The Next Steps In Life

As of the end of September, I have departed my position as a product designer at CannonKeys.

But why?

Mainly wanting to explore more in life - after having keyboards front-and-center of my life for nearly 8 years, I have accomplished a lot of what I set out to do.
With that, I wish to focus back on the reason why I started designing keyboards to begin with - using my own ideal work tool for contributing to the world via software.

A huge thanks to the CannonKeys team for everything they’ve helped me achieve over the past three years and beyond - both on the fronts of keyboard development and software knowledge (an especially huge thanks to Upas on that part).

So where are the keyboards?

Multiple keyboards have been placed into CannonKeys’ pipeline prior to departure - expect to hear more about them in the future in proper announcement posts.

Specifically, the boards are Photon, forge-c, and gemstone (of which the latter two are non-final names) - all with very different goals which I’ve wanted to address for years.
Of the three, Photon is the closest, and it tackles my long-standing goal of creating a keyboard for both the newcomer and experienced hobbyist alike - a trait made possible by its sheer versatility, performance, and accessibility.
Expect to hear more about this one fairly soon (and if you’re attending the next Tokyo keyboard meetup, you might see some units in person).

So you’re quitting keyboards?

Nope - just switching back from full-time keyboard addict back to hobbyist independent designer.

As such, any other projects that are in the works will continue to progress - whether they be keyboards like Polaris V2 or community efforts like Atelier.
Currently running group buys will progress as usual.

And knowing myself, I’ll get the occasional uncontrollable itch to design a new keyboard for the rest of my life, so there’ll probably be new designs for the foreseeable future.

The one remaining capstone

However, despite everything I’ve already done, I still have one massive keyboard goal left untouched.

One which I cannot to walk away from unattempted.
One which will be the culmination of everything I’ve learned over the past near-decade.
One which, after all these years, will be my true endgame.

Thus for at least a short while longer, I’ll be tackling this goal before going full-time software.

Expect to hear more about it in the coming months.

If you want a heads-up as to when these next projects go live, make sure to obtain the Notifications role in the ai03 Discord community to receive a ping when there’s progress.