Dr Will Pearson
Will combines a research background in public sector learning with a working practice in software engineering. DevBot started as a side project testing what happens when narrative design, learning science, and modern software engineering are taken seriously — in the same room, by the same person — instead of being parcelled out to three different agencies.
It grew into a studio when it became clear that public sector buyers were hungry for consumer-grade tools but kept being sold enterprise-grade disappointment.
What we believe
Public sector learning has been underserved for too long. The tools are generic, the content is dull, the measurement is meaningless, and the learners know it. Half the budget leaks on a platform people close at the first plausible excuse. We think it should be better than that — not in a manifesto sense, in a minute-three of Episode 1 sense.
We believe learning works best when it's wrapped in story — not gamified with points and streaks, but genuinely narrative. Our episodes are animated fables about the realities of civic work: the politics, the trade-offs, the human dimension of policy and governance. They're designed to be the kind of short, focused training nobody regrets making time for.
We believe assessment should be transparent and portable. Every badge we award is an Open Badges 3.0 credential — verifiable by anyone, shareable on LinkedIn, owned by the learner rather than rented from us. It doesn't expire when a licence does.
And we believe civic news and professional development belong together. Understanding what's happening in the sector is how you get better at your job. That's why ambivalence is one platform, not two.
How we work
DevBot is a lean studio with a purpose-built toolchain. ScriptHub is where episodes are authored — structure, scene blocking, interaction logic, rubric mapping, branching narrative, all in one place. SoundBox is the virtual production desk that turns scripts into finished media — narration, soundtrack, subtitles, multilingual exports. ambivalence is the platform learners see. Each tool is built to work with AI assistance, which is how a team this small produces at the scale you'd normally expect from a studio five times the size.
Our primary market is UK local government — 353 councils, 2.3 million public sector workers — but the platform is multilingual, territory-aware, and infrastructure-ready for international deployments. UK-hosted, GDPR-compliant, DPA on request. The Trust & Security page has the full technical picture →
Where we are
Season 1 of ambivalence is five episodes live on ambivalence.app and three more in production, closing with a platform-announcement finale. The credential infrastructure is operational: three hundred and twenty-four rubric cells in the production database, thirty-six canonical badges rendered, Ed25519 signing key live, issuer profile published. The commercial materials — DPA, SLA, terms, privacy policy, security whitepaper, pricing, ROI model, curriculum map, email nurture sequences — are written and on disk. What's next is conversation: with councils, combined authorities, and L&D partners who want to do training differently.
Get in touch
Whether you're an L&D director looking for a better approach to CPD, a combined authority exploring innovation pilots, or a partner interested in white-label licensing of our learning framework — we'd like to hear from you.