Named after a floating nightclub on the Tyne with a famously revolving dance floor. Now moored on the internet, doing different work.
01 / WHAT
Every serious shop needs an unserious one. This is mine. The day job is a regulated-industries AI consultancy with a respectable surname above the door. This is not that.
This is where things go that don't fit. Half-built tools. Spicy takes. Side-projects that won't survive a governance review. Experiments published before they're finished, on the theory that finishing is overrated and shipping isn't.
The rule is simple: if it's interesting, it goes here. If it's billable, it doesn't.
02 / ORIGIN
For 25 years she sat on the Tyne — first at Newcastle Quayside, later at Gateshead — a converted ferry turned floating nightclub. Three decks, six bars, the lot.
The thing everyone remembers is the dance floor. It rotated. Slowly enough that you didn't notice sober, fast enough that you absolutely noticed otherwise. Generations of Geordies have a story about being thrown off it, or watching someone else be thrown off it, in roughly equal measure.
She was towed away in 2008 to be scrapped. This site is not a museum. It just borrows the name, and a bit of the spirit — a place that takes itself seriously enough to do the work, and not so seriously that it forgets the dance floor moves on its own.
03 / HOUSE RULES
1. SHIP THE THING. Half-finished beats fully-considered. The dance floor doesn't stop for your perfectionism.
2. NO DECKS. No strategy slides, no quarterly review. If it needs a roadmap, it lives somewhere else.
3. SAY THE QUIET PART. If it's interesting because it's true and uncomfortable, it goes here, not in a LinkedIn post that's been through three filters.
4. THE FLOOR ROTATES. Stand still and you fall off. Try things. Kill things. Move on.
Things in motion. Some will graduate. Most won't. That's the deal.
// First artefact. Format unknown. Probably an essay. Could be a tool. The only deadline is "before momentum fades."
// A small thing that does one thing. The "one thing" has not yet been finalised. The smallness has been finalised.
// Things noticed at the edges of the consultancy. Patterns that don't fit a deliverable but want writing down.
// The domain came from a drunk conversation with M. Whether M. is a co-author or a muse is currently undecided.
This is a one-person operation with no inbox monitoring SLA. Replies come when they come, in the order I find interesting. That's the deal.
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