I have had a personal portfolio site for the last 8 years. That is nothing special, millions of people do that. But what if it was special? The older I get the more I think about serendipity. There are so many individual moments that make up life that happen only because you make space for them to happen. So how does a person expand the surface area of their potential serendipity? The answer seems obvious, do interesting things and publish more. But is a greater area enough?When it comes to creating on the internet there is an extreme power law, the very best and most unique content ends up having 100-1000x more impact than similar lesser works. This seems to make sense. Originality is rare and time intensive while the internet has almost no switching costs. An expansive surface area (follows, reach) isn’t really enough if there is no value created; it needs to be paired with increasing depth as well. That was the starting point of latest build and my first time approaching this site as a product as much as just an online contact page.

What does a site look like that promotes ever increasing area and depth? Surface area tends to dictate that it leans more generic in look and feel, rather than a niche crazy themes.

In looking at thousands of profile pages over the years they traditionally fall into a few categories

1. The designer portfolio - thin wrapper mostly around images and video.

2. The developer page - A single page site that is minimal and covers professional experiences, open-source work, and links to social pages. Maybe a handful of blog posts from the first week they put the site live.

3. The award winner - a multi-page site that goes above and beyond to highlight that they have won awards and have worked with high-profile brands. Lots of animations.

(some good places to look for personal sites: curated.design/portfolios, siteinspire.com/portfolio)

None of those patterns really fit what I am looking for, so I decided to work from first principles and design it. Nuance demands agency. Agency means custom development work. Clean slate.

Traits that I want the site to capture:

• ‘One great essay can change your life’ is a very real thing in 2024. I would love to a solid platform to write engaging long-form pieces to attract like minds.

• We deserve nuance. When I look at someones portfolio I want to know way more info than they list. This site should enable people to dig deep, without requiring it.

  • This means being more open on the internet, something that many ‘professionals’ avoid.

• I am actively architecting my work life. I am not a traditional person that wants to work a traditional job. I want the ability to sell my work and effort through this site, such as consulting and project work.

• I believe that curation is both an important skill and a crazy good serendipity lever. It offers conversation starters that often lead down the most interesting paths. Plus it is just fun to do.

• It is important to encourage your mind to problem solve in the background. Putting thoughts down in writing gives your brain open space to identify questions, similarities, and potential. Thinking about the future is a reps required process. The deeper you understand something, the more interesting questions you are able to ask. Twitter isn’t a great place to share this type of thing.

• It is important for something to look cool. People identify with aesthetics and much more likely to share work that they approve of (ie. not crazy scroll-jacking). Cool also just comes down to messaging.

• I want to focus on the future. This isn’t a historical portfolio or CV alternative — it is my home on the web.

• Documentation and exhaust data defines reality. Few people write well. Fewer people build cool things. Very few write well about what they build. Creating engaging, detailed project builds is a skill I want to develop.

• Viewership doesn’t matter without interaction. Make content memorable and effortless to start engaging.

• Being direct is better than being suggestive. Most people worth working with aren’t sitting around bored. Get to the point. If you are a consultant give a clear indication of the work you offer.

making it happen

Broadly most of what I do falls into a small set of categories: thinking, exploring, creating, and curating, so that seems like a natural way to separate the site. At first I had a more traditional split of projects, thoughts, and writing, but I opted to abstract these one level up. Exploring might have thoughts, or writing. eg. Optimize for topic rabbit holes vs. single touch points. These themes can be supported indirectly by multiple different CMS style objects.

A person only has so much time to build, so focusing on specific topics as one-offs is fine. This build completely ignores scalability.

Information structuring is a lost art. It makes no sense to give everyone the same level of information. A good deal of my work in AI is influenced by this concept.

My assumptions:

• 70%+ of people will only visit the homepage, 50% of those will only see the pictures.

• People hate linking to mailto:name@email.com convention. (opens in default email client)

• My content is long form and won’t translate quite as well on mobile.

• People want to place you in a high-level bucket. ‘Developer, designer, influencer,’