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Caffeine is obsolete.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. 


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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

Yonmo

I work with hospitality operators—restaurants, cafés, event planners, and boutique hotels—to build stronger guest relationships and smarter offerings by engaging guests while they’re still on-site.

Yonmo’s platform helps teams:

• Ask targeted questions at the right moment (in-seat, post-purchase, etc.)
• Turn insights into action immediately—not weeks later
• Reward guests in real time with offers that drive return visits and word of mouth

Early pilots have helped partners reduce guesswork in R&D, spark social engagement, and test new offerings through live feedback loops.

Currently in private beta across Bangkok, Chicago, and Toronto. Open to conversations with hospitality operators, consultants, and local business networks looking to create more meaningful guest experiences.

Founder

Setter

Led engineering teams in launching a new mobile application that enables users to express interest in new products through blockchain tokens

Head of Engineering

Squarespace

• Led product and engineering on creating the first Ethereum NFT lazy-minting mobile solution for digital collectibles, onboarding users without any crypto experience in a single, seamless flow
• Established partnerships and integration with Rarible, Infura, Pinata, and Coinbase
• Advised Finance and Security in building the first cryptocurrency and blockchain-based practice at Squarespace
• Designed and developed a mobile native self-custodial wallet built into Unfold, supporting signing messages and sending earned Ether from collectible sales
• Managed and contributed to writing for mobile iOS (Swift), frontend web (React, JavaScript), and backend (Node, TypeScript)

Product & Engineering Lead

• Led the iOS Squarespace App team, managing delivery and coaching engineers
• Built the automated testing best practices for the mobile teams at Squarespace, setting a new standard for quality ownership and significantly reducing manual QA (TDD, XCTest, Quick, Nimble)
• Led various feature development and implemented more scalable and modular app architecture via new internal frameworks (Swift, MVVM)

Senior Software Engineer Team Lead

Senior Software Engineer

Independent

• My products have been featured internationally in publications including The Wall Street Journal, The Verge, Product Hunt, and Ars Technica.
• I designed, developed, marketed, and managed a portfolio of my own Swift applications for iPhone and iPad.
• Kuaiboard – a text snippets keyboard app – was featured by Apple as a "Great App for iOS" in the U.S. and several other iOS App Stores, and charted consistently as one of the top 50 paid utility apps in both Hong Kong and Malaysia.
• Taiwan Garbage Service – a map reference and SpriteKit game app – was featured twice by Apple in the Taiwan App Store Today feed, and charted consistently as one of the top 10 free reference apps in Taiwan.
• Eat Drink Taiwan – a Taiwanese food discovery app for both iOS and Android – was covered by Yahoo! News Taiwan and recommended by the Taipei City Government.

Product Engineer

Freelance

• Led development for startups with applications for mobile devices made by a company named after a fruit
• Architected both a childhood memory media management app and a memory photo printing app (Objective-C, VIPER architecture, 50K+ registered users)
• Created internal Cocoa Touch frameworks to support code reuse across both applications (Core Data persistence layer, AWS/S3 background media uploads, in-app purchases)
• Co-led project management, managing issues, goals, and timeline to keep projects finely oiled and moving forward (Agile, Pivotal Tracker, Trello)

iOS Engineer

Orchard, NYC

• Developed and successfully launched several iOS applications, including an e-book reader, favorite movie queue manager, and camera-driven animated GIF creator
• Employed test-driven development (Cedar and XCTest) and pair programming methodologies to ensure stable, high-quality codebases
• Created an open source full-stack solution for a mobile chat iPhone application (Objective-C and Ruby on Rails)
• Created internal tools and modules for streamlining mobile application development

This Looks Nice

• Provided professional standards-compliant, responsive design and development services to individuals and businesses
• Offered full-stack solutions for content management systems, ecommerce, and website maintenance (Ruby on Rails, PHP, Drupal, HTML, CSS, JS)

Co-founder, Designer, Developer

These days I’m excited about helping people in hospitality solve challenges in feedback, rewards, and automation with their guests. Previously I’ve also designed and developed mobile productivity apps to help people save time and get things done. My products have been featured by Apple and have charted on the App Store’s Top 100 lists. Online and print publications like The Wall Street Journal have also reported on my work. When I'm not writing software, I'm writing music, performing sketch comedy, or honing classic cocktail recipes!

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The Battle

Ian Beacraft

Kevin Wolkober

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