To whom it may concern,
It’s hard to escape patterns. They’re all around us. And often they occur on many different scales. Imagine a spiral, for example. This basic geometric pattern shows up again and again and again: in the double helix of our DNA, in tropical storms that traverse oceans, in galaxies that are so big we can hardly envision them in our mind’s eye.
Everywhere we look, the same patterns keeps on showing up. Isn’t that mesmerizing? They seem to hold the world together.
I find this so astonishing that I’ve come to suspect that all of us might be shaped by foundational patterns. Ever since I was a kid, my instinct drove me to clarifying things in order to connect people. That became my professional pattern too, my why: clarify things to connect people. Everything I did at inkernaut — writing, research and facilitation — branches out from there.
At inkernaut I’ve transformed my pattern into a service. After clarifying things through research — by investigating the context and identifying the essence of a story — I connected artists with audiences, companies with customers and governments with citizens.
Most of the commissioned work I did as a freelancer involved an element of chance. People contacted me to conduct in-depth interviews, write articles, edit scripts, ghostwrite books, compose speeches, write copy, draft press releases, host workshops, moderate discussions with live audiences, serve as master of ceremony or facilitate collaborative writing.
In a sense, the main business strategy for inkernaut has always been serendipity. And if you take a closer look, you might find that this approach is encrypted in the very name of the endeavour. By bringing together the words ‘ink’ and ‘nautilus’ I expressed my desire to explore every nook and corner of society and report back about those experiences in writing. Now, after more than a decade, it’s feels like it’s time to innovate.
It’s time for something new. Topics I’ve always found most rewarding to work on include modern rituals, contemporary art, cultural heritage sites, physics, citizen participation and urban planning. It might seem a bit puzzling to bring all of these interests together, but I have hunch there might be underlying pattern there.
inkernaut
December 2021