Brighton Web Development Meetup

From Zero to AI

How a Small Studio Rebuilt the Way It Ships Software - Andrew Cheeseman

Tonight, we are delighted to host longtime group member Andrew Cheesman's new talk on his experiences of implementing AI into software development projects that Andrew worked on with his team over the last couple of years.

TALK SYNOPSIS
Everyone’s talking about AI — but what does adopting it actually look like in a small company? Not a research lab, not a big-tech giant, but a handful of people shipping real software for real clients.

In this talk, Andrew Cheeseman shares the honest, unpolished story of how his studio went from using no AI at all to weaving it through the whole delivery process: writing and reviewing code, running DevOps and SRE, and even how the business communicates with and delivers for its clients — including a Fortune 500 account.

Expect the good, the awkward and the genuinely surprising: what worked, what quietly wasted time, where the team pushed back, and the judgement calls that mattered far more than any particular tool.

If you run or work in a small team and you’re wondering how to make AI a practical multiplier rather than a hype cycle, this session is for you.

WHAT YOU’LL TAKE AWAY

• A realistic path from zero to embedded— no big budget, no big team required.
• Where AI genuinely earns its keep across coding, DevOps/SRE and client delivery — and where it doesn’t.
• How to bring a sceptical team along while keeping quality and review discipline intact.
• The pitfalls to sidestep, from someone who walked into a few of them.

SPEAKER BIO
Andrew Cheeseman is a hands-on engineering and DevOps lead with 30 years across infrastructure, C#/.NET, AWS and Terraform. As Director and Chief Architect at Graffic Jam, he designed and built the cloud platform behind a Fortune 500 client’s global events programme, and now helps small teams adopt AI-assisted engineering and modern DevOps. Brighton-based.