MAKER & LEADER · SEVERAL WORLDS · SCOTLAND
I build things
across several
worlds.
I’m Dean Rougvie — I make leadership tools, write tabletop adventures, draft a couple of books, and over-engineer a homelab when no one’s looking. Most of it starts as an experiment. Some of it becomes real.
Four worlds,
one stubborn maker.
Each one started as a what-if. They don’t really connect — except that the same person keeps showing up to build them.
01 / Leadership
ImTheBusManagement & leadership tools.
A practical toolkit for people who lead teams: SWOT, Important-vs-Urgent (Eisenhower), Impact-vs-Effort, a Feedback Scale, a “Bored-to-Panic” check-in, and a dashboard to pull them together. Opinionated, hands-on, made to be used in the room. Pairs with Of Course It Went Wrong — the book describes the patterns, these tools help address them.
02 / Tinkerer
Homelab & toolsOver-engineered solutions to small problems.
If something annoys me twice, I’ll usually build a little machine to make it stop. Sometimes that machine is far more elaborate than the problem deserved. It’s how I learn, and occasionally something useful emerges.
·· / Workshop
Odd little web toysPlayful experiments that escaped the lab.
Nothing serious here — just practice pieces and half-finished ideas I built to learn something or amuse myself. Poke at them; they may or may not still work.
03 / Tabletop
RedLifeAdventuresRPG resources for the table.
Locations, NPCs, encounters and printable tools — for D&D and games like it.
04 / Writing
Two books underwayWorks in progress, written out loud.
Of Course It Went Wrong is about everything that goes sideways and what you learn anyway. Build Your Own Brain is about assembling a head you can actually think with — tools, habits and systems for an over-engineered mind. Read the full pitches below.
Two books, in progress.
Being written, out loud, with the occasional false start. Both written in the public part of PKA.
Writing · in progress
Of Course It Went Wrong
On the gap between the plan and the day. A reference book of 40 failure patterns (why they happen, how they show up, what they cost, how to counter them) — Individual → Team → Organisation → Systems. Also a companion to ImTheBus: the book describes the patterns, the tools help address them.
Writing · in progress
Build Your Own Brain
On assembling a head you can actually think with. A decision-led guide to designing a personal knowledge assistant — for curious people somewhere between non-technical and semi-technical who want to understand the why, not just the recipe. Written in public from the working source-of-truth documents of a real, working system.
Also, a camera
A quieter practice:
dissolving places.
A quieter practice:
dissolving places.
Documenting the places where human intention is slowly dissolving into time, weather, and nature. Edgelands, industrial texture, decay, reclamation. Scotland.
The tools I think with.
A short working set of razors, laws, and voices — each one named, each one earned its place.
Expand the working set →
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Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Carl Sagan (the Sagan Standard) -
Never attribute to malice what stupidity explains.
Hanlon’s Razor -
As simple as possible, but not simpler.
Einstein’s Razor -
The effort to refute nonsense is an order of magnitude greater than the effort to produce it.
Brandolini’s Law -
When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?
John Maynard Keynes -
Million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.
Terry Pratchett
You do the math. You solve one problem… and then the next one… and if you solve enough problems, you get to come home.Andy Weir, The Martian