San Diego IndieWeb Camp 2024: Community Play

N.B.: There’s no way to comprehensively encapsulate 2 full days of an IndieWeb Camp. Here are a few impressions and posts and links and memories. Here are a few select photos and thoughts.

IWC SAN DIEGO 2024 #INDIEWEBCAMP burn all books & friends
I made this header for the event. I am pretty proud of it. It’s meant to mimic the look of Riso-printing which is how I first came to know Burn All Books. Their shop is singluar in San Diego and we were all delighted with the venue.
Group Shot
GROUP SHOT!

Left to right: Anthony, David, gRegor, Al, and me.

Photo by Tantek originally posted to Swarm

David Shanske and 2 of his 3-D printed and hand-assembled keyboards

David has been building keyboards lately. 3-D printed in parts, and then hand assembled, including soldering. He’s gotten quite good at it! He wrote at the camp about Switching to ClassicPress. His example has me thinking about doing that very same thing. The WordPress ecosystem has been terrific for me, but there’s a new patina of disappointment and drama settling on it right now and it has me considering other options.

Tantek, gRegor, David, Chris (with typewriter), and me
"Hearing a typewriter is proof of life."@artlung, IndieWebCamp San Diego 2024
Photo by Chris Aldrich
Hello from IndieWeb Camp San Diego ~ 2024. This in being written on a Smith-Corona typewriter which Chris Aldrich brought up from Los Angeles. Or, rather down, from L.A. Thanks for reading, Joe (Artlung.com) December 8, 2024.
originally on Mastodon
>Tantek, gRegor, David, Angelo (on screen), Anthony, Chris (with typewriter), and me

Angelo attended remotely. On a recent IndieWeb Homwbrew Website Club Angelo opened up his site to allow those who logged in with their website to make changes to it. Do you remember the first time you encountered a Google Doc and multiple people were typing at the same time? I remember that experience with an editor called SubEthaEdit, on a local network. I’m pretty sure it was at a BarCamp in Los Angeles that I first experienced it. It may seem utterly normal to us now to group-edit a document, but 20 years ago it was miraculous.

I have attended a number of BarCamp-type events over the years. This is the third IndieWeb Camp experience. The first was San Diego 2023. The second: Portland this year. And I’ve attended UX Camp DC several times. An event called BeCamp in Charlottesville, and some DevHouse type hackathons.

In a session at IWC, Al Abut dubbed this experience “COMMUNITY PLAY”.

I love that. It’s something I want to lean into. By playing together we cleave to each other. We find whether and how we get along. Play facilitates that. And when we can play together, we can also attack hard problems together. I feel strongly that here in the US we are entering a year where there will be hard tasks to do. Dread is in the air. Prepping for the year with play and good camaraderie feels useful.

Thanks for reading.

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