloud VPN failover strategies.
* Architected and implemented the largest Skype for Business deployment for 30k users and 100 agent Zeacom contact center.
* Developed our UC framework and best practices on migrations and greenfield deployments.

Senior Consultant

Aqueity Inc.

Achievements:

* Lead role in the development and implementation of new client solutions such as VMware/Hyper-V private clouds, SQL failover clusters, Lync and Exchange Unified Messaging, WAN optimization, and migrations to public cloud services like EC2 and Azure.
* Managed all on-premise to hosted services migrations, resulting in substantial client savings and reduced management expenses.
* Built new virtualized internal IT environment using VMware vSphere, Windows Server 2003 R2, Exchange 2010 DAG and UM, SharePoint 2010 with SQL 2008 R2 failover clusters, Lync Server 2010 and Asterisk based custom phone system.
* Lead role in the technical development and deployment of Image-based Backup and Intrusion Prevention solutions as a service, which now accounts for 25% of added revenue.
* Designed and implemented multiple VMware clusters using EMC and Dell iSCSI SANs resulting in increased revenue by reducing infrastructure costs associated with direct attached storage while increasing system availability.

Responsibilities:

* Lead in resolving all Tier 3 escalated issues through applied experience, research and vendor management.
* Managing over 140 Servers, 1000 Workstations, and 50 Firewalls within a diverse client base accounting for over 1.5M in annual revenue.
* Proactively managing equipment on 3 full racks at two datacenters including core Layer 3 switching fabric, redundant edge routers and load balancers.

Senior Systems Engineer

PCCTI

* Improved and streamlined many aspects of the business by implementing solutions such as Multicast Ghost across locations for drive imaging, direct mailing systems, and a centralized image management system.
* Taught several courses including A+, Network+, CIW (Web Developer / E-Commerce).
* Implemented the first File and Mail server for the company using Windows SBS 2003, as well as a custom Asterisk VoIP system.
* Responsible for managing 100 public and 20 company computers, 2 servers, and all networking equipment.

IT Administrator / Instructor

Regal Furnishings

Systems Administrator

IT Architect and Consultant with over 17 years of experience and a focus on advanced networking, public cloud architecture and enterprise compute and storage infrastructure.
As a Solutions Architect at AWS, my goal is to ensure our customer’s success in the deployment of workloads on AWS through architectural guidance, Proof-of-Concepts, prototyping, and evangelizing new services and optimization opportunities through presentations, Well-Architected reviews, immersion days and workshops.
My pride-and-joy home lab demonstrates my passion and dedication to the field. It is constantly evolving and allows me to play with the latest in containers and automation. I am also bilingual in Spanish as native tongue.

taplio

The Battle

Ian Beacraft

Gonzalo Escarrá

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