Technology Strategist & Keynote Speaker
I help you turn complex ideas into stories that win attention, build belief and move business forward.
Ways I Can Help
Give your audience a reason to think differently and act.
Your event is an investment, and the keynote should give people something they can use when they get back to work. I connect technology change with the pressures and opportunities facing your audience, using evidence and stories to challenge assumptions and make the implications clear.
If you want a keynote that starts a useful business conversation, let’s talk.You could be winning business with a story you haven’t found yet.
I work with you to uncover the strongest reason to choose your business, which may be buried beneath product descriptions, familiar slides and corporate messaging. Together, we examine what matters to your customers, find where you can make a credible difference and build the evidence behind your argument. We turn that thinking into stories your teams can use to open doors and move conversations forward.
If your value isn’t coming across, let’s find the story that makes it clear.Make your most important business conversations count.
When you’re asking someone to buy, back an idea or change direction, you need a story worth believing and the confidence to deliver it. I work with you to develop your most powerful stories, challenge the thinking behind them and then coach you on how to deliver them. We develop the story and the delivery together, with a clear view of what you want the audience to do.
If you have a conversation you need to get right, let’s work on it together.Matt Watts delivered an engaging and thought-provoking session that really connected with our audience. His insights were highly relevant to the challenges many organisations are facing today, and he communicated them with clarity and confidence. A compelling speaker we'd highly recommend for any event.
Dom Gryszan
Marketing Director, Logicalis UK&I
In my own words
A short video of me talking about technology, change and the way I think about it.
Ripples and Waves
I’ve spent much of my career looking at how technology changes and what it means for the businesses using it. That became my Ripples and Waves framework, and it informs the keynotes I give, the stories I develop with clients and the way I coach.
Making sense of change
Ripples and Waves helps me distinguish incremental developments from changes that could reshape a market. It gives me a way to explore their implications, make connections and work out where a business may need to act.
Supporting evidence
The trackers follow technology developments, vendor performance and the wider forces influencing investment and adoption. They provide evidence to test the thinking, including when something challenges a conclusion or changes the picture.
I use the framework and that evidence together in the work I do with clients.
A new announcement can demand attention without changing much, while a bigger shift can take time to become obvious. I use Ripples and Waves to look at what sits behind those developments and how several changes might come together. The trackers help me keep testing that interpretation as new evidence emerges.
I explore the thinking in more detail in my books, and share updates through the Ripples and Waves newsletter.
Keynotes
Your audience needs to look beyond the next technology announcement and consider how longer-term changes could affect the organisations they lead or work with.
I use my Ripples and Waves framework and current research to explore possible futures through stories and examples. I help your audience question assumptions about where technology is heading and consider what those changes mean for their vision and strategy.
I tailor the keynote to your audience and the purpose of your event, connecting those possibilities with the decisions they face.
Explore the keynote topicsSignature Ideas
Managing the Ripples, Riding the Waves
I use Ripples and Waves to help audiences distinguish everyday technology developments from changes that could reshape their business, and explore how AI, cyber security and sustainability affect one another.
Security is Fundamentally a Thinking Problem
AI has industrialised social engineering, and quantum computing threatens encryption. I use the story of Bletchley Park to explore how the way your leadership team thinks about security affects the decisions it makes today.
Digital Waste, Sustainability & the Energy Crisis
The UK has 500 data centres and that number is rising, while 68% of stored data is never touched again. I explore where organisations can reduce that waste and what doing so could mean for costs and energy use.
Simplifying the Complex
Technology leaders have more options to consider while keeping everyday services running. I explore how to make time and budget for work that can improve the business without neglecting the services it depends on.
It's All About Time
Some technology developments arrive within weeks, leaving teams little time to work out what matters. I explore how IT leaders can decide where to spend their time when several demands compete for their attention.
Story Development
It might be a customer conversation, a new sales angle, a partner proposition or a marketing idea. It could be something leadership needs to understand, or perhaps something worth taking to a stage. The difficult part is often finding it, developing the thinking behind it and making the argument stand up.
You and I start by looking outside the existing corporate message, using Ripples & Waves, research and what you know about your audience.
You and I challenge the ideas together. Themes can change, combine or become threads running through another story.
Together, we gather the research, evidence and examples that support the story and agree how to measure its impact before creating the presentations and one-pagers.
You leave with three developed stories, presentations and one-pagers. Because you and I build them together, you also learn how to identify potential themes, decide which are worth pursuing, build the storyboard and develop the evidence behind it.
When the next customer opportunity, market change or big event comes along, you know how to work through the process again.
About Me
I started my career as an aerospace engineer at British Aerospace Filton. Since then I've spent over thirty years in technology, from the client/server era to AI, seeing how successive changes have affected the businesses using it.
I've spoken to audiences across 56 countries, and what people tell me afterwards is that they finally understand what's happening and they know what to do about it.
That's the most important thing I'm trying to do every time I stand up.
Work With Me
The Books
In my books, I explore the patterns behind technology change and explain the framework I use to distinguish incremental developments from changes that reshape markets.
A framework for telling the difference between incremental change and genuine transformation early enough to act on it. This is also the thinking that sits behind much of my keynote and Story Development work.
Explore the book →
The story of four waves that reshaped enterprise technology and why I see AI as a further wave of change. This is where I began developing the Ripples and Waves framework.
Explore the book →Drag to explore →
Insights
Short perspectives on technology, business and the bigger picture.
2026
Are you an ambivert?
I enjoy being on stage, but I also need quiet time to think and recharge. Understanding that balance shapes how I prepare my own stories and how I coach other people.
Read on LinkedIn →
2026
Remember the Turbo button?
The old PC Turbo button has a lovely story behind it. A way to slow a machine down became a lesson in how a different perspective can change the story you tell.
Read on LinkedIn →
2026
Has Pandora’s box just been opened?
Sovereignty involves more than where data sits and who can access it. I also ask who could stop you using the technology your organisation depends on.
Read on LinkedIn →
2026
Getting Six Words off the ground
What have I learnt from building Six Words? I share some of the challenges, from explaining the value of an independent perspective to pricing experience and keeping a useful routine.
Read on LinkedIn →
2026
Unlock Customer Opportunities in 30 Seconds
If I pointed a camera at you and said you’ve got 30 seconds to tell me what one of my biggest opportunities could be, what you do and why I should care, could you? I spent most of yesterday working on exactly that with a client’s team. This was the final day of a few weeks’ work with them. We’d done the research, found the themes, built the storyboards, created the presentations and one-pagers, and now the job was to help them explain all of it in 30 to 60 seconds.
Read on LinkedIn →
2026
When was the last time you invested in you?
Each year many companies give employees a personal development budget, but good intentions can come to nothing and the budget expires unspent.
Read on LinkedIn →
2026
Data centres in space!
Everyone has something to say about the SpaceX IPO. I’m not a finance person, but I have spent decades working around data centres.
Read on LinkedIn →
2026
Sovereign cloud is NOT a product
Sovereign cloud is a state you have to genuinely achieve, and most organisations are nowhere near as close as they think.
Read on LinkedIn →
2026
It is NOT a Sovereign Cloud
If a cloud provider is incorporated in the United States, or if its parent company is, the US CLOUD Act can create obligations that matter to sovereignty.
Read on LinkedIn →
2026
What should I feel and do?
I’ve attended a lot of presentations over the years and I’m still amazed by how frequently I’m left wondering what the speaker wants me to feel or do.
Read on LinkedIn →
2026
The harvest now, decrypt later threat
At Bletchley Park, the Bombe didn’t decrypt messages in real time. It collected and worked through traffic systematically.
Read on LinkedIn →
2026
Who gets fired if this fails?
One question stopped a vendor presentation in its tracks. The silence that followed said everything about accountability and ownership.
Read on LinkedIn →
2026
Manage the Ripples, ride the Waves
Why I wrote the second book, and why the framework that started with data storage turned out to apply to every technology transition I’ve lived through.
Read on LinkedIn →Get in Touch
I’m selective about the work I take on because the best results come when there’s a genuine match. Tell me what you’re working on and I’ll be honest about whether I can add value.
Based in
Based in the UK, available globally
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