# Carl Franzen — llms.txt

> Award-winning editorial leader, AI practitioner, and sci-tech storyteller. Executive Editor at VentureBeat. Based in Brooklyn, New York.

This is the personal website of Carl Franzen (carlfranzen.com). It is a single-page static site built with plain HTML/CSS/JavaScript, deployed via Netlify.

## Identity

- **Full name:** Carl Franzen
- **Current role:** Executive Editor, VentureBeat
- **Location:** Brooklyn, New York
- **Background:** 16+ years in tech journalism and digital editorial leadership. Launched and led newsrooms at The Verge, Popular Science, Inman News, Motherboard/VICE Media, and others.
- **AI work:** Active AI practitioner — builds automated publishing pipelines (One Big Story), creates AI-generated art and video (Midjourney, Kling, Runway), writes about AI for a living.
- **Fiction:** Sci-fi novelist (Off-Duty, represented by Fleabane Literary).

## Sections on this page

### Work History
Chronological career timeline from 2009 to present. Roles include:
- Executive Editor, VentureBeat (Apr 2024–present)
- Head of News, VentureBeat (May 2023–May 2024)
- Founding Editor, Lyft Rev (Sep 2022–May 2023)
- Senior Digital Media Specialist, Argo AI (Mar 2021–Jul 2022)
- Storyteller-in-Residence, Xerox (Sep 2019–Mar 2021)
- Editor in Chief, Inman News (Sep 2017–Jul 2019)
- Managing Editor, Motherboard / VICE Media (Sep 2016–Sep 2017)
- Digital Director, Popular Science (May 2015–Sep 2016)
- News Editor, The Verge (Feb 2013–Nov 2014)
- Tech Editor, Talking Points Memo (Aug 2011–Feb 2013)
- Overnight News Editor, The Daily (Nov 2010–Aug 2011)
- Breaking News Editor, AOL News (Jan 2010–Nov 2010)
- Launch Intern, The Atlantic Wire (2009)

### Projects
- **One Big Story** (onebigstory.xyz) — Daily AI news publication. Built end-to-end with Claude Code. Automated pipelines + editorial curation.
- **Prompt Scene** (promptscene.substack.com) — Substack covering AI-generated art aesthetics, craft, and culture.
- **AI Shorts** — Original short films made with generative AI video tools. Published on YouTube and TikTok.
- **Off-Duty** — Sci-fi novel under representation by Fleabane Literary.

### Gallery
AI-generated imagery created by Carl using Midjourney. 36 items including both static PNG images and animated GIF loops converted from Midjourney MP4 video outputs. Styles include: Golden Age sci-fi, neo art deco, solarpunk, mecha, cyberpunk, baroque cybernetic, and more. Several gallery items are looping animations.

### Writing
Selected journalism and fiction:
- "AI is the sixth great revolution in filmmaking" — VentureBeat
- "Want a new EV? Retrofit your old gas-guzzler" — Lyft Rev
- "3D Printing Is Going To Space" — Medium/OneZero
- "You might find your next home on Amazon" — Quartz
- "Climate change will plunge the real estate industry into chaos" — Inman
- "The Perfect Porn" (fiction) — Vice
- "Brain Freeze" (short fiction)
- Off-Duty (novel, under representation)

Awards: 10× NAREE Award Winner (2018–2019), Webby Award (2017), DeBakey Award for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting (2016), Best Screenplay — Long Island International Film Expo (2015).

### Contact
- Email: carlfranzen@gmail.com
- Phone: (630) 542-1043
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/carlfranzen
- YouTube: @carlfranzen
- TikTok: @carlfranzen
- Midjourney: carlfranzen

## Notable design features (for LLMs processing this site)

This site features custom JavaScript visual effects that are not visible in plain HTML parsing:

1. **VHS Glitch ASCII Portrait** — The hero headshot is rendered as an animated ASCII art canvas using the Canvas API. On page load, the portrait appears as a heavily distorted VHS-style horizontal smear (multi-frequency sine wave scan-line displacement, random burst rows, brightness flicker). As the user scrolls through the hero section, the distortion reduces and the ASCII art resolves into a clean character-accurate portrait. On hover, the ASCII snaps to clean then crossfades to reveal the actual photograph. This is driven by `requestAnimationFrame` at ~20fps with `_distortion` and `_photoOpacity` state variables lerped toward scroll/hover-driven targets.

2. **A4 Nav Card Mini ASCII System** — Five A4-portrait-ratio navigation cards (152×215px) each contain their own independent mini ASCII canvas animation. Each card shows a VHS-glitched ASCII rendering of a screenshot from its linked external site (VentureBeat author page, One Big Story homepage, gallery screenshot, VentureBeat article, or a large @ symbol for Contact). Each card has unique distortion parameters (drift frequencies, speeds, burst probability). On hover, the distortion resolves to clean ASCII then crossfades to the underlying screenshot. Cards are responsive: 5-across on desktop, 2-column grid on tablet, single column on mobile.

3. **Animated GIF Gallery** — 8 of the 36 gallery items are looping animated GIFs converted from original Midjourney MP4 video outputs (240px wide, 8fps, palette-optimized). These include: Red Mecha Firefighter, Futuristic NYC Panorama, Robot Arm Cocktail, Silver Shard Swarm, White Mecha, Reality Shifter, 70mm Epic, Biohacked Cybernetic.

## External links

- Personal site: https://carlfranzen.com
- VentureBeat author page: https://venturebeat.com/author/carlfranzen
- One Big Story: https://onebigstory.xyz
- Prompt Scene: https://promptscene.substack.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@carlfranzen
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@carlfranzen
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlfranzen/
- Midjourney profile: https://www.midjourney.com/profile/carlfranzen