piddonkadonkJake Schneider · St. Paul, Minnesota
Tech, noise, and
refusing to be
boring.
Twenty-five years booking rooms and building festivals, now pointed at AI. Gear I use, tools that hold up, and a running argument with anyone who thinks culture should sit down and be quiet.
What this is
A working notebook, out loud.
I am a creative strategist and partnerships operator with 25 years across music, large-scale live events, creator partnerships, AI, and Web3. These days I do AI solutions consulting and quality control work, and I am building Coursera courses on deal-making, business, and marketing.
This site is where the testing notes go. What I plugged in, what broke, where I went, who I am rooting for. Free, no gate, no funnel.
The pillars.
Tools & Tech
AI skills, MCP servers and plugins, model reviews, prompt recipes, and the productivity setup that survived a month of real use.
Open the stack →
02
Reviews
Gear, apps, albums, books, tacos. Honest scores, stated bias, and the thing I would buy again.
Read the reviews →
03
Adventures
Roads, rivers, festivals, and the odd detour that turns into the whole story.
Hit the road →
04
Journal
Twenty-five years of rooms, stages and spreadsheets, written down before I forget the good parts.
Open the journal →
05
The Resistance
Authoritarianism is the final boss. Here is the party composition, the gear check, and the strategy guide.
The strategy guide →
the record.
The career, dated and sourced. Four of the moments that explain the rest, and a link to all of them.
-
01
Electric Forest
Part of the founding team that built and launched the culturally iconic Electric Forest music festival. Booked the early years and helped design and curate the stages and themed areas, the parts you wander into at 2am.
Rothbury, Michigan, from 2011 -
02
Madison House
Agent at twenty-two, then partner and Director of Agency Development. Led agency growth and operations at Madison House in Boulder, with 100+ artists across the rosters he built and ran.
Boulder, Colorado, 2005 to 2017 -
03
Madmin
Helped build and license Madmin, an early cloud booking CRM for the music industry, with three partners. Built out of the seat of the person who had to enter the tours, then licensed to other agencies.
Software, licensed to The Agency Group and Windish -
04
AI quality and solutions work
Rubric architecture, golden answers, model failure design and agent trajectory review for frontier AI labs and the platforms that staff that work. Plus deal-making coursework for Coursera through ansrsource.
St. Paul, Minnesota, 2025 to now
On the record, by other people.
Press, verbatim“If an earthquake develops near Colorado, pin it on the eruptive activities of Jake Schneider.”Larry LeBlanc, CelebrityAccess, 2014
“His desire for efficiency extends beyond his office walls and into festival crowds, tour buses, and even his own home.”Cherie Hu, Forbes, 2017
“I think Jake really worked to get him into those clubs and [earn] acceptance in those rooms.”Charlie Walker, C3 Presents, in Pollstar, 2010
“After almost a decade with the company, he's now a partner, director of agency development and an all-around badass.”Rooster Magazine, 2014
ForbesRolling StonePollstarLos Angeles TimesLA WeeklyCelebrityAccessMagnetic MagazineHypebotRooster MagazineEDM World Magazine
The channel.
Since 2006piddonkadonk. started as a video blog in July 2006, before the word existed. Backstage in Japan, a pachinko win in Nagoya, Rage Against the Machine shot from a Ferris wheel. Ninety-nine videos are still up. New ones are being cut, on my terms, with no sponsored opinions.
New episodes are being shot in the office, on the road, and at least once from somewhere I should not be standing. First one goes out through the newsletter.
The tool stack.
Free · No gateI do AI quality control for a living: rubrics, golden answers, agent trajectories. These are the tools I built for my own paid jobs, given away. There is enough for everybody to eat.
Rubric Writer
Writes rows that are atomic, binary, self-contained and objective, and refuses to write the mushy kind.
Get it →
Rubric Auditor
Audits a rubric you already have. Duplicates, inverted negatives, category imbalance. Feedback only.
Run it →Golden Answer Checker
Grades your reference answer against your own rubric before you build a thousand tasks on it.
Try it →The Rider Test
A one page checklist that runs any criteria doc through the touring-rider standard. Works on specs too.
Grab it →
Who Is Hiring
The platforms paying people to make AI less wrong. I work on several of them. Referral links stated plainly.
See the board →
B1NARY H0RDE
The consulting side. Rubric architecture, model failure design, agent trajectory QC, creative tooling.
Next door →Twenty-five years, a handful of photos.
ReceiptsRooms I booked, stages I helped build, and the gear that got it there. Not stock. These are mine.
From the journal.
Long enough to be useful
Sep 19BATNA, explained with a concert booking
Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement sounds like a minor Batman villain. It is your plan B, and it sets the floor for every deal you make.
Sep 16The Claude Code setup I stopped fiddling with
Six weeks of tweaking, then a month of leaving it alone. The instructions file, the skills, the MCP servers that stayed, and the ones I deleted without ceremony.
Sep 9Final boss energy
Authoritarianism runs the same script as every end-game boss: a big health bar, obvious tells, and a room full of people who can win once they stop soloing it.
Mixtapes.
No talking · Just playDJ sets and long mixes for working, driving and cleaning the kitchen at midnight. They will live on Mixcloud, which pays the artists whose records are in the set. The page there is open. The first tapes are being cut.
The Nonsense Emailer
One email. Zero nonsense, except the good kind.
What I tested, what I am reading, one tool that saved me an hour, and one thing that made me laugh. Sent when it is worth sending, never to hit a quota.
