Seaweed
Economy
A free website on the economics and business of seaweed.
Strategy, applied economics and systems
Complex challenges need clear paths.
TalPlay writes community plans with First Nations, publishes the prices and costs the seaweed sector needs, and designs and evaluates development programs in countries where the work is hard.
First Nations priorities
Seaweed
Community systems
Regional growth paths
Technology
What we do
Four areas of work.
TalPlay
Communities
ForFirst Nations, their Councils and departments
You getA community plan, an economic strategy, and a way to keep both in use
Community planning
Seaweed
ForPeople who farm, process, sell or fund seaweed
You getPublished prices, costs and buyers in one place, with tools and guides
The seaweed work
International development
ForUN agencies, NGOs and governments
You getPrograms designed, staff trained and results evaluated, in places that are hard to work in
International work
Businesses and institutions
ForOwners, managers, colleges and universities
You getA stuck problem worked through, careful use of AI, and programs designed for your students
Start a conversation
Built by TalPlay
The systems we build.
Some problems need a tool that stays with the people doing the work. TalPlay has built one and is designing a second.
Seaweed
Community plan
to action
A way for a Nation to keep its community plan in use after it is approved.
The practice
We carried one idea into a single community in Palestine. It was a small idea, and honestly, it was enough. The people there took it and made it theirs, and it crossed borders on its own: Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen, Morocco. Twenty years later it's still running, and they own it entirely. That's what we build: work that communities make their own, that puts people in the driver's seat and outlasts the consultant who helped start it. The proof that money is not everything is a program that no longer needs you.
How TalPlay thinks
Economies are built through systems, trust, and timing.
A strategy is only useful if it can hold up in the real world: in budget meetings, community conversations, investor diligence, and the uneven conditions where change actually happens. TalPlay is built for the gap between the plan and the outcome.
Start with the operating reality.
Before recommending a path, TalPlay studies the institutions, incentives, market signals, histories, and constraints already shaping the system, not the system someone wishes existed.
Make the choices explicit.
The work turns ambiguity into decisions: what to build, what to pause, what to test, who must be involved, and what evidence is still missing.
Design for use after the report.
Outputs are built to be acted on by boards, councils, funders, and project teams long after the engagement ends, not filed away after the presentation.
Respect the relationship that makes work possible.
In Indigenous communities, fragile economies, and emerging sectors alike, trust is the infrastructure. TalPlay approaches every engagement with the patience that trust requires.
Thinking on the record
The advice I find myself giving over coffee.
Short notes from the work. People come to TalPlay for delivery, but they come back for the thinking, so here is some of it, free. If one of these starts an argument, write to me. That's what it's for.
Sector Note
Comprehensive Community Planning for First Nations: what works, what doesn't, and what planners rarely say out loud
After working through multiple CCP processes, a frank assessment of where community planning succeeds and where it quietly fails, and what Nations and planners need to do differently to make these documents matter.
Reference
Seaweed prices and buyers in Canada and the United States: what has been published
A reference with the source and date for each figure, and a plain statement where none exists. Read it on Seaweed Economy.
Field Note
The money is rarely the missing piece
Every few years someone looks at a struggling local economy and concludes it needs capital. Usually the loans that work sit inside a system that already works. Capital dropped into a broken system doesn't fix the system. It gives the failure a budget. Trace one transaction end to end, fix where it dies, then fund it.
Field Note
The certificate is not the finish line
Most youth employment programs end on the wrong day: graduation day. The hard part was never the training. It's the first paying customer, the first contract, the first month of doing the thing for real with rent due. Design backwards from that first transaction, and build the program to remove what stands in the way of it.
Essay
After the Report: why economic strategy fails at implementation, and how to design against it
Most strategy work ends with a document. The interesting question is what happens after, and why the choices made during strategy design determine whether implementation succeeds or quietly stalls on a shelf.
Bring me the messy version.
You don't need a polished brief. If you're a First Nation weighing a community or economic plan; if you're a UN team or an NGO and a program isn't landing; if you need a curriculum designed or an evaluation done, write to me and tell me where it hurts.
Not a project yet, just a question? That's fine too. Some of my best work started as someone asking for advice.
I can help you build digital products, integrate advanced technology like AI responsibly into your operations, and design programs for post-secondary institutions that work for the communities they serve.
Here's the promise: work with me today, and within a reasonable timeline, you could have programs you have never had before, built on your context, made with your community, and creating the ground for a better tomorrow for the generations that follow.
Thank you!
I'll be in touch soon.