Speaking

// SPEAKING

I run one studio, and it ships its own receipts — a published cap table, a granted patent, a privacy claim you can break in one command. I speak to game-audio, business-and-culture, and AI-and-product tracks about the systems under the stories: how ownership can be arithmetic, how adaptive music stays rights-clean by construction, and why the most trustworthy software has no server to trust. Book me for a session that hands the room something it can verify on the way out.

Talks

Ownership Can Be Arithmetic

For a decade my studio ran on one rule: an hour of work earns a point, and points are the cap table — my own share included, earned at the same rate as every line beneath it. This talk walks that decade of receipts, the published ledger anyone can audit, and what happened when the same arithmetic was handed to undergraduate founders to run their own companies. It’s the rare equity talk with the spreadsheet left open on stage. For business and culture tracks.

Rights-Clean by Construction

The generative-music lawsuits made every audio director’s lawyer nervous about where the notes came from. This talk lays out the alternative I patented and shipped: adaptive music assembled from human-authored source by a documented system, with provenance you can trace and a rights story a legal team can actually sign. It’s how you score a game that never repeats without borrowing anyone’s copyright to do it. For game-audio tracks.

There Is No Server

Local-first isn’t a privacy feature bolted onto a cloud product — it’s a product strategy, and this talk makes the case from the buyer backward. It covers why regulated buyers can’t touch most AI tools, how “your data never leaves your machine” becomes a claim you demonstrate instead of assert, and the one-command test that proves no data left the room. Trust you can’t verify is just branding. For AI and product tracks.

Sessions

Two ways to bring me into the room, priced up front — so the conversation starts with your date, not a quote.

Conference / Festival Session — $3,500–$7,500 + travel

Keynote or track session. Three talks, written and pre-matched to game-audio, business-and-culture, and AI/product tracks.

• One of the three talks above, matched to your track
• A session that hands the room something it can verify: a published ledger, a granted patent, a one-command privacy test
• Slides and a short bio built to your program; the headshot and logos are in the kit below
• Q&A, and the recording is yours to keep

Book a session ›

Corporate Session / Workshop — $7,500–$15,000 / day

Half or full day. A few workshop days a quarter — delivery comes first.

• A working session for your team — “Stand up an agentic delivery line” or “Rights-clean adaptive audio,” built to your stack
• Half a day for the primer; a full day to go hands-on with your own code and data
• The same senior attention as my builds — no bench, no juniors, no slideware
• On-site or remote; your team keeps the materials and the working examples

Book a workshop ›

Tape

Three long-form conversations from 2024 — games, music, and the hacker ethos, unedited and at length.

• Professor Game #327 — “Charney Kaye Brings the Music Into the Mix” — failing faster, tight core loops, and building generative music for games. Listen · Feb 2024
• Design Your Legacy — “A Hacker’s Ethos and Legacy” — the hacker attitude, open-sourcing the music engine, and the shift to dynamic experiences. Listen · Apr 2024
• Sunday SoulDay S2E15 — “The Creative Pulse of Charney Kaye” — DJ roots, post-production, tech, and the entrepreneurial through-line across twenty-five years. Listen · Apr 2024

Kit

Everything an event needs to introduce me and print a program.

Introduction · 75 words. Nick Charney Kaye is the operator of Outright Mental, a one-person interactive-entertainment studio in San Francisco. He is the inventor on a U.S. patent for generative music, the architect of the open-source XJ adaptive-music platform, and the builder of local-first AI products that keep data on the user’s machine. Across twenty-five years he has shipped work for David Blaine, the U.S. Department of Justice, and Stetson. He runs his studio as a published-ledger co-op.

• Headshot — JPG
• Outright Mental logo lockup — PNG
• Outright Mental logo — SVG · vector

Logos and headshot may be used in event programs and slides — please don’t recolor, crop, or alter the marks. The full studio press kit carries additional logos, key art, and the studio fact sheet.

Booking

Prefer a conversation first? Book a 20-minute fit call. Plain email works too — hi@nickcharneykaye.com, answered within one business day, by me. I travel from San Francisco.