Rob Gordon
Hello! I am a creative technologist and researcher exploring the frontiers of humans-doing-things-togetherness. My research consists of theorizing about and developing software at the intersection of AI, digital democracy, coordination, and tools for thought. I do this because I believe we can improve our planet and our lives with technology that helps us better understand ourselves, the world around us, and how we relate to each other.
Background
I like making music. I studied composition at California Institute of the Arts while teaching myself to code in my spare time. After university I entered software through the side door, coding sound and visuals for performance art and installations. In 2017 I began building websites for nonprofits at Constructive. Making websites became making apps became building experimental tools alongside Mila researchers at Element AI. Covid happened. As a result of sharing Flowchart Fun, Nathan Young invited me to build forecasting tools with him at Goodheart Labs. Last year Nathan and I were accepted into the AI for Human Reasoning Fellowship, during which we built a bot which wrote the first AI-written community note on X. As of now our bot is among the top 50 CN authors and has served notes to millions of X users. In late 2025 I received a grant from the Future of Life Foundation to research coordination technologies. That led me to where I currently work, BRKT Labs, a small research group exploring AI-mediated collaboration and healthier social fabric.
Projects
Tools I actively maintain — spanning diagramming, visualization, and group coordination.
TeamSort — Instant polls for prioritizing tasks and making group decisions. No login required.
Flowchart Fun — The fastest text-to-flowchart tool on the web. Maintained since 2021.
Docugram — Upload a document, get an editable diagram.
Many things have been built and retired over the years. These are the ones I'm actively maintaining. The rest is on GitHub.
Things I'm Reading
Let Cities Build Utopia — Elle Griffin / Elysian Collective · Companies have built more beautiful cities than Hong Kong. Investors have funded a better quality of life than Shenzhen. What if cities could build utopia?
Adaptive Democracy · A framework for governance that can actually keep up with the rate things change.
Get in touch
If you're working on coordination, collective intelligence, deliberative process, or anything nearby — I'd like to hear from you.