Invite me to speak
Talks, podcasts and workshops on one idea: software, and businesses, that know what they do not know. Three talks drafted, a bio in three lengths, and an honest count of talks given so far.
Three talks
- A model of your business that knows what it does not know — for owners and operations leads. The five numbers you run the week on, each marked current, stale or dark, and why the most expensive number on a dashboard is a zero nobody measured. Drawn from the Frame the consultancy sells and the engine underneath it.
- One human, several AI seats, one written law — for engineering leads and anyone putting agents to work. How a solo engineer runs his repositories with a team of AI agents without lying to himself: one lease per task, referees instead of trust, a named list of the things only the human can do, and the failure that taught the rules. What broke, what the fix was, and what the agents still cannot be trusted with.
- Missing is not zero — a short talk for anyone who reads a dashboard. Three ledgers that counted from zero this autumn: a job search, a sales pipeline and a machine's own report. What each looked like before the first measured number arrived, and why an honest blank beats a fake zero.
Formats
- Conference talk or keynote, 30 to 45 minutes, slides optional; the live site is the deck
- Workshop, a half day, hands on with your own numbers: by the end your team has its five numbers marked
- Podcast guest, any length; one idea per episode
- Guest lecture for physics, engineering or business students
- Fees and travel are quoted per invitation, never on the site; community and student events are often free
About Luke, in one line
Luke Spooner is a physicist turned systems engineer who builds software that keeps an honest record of what happened and a live picture of what is probably true now.
In one paragraph
Luke Spooner is a physicist turned systems engineer. He builds software that keeps two things apart: a plain record of what actually happened, and a model of what is probably true now, with the uncertainty shown rather than hidden. One idea runs through all of it: a belief engine (Umwelt), a quantum farming game built on a real simulator (SpaceWheat), a finished browser game, a small work compiler that runs a team of AI agents one refereed step at a time (Semantica), and a consultancy that draws the same picture for one small company at a time (Cerebral Frame). Off the keyboard he is a partner dancer across twenty-eight styles. He runs his repositories under a written law that several AI seats and one human follow, and publishes the record of it, failures included, on this site.
In one page
Luke Spooner trained as a physicist and works as a systems engineer. The question under everything he builds is simple to say and hard to keep: how does a system act in a world it cannot fully see without lying to itself about what it knows? His answer has two parts. Keep a plain, append-only record of what actually happened. Separately, hold a belief about what is probably true now, and show its uncertainty instead of hiding it. A number nobody measured reads dark, never zero.
That idea has several bodies. Umwelt is the engine: a belief held as a quantum state over a graph, run on ordinary computers, with the honesty rule built in; where a cleverer filter lost to a two-line blend on real data, the engine says so and ships with it off. SpaceWheat is a farming game with a real quantum simulator underneath, where players learn superposition and measurement by growing wheat. Eukaryotic Eucharist is a finished browser game, closed on purpose. Semantica is a small work compiler: two desks, refereed packets run one at a time, an append-only tape. Cerebral Frame is the consultancy, which draws the same picture, a Frame, for one small company at a time and then builds the one thing the Frame says is costing most.
He builds most of this with a team of AI agents and has had to learn, the expensive way, how to run them: one lease per task, a referee instead of trust, a named list of the things only the human can do, and a public record of what each seat claimed and what the tests actually proved. The record is this site, The Broadcast, which shows what the machine behind the work is doing, including when it is dark.
Off the keyboard he is a partner dancer: twenty-eight styles and, by his own count, about 18,000 hours on the floor. Partner dancing is the oldest version of the problem his software works on. Two people coordinate in real time with no shared script and no words, one leads and one follows, signals arrive late, and a missed step has to be repaired without stopping the music.
On stage he talks about operations, about putting agents to work, and about the difference between a measured zero and a blank. Everything he says links to a measured line on this site, including the zeros.
The record
Counted from the talks ledger as committed with this release: talks given 0 · drafted 3 · invitations accepted 0 · paid 0. No recording yet. When a talk happens it is listed here with its date and venue, and its recording links from this line.
Invite
One email with the event, the audience, the date and the format. Luke replies by email, and quotes a fee if the answer is yes.