VitaeMap

Around twenty five years ago, I was working as a developer when online maps were starting to become accessible to everyone. Google Maps and Yahoo Maps opened up a fascinating new way of interacting with information.

So, naturally, I started experimenting. I put my CV on a map.

It was just a small experiment. But something unexpected happened: the same information suddenly told a completely different story.

A traditional CV showed a sequence of jobs and dates. The map showed something else. It showed where I had been. Where I had stayed. Where I had moved. It could reveal roots, movement, curiosity, and perhaps even a desire to explore.

The information hadn't changed.Only the representation had.And that idea stayed with me.

A life is not a list

Twenty years later, we still mostly represent human journeys through lists: Job title. Company. Date.

But a life is rarely experienced that way.

It has places, periods, choices, encounters, detours, failures, passions and turning points.So I kept coming back to the same question:

What if changing the way we represent a life could change the way we see it?

That's the idea behind VitaeMap.

The same story, seen differently

With VitaeMap, a journey can be explored geographically.

A map can be presented in different ways depending on what you want to see.

And it can become more than a static representation.

But the map is only one possibility.

VitaeMap currently offers multiple ways to explore the same journey. Because a map is excellent at revealing movement and geography.

But sometimes, geography isn't the story you are trying to tell.

Sometimes, a journey should look like a journey

A different representation can reveal something entirely different.

The same life. The same events.

A different perspective.

And that's the core idea behind VitaeMap.

There is no single right way to represent a life. A timeline can reveal rhythm. A map can reveal movement. A journey can reveal choices and detours.

Other representations can reveal patterns that would otherwise remain invisible.

VitaeMap currently includes 12 different ways to explore a story, and I'm still experimenting with what a "life representation" can be.

An idea that took 25 years to become a product

That original experiment, putting my CV on a map, never completely left me.

The technology changed. My career changed. The idea evolved.

And eventually, it became a question worth building a product around.

What could we discover about ourselves if we stopped representing our lives as lists?

That's the question I'm exploring with VitaeMap.

And, twenty years after putting my CV on a map for the first time, the experiment is still going.