- Project Catalyst is starting up again under the Cardano Foundation's leadership. I'm optimistic about the reset and curious to see how the new approach unfolds.
- Gimbalabs has been my main focus. Over the summer, H and I organized and participated in the inaugural Piece of Pie Builder Season—a different kind of hackathon centered on building in public, consistency, accountability, and collaboration rather than competition and judging. The response was encouraging, and we're already planning the next season.
- Builder Season has become a bigger idea than a single hackathon. I'm exploring it as a reusable framework that communities can adapt to help people commit to projects, build together, and ship meaningful work.
- ODIN (Open Decentralized Innovation Network) has been quieter for me recently, but many of the ideas I'm bringing into Gimbalabs grew directly out of my work there.
Holistic Systems Cooperative (HSC)
Cardano RealFi Alliance (CRFC)
Big Questions Institute (BQI)
U-Lab 1x
CS50x
Cardano 4 Climate
SingularityNET's Deep Funding
Sociocracy3.0
Building on the web - Local First - RSS and open protocol networks
Fun and functional collaboration (another word for Governance)
Fitness and getting back into shape
I'm helping ramp up Gimbalabs Season 7, with a big focus on moving our project management from Notion to GitHub. The goal is for each project to have its own repository, while a shared GitHub Project ties everything together with Kanban boards, issues, and milestones. We're trying to keep everything that worked well in Notion while embracing a more open, developer-friendly workflow.
I've also been thinking about the future of AlaskaGold. The website is finally in much better shape after clearing out years of spam and neglected content, but I think the next phase is less about the website itself and more about community. I'd like to experiment with social media and find ways for travelers, guides, and local businesses to interact and share their experiences in public.
That connects to another project I've been excited about: Builder Season, an idea that grew out of this summer's Piece of Pie hackathon. What started as a better way to run a hackathon is beginning to feel like something more general—a framework for helping people commit to a project, build in public, stay accountable, and encourage one another through small incentives rather than direct coordination.
I'm increasingly interested in whether this model applies beyond software development. Could it work for photographers documenting Alaska? Citizen scientists? Writers? Open-source communities? I suspect there's a broader pattern here, and I'm enjoying exploring where it leads.
I recently finished The Four Seasons on Netflix with Tina Fey. It was a thoughtful comedy about growing older, long friendships, and how those relationships change over time. I enjoyed it more than I expected.
I'm also looking forward to the return of Ted Lasso. In the meantime, I've been rewatching Silo on Apple TV+, which has been just as engaging the second time through.
On the audiobook front, I finished On Stranger Tides. It has a dark Caribbean setting that keeps reminding me of Pirates of the Caribbean - it must be related. The inspiration came from Pirate Borg, a pirate-themed RPG built on the Mörk Borg ruleset. I'd love to find a group to play with someday, though for now that's more aspiration than reality. Solo RPGs are still on my "one of these days" list.
New York, New York
Discord - Newman5
Masto - https://mastodon.social/@Newman5
Bluesky - newman5.bsky.social
Personal 11ty blog - NewmanUre.com
Just got a robot vacuum. And, oddly look forward to doing the McGill 3 core exerises each day. And I want to check out omg.lol and the status log in particular.
/Now pages are fun. /Now pages are cool. Find out why and how at https://nownownow.com/
updated: 2026-08-03