How I got here

My name's Colin O'Brien, and I'm based in Brussels, Belgium.

I've been online for more than 30 years. During this time, I’ve watched the web evolve from the early days, when every website had a grey background and left-aligned text, to today's much more complex landscape.

I started in graphic design and typography before co-founding one of the first internet service providers in Belgium, where I did everything from configuring network routers and servers to building websites and doing phone support.

Since then, I've worked in tech and marketing, launched a startup, and developed countless websites and apps as a freelancer, contractor, and consultant. Needless to say, I've seen it all, sometimes repeatedly (hello there, hype cycle).

From the dotcom boom via the mobile revolution to today's AI fever, I've learned not just to keep pace, but to distinguish what's genuinely useful from what's just noise (and there's a lot of that).

Along the way, clients paid me to build things. But what they kept coming back for was the thinking around these projects: the choices, the vendor claims that didn't hold up, the obscure questions nobody thought to ask…

Eventually it became clear that part was the real work, so that's what I do now. With a focus on autonomy and ownership.