How the card categories work
The categories separate roles from projects, enduring practices from tools, and completed work from current exploration.
The connectome is the whole map generated from the site’s connected notes and their explained relationships. Each card is one note; the connectome lets a reader see the larger pattern. It groups those cards by what kind of context they provide. A category is a reading aid, not a claim that a card has no relationship to the others. A project can emerge from an experience, use several tools, and become the subject of writing or a highlight.
Experience
Experience records roles, organisations, and sustained professional contexts. It answers questions such as where I worked, what position I held, or what longer-running responsibility framed the work. Examples include SalesCandy, where I served as Chief Technology Officer, and ADL, my live-theatre technology practice from 2007 to 2010.
Projects
Projects are bounded pieces of work: a production, campaign, installation, game, or other identifiable thing that was made. They are separated from the role or organisation in which the work happened. Examples include Air Con, a theatre production supported by a five-projector system; Next Stock Market Game, a networked simulator; and TCS Be A Hero, an interactive billboard experience.
Practice
Practice describes enduring capabilities and ways of approaching work. These cards cut across individual employers and projects. Organisations and systems covers systems thinking, organisational design, discovery, and facilitation. Media Lab practice brings art, technology, people, and making together. The connectome is one example of that practice making complexity visible.
Learning
Learning records formal education, certifications, courses, and microcredentials. It provides the specific institution and date context without turning study into a claim of project experience. Examples include the BSc (Hons) Media Lab Arts and the Google Cloud Professional Cloud Developer Certification.
Writing & talks
Writing & talks contains articles, public reflections, and presentations. These cards identify an idea made public and, where available, preserve its original source. Examples include Making a shared brain with my GenAI buddy and AWS Serverless at SalesCandy. A piece of writing about a project can link to it without becoming the project itself.
Highlights
Highlights marks awards, milestones, and notable collaboration threads that help orient a reader but do not fit neatly into a role, project, or qualification. Examples include the AmBank BizRACE Digi Innovation Award and the continuing Instant Cafe Theatre Company collaboration. The specific theatre productions from that collaboration are categorised separately as Projects.
Tools & ideas
Tools & ideas explains technologies, methods, and organising concepts that recur across the practice. A tool card does not by itself claim a project or qualification; its connections provide that context. Examples include AWS, rapid prototyping, and connected notes.
Current interests
Current interests is the Rolling Agenda: active questions and explorations rather than a record of completed projects or certified expertise. These cards can change as the practice develops. Examples include Cloudflare-first solutions, MySotongkoo, and Unlocking Co-creative Teams.
Read categories together with connections
The categories provide a first distinction; the links carry the richer meaning. “Follow a connection” records an authored relationship and its reason. “Linked from” shows the same relationship from its destination. “Mentioned in” records an ordinary prose reference. Together, categories and connections show how roles, projects, practices, learning, public ideas, highlights, tools, and current questions inform one another without collapsing them into the same kind of claim.