Scott Yates

Making this page, I realized that a thing that has kind of defined my work life has been solving problems, not just hypothetically, but by building things that haven’t existed before and turning them into sustainable entities. I’ve built and sold three companies. I created an internet standard to strengthen local news. And I’ve come thisclose to fixing time itself. 🤞🏽 Lately, I’ve also been making word games.

Still working on

• LockTheClock

  A campaign to stop changing the clocks twice a year. I've been at it for more than a decade. Along the way I've testified to the U.S. Senate and been interviewed on The Daily Show.

• trust.txt

  A simple file that lets news sites say who they're connected to. It's now on its way to being an IPTC standard, and I lead IPTC's Publisher Transparency group.

• Daylight Data

  Geographic data analysis and visualization, plus other hard problems that data can solve.

Games

• Conexiones

  Connections, but in Spanish. It's made for learners, like me.

• Fluxis Redux

  A daily word-chain game. The Atlantic shut down the original. I rebuilt it to make it better than it was before. Better. Funnier. Funner.

• Monolist

  An arcade game for when you need to switch your attention without falling down a doomscroll hole.

• County quiz

  Find out how your county compares to the rest of the country.

Started and handed off

• 2000MyTrafficNews

  Traffic news for local media. It was acquired by what became Nokia, and then Microsoft, which still holds my patent.

• 2005LgDb

  A legislation database. It was acquired and still operates as BillTrack50.

• 2008BlogMutt

  A marketplace for freelance writing. It became Verblio and was later acquired by Edited Capital.

• 2016JournalList

  The nonprofit behind trust.txt. The International Press Telecommunications Council is now in the process of making it a new internet standard.

• Local Journalist Index

  A count of local journalists in every US county. I built it for Rebuild Local News and Muck Rack, then turned it over to them.

About me

I was born in Glenwood Springs and grew up in Colorado. I dropped out of CU and later got a journalism degree from NYU. I worked as a reporter until I left to start companies. Along the way I picked up a U.S. patent, some journalism awards, and one published book, which was a project all its own.

I'm still officially a Colorado resident and taxpayer. Most of the year, though, I live on Vid e Higuera, an 11-hectare farm in Costa Rica that I’m slowly converting from cow pasture to fruit trees.

I mentor startups with Techstars, advise Rebuild Local News, and co-chair the W3C Credible Web community group. I also serve on two nonprofit boards.

I take on some contract work, mostly data analysis and building tools like the ones on this page.

Connect

• LinkedIn

  The best way to reach me.

• Photography

  Pictures I've taken that I don’t mind sharing publicly.

• Email

  My first name at my last name dot net.