Indie RND
Welcome to Indie RND! This is a gathering place where independent researchers and builders can share their unique tools and methodologies for research and development.
The focus is on accelerating research and building tools for thought that generalize across many disciplines - think knowledge bases, computational notebooks, AI research agents, physical note-taking methods, and reading techniques. However, we’re open to anyone who’s serious about doing independent research on deep topics.
We’ll be self-sufficient and collaborative in bootstrapping our own research and development (e.g. helping each other set up research pipelines, pooling compute resources, etc.), and we’ll generate meaningful artifacts that we can share with the world, such as joint publications, a catalog of tools for thought, and perhaps even a course on independent research.
What sessions usually look like:
Short presentations from members on research techniques, tools, experiments, or findings.
Occasional guest talks from researchers, builders, or independent thinkers.
Live demos of workflows, systems, or tools for thought.
Collaborative discussion around open questions, methods, and bottlenecks.
Experiments with new formats for collective inquiry and shared progress.
If any of the following sounds like you, Indie RND might be the right fit:
Full-time software engineer by day, independent researcher by night.
PhD student who wants to push beyond the limits of your discipline.
Citizen scientist exploring unorthodox or emerging fields (e.g. deep learning before it became mainstream).
Toolmaker interested in helping people think better.
Anyone committed to deep, independent inquiry with real rigor.
If you’re joining for the first time, please bring to share any of the following:
Research methods, systems, or tools that you find to be effective.
A research topic you’re working on (or want to start working on).
A tool for thought that you’re building.
We’ll present using a projector, so preparing slides would be helpful. Please use the 540 entrance and knock when you arrive. If you show up after 8:00 pm, please find us in one of the rooms.
There’s something transformative about proving that you can do meaningful research and development on your own terms outside of corporations and institutions. That’s the spirit we want to capture at Indie RND.