Building Relationships with Information: A Digital Gardening Workshop with Fran Carlos
How do we build intentional relationships with the information we encounter daily in the attention economy? In this hands-on workshop, medical student and content creator Fran Carlos invites you to explore digital gardening—a practice of curating and synthesizing information to consciously tend to your curiosities. Unlike passive scrolling through feeds that prioritize breadth over depth, digital gardening offers an active, personalized approach where ideas connect in multiple directions, much like wandering through a physical garden and discovering unexpected relationships between plants across seasons.
Together, we'll take an "internet walk" to examine what we consume versus what we truly care about, then build our own digital gardens using tools like Obsidian and Are.na. You'll learn to capture ideas with honest reactions, organize thoughts across different contexts, and discover poetic connections between concepts—from scientific theories to personal observations. By the end of this workshop, you'll have started your own garden and explored how this practice can evolve from private reflection to collaborative learning, helping you stay grounded online while nurturing the information that shapes your worldview.
Learning outcomes:
Set up your first digital garden in Obsidian with organized folders and tagging systems
Practice capturing and contextualizing ideas during a live "internet walk" exercise
Learn to connect information across notes using references, tags, and collaborative tools like Are.na
This is an online event. The session will be recorded. Materials and recordings will be sent after the workshop to registered participants, and will then be posted online to the public after a further ~6 month delay.
This event is part of Developh's 2025 Rainy Season Talks series, focusing on workshops that center creative and critical practices around technology.
Donate to the workshop
If you have the capacity to donate to Developh, these are our suggested workshop fees:
Philippines: 250-600 PHP
Outside the Philippines: 15-25 USD
Donations may be made at paypal.me/developh or via GCash to the number in this link.
About the presenter
Fran Carlos is a Filipino medical student, artist, and technologist devoted to more mindful and gentle ways of being. Through her videos, writing, and tiny toolkits, her work seeks to explore the question — "How might we reclaim our curiosity, creativity, and humanity, in and alongside digital spaces?"
francarlos.com
tiktok.com/franifesto
instagram.com/francinecarlos
About Developh
Developh is an arts & research institution nurturing critical and creative technologies, working towards a more archipelagic internet. As a community of practice, we gather, publish, research, and create to reclaim technology as a tool for liberation rather than oppression. Our activations concern the online, offline, and in-between.