About Ed.

I'm the Vision Builder. I've been the person they called when something needed to be made real for about thirty years.

The sales team at Postmedia used to sell things to advertisers that didn't yet exist. They'd come back with a signed contract and a deadline, and I'd be the one who'd figure out how to ship it before the launch date. They knew they could sell whatever they could dream up because I'd build it. That's not the language anyone used at the time, but looking back, that was the relationship.

People in my network saw me do this. When they refer me now, that's the story they tell, the person who got it done when nobody else could.

I architected one of Canada's first headless CMS platforms in the early 2000s, before "headless" was a word the industry used. I grew the team from one person to fifty as it became the backbone of what would grow into Canada's largest digital media network. I shipped things on Tuesdays I'd thought of on Mondays. It was the most fun I've ever had at work.

Then it got big. Twelve people had to approve a colour change. In 2016 I walked away, no package, no plan, no next thing lined up, because the place had become one where shipping anything took a quarter, and I wasn't built for that.

Since then I've been on the kind of calls people only make when something has to be made real and they don't know how. A national campaign two weeks from launch. A Salesforce portal nobody could ship for a year. A global conference moved online in months. An investment firm with a vision to multiply itself through AI, no idea where to start, and an executive assistant who turned out to be the one who could carry it.

The pattern has been the same the whole time. Someone has a vision. Something they want to build, ship, prove, fix, or multiply. And they need the person who can make it real. The technology is almost never the hard part. The hard part is having that person in the room.

I think of the work as being a lighthouse for the businesses I help. Not a guide leading you somewhere specific, you already know where you want to go. Just a steady, present light, in the right place, when the water around you is unfamiliar. An active participant who stays put while you find your bearings.

Here is the most honest thing I can tell you about how I work.

I've never failed to achieve someone's vision. The harder the problem, the more excited I am to see it come alive.

The trivial work shrivels me. The "we don't even know if this is technically possible" calls are my favourites.

That's the seat I take. That's been the work for thirty years. That's what Signal & Craft is for.