My name is Sean Mahan. I live in Pittsburgh, PA, with my spouse, LB, the two best kids in the universe, and a black cat named Telstar (“TS” for short). When I have some spare time, I like film photography, walking around the city, and wishing I biked more often.

I am the Director of Software Engineering at Knowledge Architecture, where I have worked since 2011. KA has no outside ownership, and our business model is just providing good products and services. Specifically, an intranet platform for architecture and engineering firms called Synthesis, and guidance on things ranging from software details to knowledge management best practices. AEC is a fun industry, I personally have gotten the opportunity to build a lot of interesting things, and I feel fortunate that I can work with my dozen-ish coworkers who are smart, dedicated, collaborative, and great communicators.

For a while starting in the mid 2000’s, I made online/offline arty games. I was part of the core team behind SFZero, a Situationist-inflected “collaborative production game” of people doing creative tasks; Journey to the End of the Night, a street game of tag that has been played around the world; Flashback, an educational online/offline prompt and response game for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; and both Ghosts of a Chance and Pheon, which were in person and online games created for the Smithsonian American Art Museum. This is actually how and why I learned computer programming! I miss this kind of creative work sometimes, but I don’t miss the stress of being responsible for sending a couple of thousand people running around a city at night. I also don’t miss trying to get paid for that kind of work; I bought this “Intended Effect” url because I was frustrated by what I thought were poor efforts to connect the Gamification boomlet of those years to measurable outcomes.

I also used to spend a fair amount of time making music. I’ve primarily played bass and occasionally guitar or keyboard in bands ranging from punk to jazz to indie rock. I was in Codename: Russia and Fulton Pyser, and played with the The Connell Brothers Band in the South Jersey / Philly area; in First Coat, The 68’s, and The Paraleisural Uninsurance Temp Agency in Chicago; and in The Parents in San Francisco (a band that began while no one had kids, and ended when too many of us did).

I definitely need space in which to be creative, and I think I’ve had some pretty good ideas over the years, but overall I am at my best helping to make someone else’s scheme (that I believe in) into a reality; a classic bassist or technical cofounder. With age, my curiosity and caution have developed into a near-doctrinal resistance to sweeping pronouncements, so this blog may not be a satisfying read. That said, I miss the old internet, I do enjoy writing, I haven’t kept up old social ties, and I’d like to make new ones—so that’s why this website is here.