Crisis intelligence and response
Distributism is crisis intelligence and response for technology companies. When an outage, a breach, an AI controversy, a social media backlash, a round of layoffs, or a business crisis puts your company in the public eye, I give your leadership a clear picture of what's happening and the words to act on it.
Retainer clients hear back within 15 minutes. At any hour.
Run by JA WestenbergSound familiar?
None of these are engineering problems, but they shape what customers, staff, and reporters remember about the incident.
Without Distributism
With Distributism
Technical incidents are only part of the work. I also handle crises that start with an AI product, a social media post, a layoff, or a business decision.
Service failures, security incidents, and vulnerability disclosures. I write the status updates, customer notices, and advisories, and check each one with your engineers and counsel.
Model failures, harmful or wrong outputs, disputes over training data and privacy, and public objections to how you build or use AI. I explain what happened and what you're changing in terms your users and critics can check.
Pile-ons, viral complaints, boycotts, and coordinated campaigns. I track where the complaints are spreading, tell you which ones need a response, and write that response for the platforms where people are talking.
I plan announcement day and write the messages for affected employees, the remaining team, customers, and the press, so people hear the news from you first.
Crises with no technical cause: executive misconduct or departures, pricing changes, failed launches, funding or acquisition fallout, lawsuits, and regulatory inquiries.
Once an incident is public, customers, employees, markets, media, regulators, investors, and online communities all start working the story at once, each with different information and different incentives.
I pull those audiences into a single view, then tell you what's changing, what matters, and where you can still alter the outcome.
Narrative intelligence
My monitoring tracks public sentiment, emerging claims, influential voices, media movement, and community response, so you see what people are saying as it happens, not days later in a report.
Response engineering
I write and execute your most critical communications. Every message is precise, technically authenticated, and ready to deploy.
Executive command
I map the public risk and outline your strategic options. Before you make a move, I forecast the consequences of taking action, and the true cost of staying silent.
Reputation recovery
Public recovery usually takes longer than technical recovery. I stay on the public side until customers, staff, and press stop treating you as the story.
If a bad day at your company makes the news, you're who I work for.
Artificial intelligenceAgentic platformsCloud infrastructureCybersecurityDeveloper toolingFintechCritical softwareNetworked products
…when any of these happen:
My model is closer to forward-deployed engineering than to account service.
I work alongside your engineers, your executives, and your counsel. I'm a senior operator who can enter a complex situation quickly and own the narrative.
Before anything happens
On retainer, I stay close to your company, your systems, your leadership, and the people who talk about you in public, so when pressure arrives, I already have the context.
Right now
For a live situation, I deploy straight into the response and stay through public recovery.
Before the first alert
I build the communications infrastructure, the intelligence baselines, and the executive capability you'll need when it sounds.
Built on AI agents, run by a person
“The agents handle monitoring and analysis. I check their work, make the calls, and answer for them.”
I build Distributism around agentic systems. They extend my reach, provide around-the-clock coverage, and deliver sentiment analysis at speed and scale.
I review and approve every external communication myself, and before I act on any material reading of public sentiment, I test it against what I know about your company, the incident, and the limits of the data.
I treat everything you share during an incident as confidential.
I work over encrypted communications and encrypted document exchange, keep the circle to the people who need to be in it, and open a secure channel from your first message.
A note before you go
Distributism is me. When you send a brief, I read it. When you're on the call at 3am, I'm on the call.
Agents do the watching. Every statement that leaves with your name on it has been through my hands first.
You work with one senior person, who is responsible for every statement from the first alert until people stop asking about the incident.
JA Westenberg
tech writer and journalistFor ongoing coverage, readiness, or an active incident.
Retainer clients receive a response within 15 minutes, at any hour.
Live incident right now? Skip the form and email activate@distributism.ai.
