meldwork

I've spent years working on products that help millions of people play games, collect, create content, and engage with communities.

meldwork started from a much smaller problem.

How do ten people make better decisions together?

The idea grew out of my experience performing with Dreamwave, an improv team in Los Angeles. Every rehearsal, show, submission, coach session, and team decision required dozens of conversations across text messages, calendars, spreadsheets, and group chats. The logistics weren't just frustrating. They slowly changed the experience of being on a team.

I started wondering what would happen if coordination itself was treated as a design problem.

Designing For Groups Instead Of Individuals

Most productivity software is built for individuals.

Even collaborative tools often assume someone is in charge and everyone else simply responds.

Creative groups don't work that way.

Healthy teams require discussion, consent, flexibility, and shared ownership.

meldwork was designed around the idea that software shouldn't replace those conversations. It should help groups have them more effectively.

A New Way To Coordinate

Instead of building another scheduling app, I designed a system that helps groups make decisions together.

The product combines availability planning, shared scheduling, call sheets, responsibilities, decision proposals, consent-based voting, and a permanent decision log into a single workflow.

Every feature exists for the same reason: to reduce the invisible work that creative groups do every week so they can spend more time creating together.

Consent Over Consensus

One of the ideas I'm most proud of is replacing simple yes-or-no voting with a consent-based decision model.

Not every decision needs unanimous enthusiasm.

Sometimes people fully support an idea.

Sometimes they have concerns worth discussing.

Sometimes they can stand aside.

Sometimes there's a genuine blocker that needs to be resolved.

By giving teams more expressive ways to participate, the software encourages better conversations instead of simply counting votes.

Making Group Health Visible

Creative groups rarely fail because of one bad decision.

They slowly drift.

People stop responding.

Responsibilities become unclear.

Important conversations disappear into chat history.

Small frustrations accumulate until the group loses momentum.

Many of meldwork's systems were designed to make those patterns visible before they become problems, helping teams stay aligned without adding more administrative work.

Why I'm Proud Of It

meldwork isn't about scheduling.

It's about protecting creative momentum.

The best teams I've been part of have always felt like something larger than the individuals involved. They develop trust, shared language, traditions, and ways of working that take years to build.

I wanted to design software that strengthens those relationships instead of getting in their way.

Whether it's an improv team, a band, a theater company, or any other creative collective, I think great collaboration deserves tools designed specifically for how creative groups actually work.