In this talk we will discuss some recent work on groups which connect self-similar and Higman-Thompson groups to big mapping class groups via "braiding". We will explain some results on the topological finiteness properties of the resulting groups, which are topological generalizations of the algebraic properties of being finitely generated and finitely presented. The talk will involve recent joint works with Xiaolei Wu (Fudan) and Matthew Zaremsky (Albany).