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Universal Cake

Our Approach to Work

At Universal Cake, our work is guided by the belief that thriving organizations built on human-centered values, equitable structures, and sustainable practices allow us to build and improve upon processes, tools, and services that support long-term resilience and well-being.

Active Projects

Sovereign Stack IT Automation

Websites

Personal Security and Privacy Solutions

Training Programs

  • Agnostic approaches to infrastructure
  • Accessibility
  • Automating Infrastructure Orchestration
    • Infra as human readable documentation
  • Automated Auditing for:
  • Privacy (HIPPA, GDPR...)
  • Security

Guiding Principles

  1. Values We place people at the core of our work, focusing on accessibility, privacy, inclusivity, and respect for diverse lived experiences.

  2. Sustainability and Long-Term Resilience Our aim is to create structures and practices that last, empowering individuals, communities and organizations to flourish over time. This sometimes means avoiding short-term wins at the expense of systemic longevity.

  3. Equity and Collaboration Transparent processes, and fair distribution of resources ensure that work is shared, meaningful, and beneficial for all participants.

  4. Continuous Learning and Feedback Feedback is part of the iterative cycle. Each project, product, and service contributes insights that help refine our values and shape more effective outcomes.

How We Work

  • Accessibility - While accessibility and web accessibility in particularly has frequently been an "add-on" this approach falls short of serving real populations. In particular, it fails to address the massive demographic shift taking place in North America as the baby boomer generation ages and the resulting implications for the need for more accessible technologies and infrastructure.

  • baby boomers and implications for accessibility

  • Documentation Inspired by P.A.R.A. (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives), we align our work into clear categories, ensuring transparency and adaptability across contexts.

  • Well-Being Focus: Thriving organizations that engage in practices that acknowledge the biopsychosocial model of health will be better prepared to create useful and long lived products that better serve and support their users real world needs.
  • Technology and Automation: By building systems that are transparent, maintainable, secure and safe allows individuals and organizations to pivot in order to better reflect their values and better serve themselves and their clients needs.
  • Community Relationships: Trust and accountability are foundational. By centering respect and care, we build relationships that foster collective growth.

Outcomes We Seek

  • Healthy, Passionate, and Supported People: Work that nurtures well-being and allows individuals to bring their unique perspectives and skills to the table.
  • High-Quality, Ethical Outputs: Systems and services that are practical, safe, secure, and sustainable and reflect human values.
  • Lasting Impact: We strive to create resilient ecosystems of people, projects, and practices that adapt, thrive, and inspire.

License

This document, Universal Cake: Our Approach to Work, by Christopher Steel, with AI assistance from ChatGPT-5 (OpenAI), is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

CC License