portfolio

A timeline approach seemed easier than pretending my work has ever stayed in one lane.

• Early Web
• Web Dev & Design
• Sex & Stigma
• IT Management
• Webcams
• Music
• Open Source
• Quantified Self
• I School
• Writing
• Policy
• Co-living
• PhD prep

Born

Matched with an adoptive family and flown from Northern Ontario to the big city at four days old. Achievement unlocked, and an early sign that I wouldn’t do things the normal way.

Early Web

I came of age online, moving through Usenet, BBSes, Prodigy, and IRC before the web was mainstream. I learned HTML building fansites on Geocities, and immersed myself in early online subcultures.

Web Solutions

Started a web design company and briefly became one of those annoying teenage dot-com entrepreneurs the media loved to profile. I was sent a new webcam to do a live interview for aspiring entrepreneurs, which would later inspire another idea...These days I see the web more as my creative playground than work platform.

Sexuality Research (Unofficial)

Two original research-based sexuality projects way back in high school: an anonymous student survey published in the yearbook, and a Family Studies project on disclosure and family norms within polyamory & BDSM communities, results collected by sharing my survey script in kink forums.Curiosity spoke loudly. In retrospect, a premonition.

StephTheGeek.com Born

Figured I'd make myself a website for once, and went with my high school nickname. As an online extension of myself, I added a public webcam to play with greater visibility and help crowdfund recording an album. My World was a personal FAQ in a visual, interactive story game format.

I.T. Management
^{Toronto Metropolitan University}

Bachelor of Commerce in a hybrid business management/computer science program, with a near-minor in sexuality studies (if it had been such a thing). Notoriously appeared naked with a cardboard robot on the cover of the school paper's Valentine's Day issue.

Webcams

The webcam experiment took on a life of its own and came to define much of my decade. I was among the first “camgirls” (before The Talkies of streaming video) in a corner of the internet then largely populated by alt-girls and misfits. My work pushed boundaries around technology, kink, artistry, and unapologetic authenticity.Along the way, I spoke out against censorship, chilling policies, and sex worker banking discrimination, and created an educational project to help other women decouple themselves from potentially exploitative webmaster arrangements. What started as a playful, defiant experiment grew into a genuinely supportive community, many of whom remain part of my life over 25 years later.

Album: Not A Victim

The culmination of teenage songwriting, and an early experiment in open source licensed, remixable music distribution, attracting resamplings from around the world — years ahead of Creative Commons catching on or later high-profile digital album releases.

• Listen

1^st Mobile Webcam

Pieced together what appears to be the world's first cell phone-based webcam, which one blogger later called "like inventing TwitPic [rip] in 2004".

• Perpetua(l) exhibit

CamGirls Documentary

One of four women featured in a documentary on early webcam culture, examining technical experimentation, identity, sexual stigma, and the politics of exposure online.

• IMDB

Drupal CMS & TopNotchThemes

As a Linux user and advocate for open source software, I also found my way to Drupal, rebuilt my personal site into a community platform, and spun that work into a focused web development niche.I helped deliver sites for orgs including Amnesty International & Teach For America, grew an international team of six, shipped a product offering, and co-authored a book. We operated as a for-profit company within a FOSS ecosystem, contributing back where our goals aligned.I handled business development, project management, SEO, conference speaking, and finances, learning firsthand what it takes to run a small business at scale.

Lifestreaming / Quantified Self

Ran sustained experiments in lifestreaming & self-tracking, publishing 24/7 webcam feeds, live web browsing activity, fitness tracker data, and emergent microblogging. I co-hosted early Quantified Self meetups and explored the social & ethical implications of exposure, personal data gathering, gamification incentives, and investigated a personal prediction market wellness concept.

YYZ 🛬 SFO

Sacred & Profane Chamber Choir

• Sicut Cervus (octet)
• La Koro Sutro

Master of Information Management & Systems

Enrolled in the I School to step back from building and reflect on nearly a decade of radical personal transparency. I wanted to create what we'd now call a personal AI chatbot, and was interested in how people narrate themselves and communicate through online systems. What happens when visibility, data, and identity collide?Master’s thesis – MeLo: The Meaningful Location Project

📉🤯💔🏠➡️🏘️

Writing

An essay I posted on Medium unexpectedly reached tens of thousands of readers, which suggested I might be able to write about more than just technical topics.

• A Psychospiritual Emergency
• Not A Victim: stories of shame, sex & stigma
• Weren't you that girl in the wheelchair?
• Building an AI Chatbot: Planning Your Personality
• Compass Not Included (2026 Substack launch)

Adult Industry Projects

Returned to exploring a range of adult-adjacent projects, focusing on platforms, payments, and education. These included experiments with cryptocurrency, the Sexy Selfie School educational series, an interactive fiction video game targeting sex worker stigma, kinky coloring books, Naked Reality coaching, and ongoing engagement with topics in the evolving adult creator economy.

Experiments

Games, experiences, & general creative tinkering.

• Perpetua(l)
• Public Key Photography
• 20m-opoly

Tech Policy Primer

Selected for the Aspen Institute’s intensive program in technology policy & public governance. My final project examined enhancements to entrepreneurship-based immigration, which we presented as a policy briefing to the federal government.

• View project

20mish Reboot

20mish (née 20mission) is a 40-bedroom co-living space in San Francisco I joined in 2013, originally founded as the first crypto hacker house.Today I help run it as a kind of ongoing startup in human systems: managing recruitment, operations, and the day-to-day realities of putting forty people into close quarters, including leading post-pandemic recovery and community rebuilding.

• 20mish.com

Resound Ensemble

• Sing To The Moon (soprano soloist)
• Website

Psychology & Beyond

Targeted coursework and projects to pivot into the social sciences.Highlights: Peer reviewer for B4U-ACT Quarterly Review journal, Crisis Text Line volunteer counselor, Peer Support Specialist & AASECT Sexuality Educator certifications in progressCourses: Abnormal Psychology, Gender & Sexuality, Responsible AI for Mental Health, Ethics of Psychological Research, Sex & Disability, Public Health

Substack Launch

• Compass Not Included

PhD - Human Sexuality

Planning PhD applications for Fall 2027 entry, with research interests in human sexuality, stigma, and highly marginalized sexual populations.