events/2025-01-22-hwc-europe
Homebrew Website Club Europe/London was an IndieWeb meetup on Zoom held on 2025-01-22.
- Archived from: https://etherpad.indieweb.org/2025-01-22-hwc-europe
Participants
capjamesg- Template:VinceAggrippino
- Adam Chamberlin
jo - https://dead.garden
Angelo Gladding
Pablo Morales- Zoyander
Tantek Γelik
benjiJoe Crawford
zachary.kai
- ... add names
Notes
- Welcome to HWC!
- Webmentions
- You can use this tool to show webmentions: https://github.com/PlaidWeb/webmention.js/
- "This part of the call is called Webmention Wednesdays."
- webmention.rocks
- Learn how to make the {{ }} brackets work around your name at sparkline
- PABLO, long time no see!!!!! +1 thought the same thing
- I'm usually working away from home or I have a meeting during HWC. Glad to be back!
- Sharing zines on personal websites
- https://gusbus.space/smallweb-subway/
- Lots of people who share zines do it via IG, DMs, email, etc.
- Mike uses iCab Mobile browser on iPhone, an extremely customizable browser, with a setting that allows you to turn off "Universal Links", which, if turned off, prevents web pages from redirecting links to an app or the app store. So, like, you could have Insta links stay in the browser instead of redirecting to the Insta app. (Also shout out because the developer is extremely responsive, I've had him write me back about issues a bunch of times.)
- THIS IS FROM INSIDE EDGE (on Debian)
- Challenges getting people on the personal web
- Limits of "audience", reach, impressions, exposure, etc. -- they are very corporate.
- "Do they mean 'community', or do they mean an 'audience'?"; collapse of context and meaning of those terms.
- Neocities as an entry point for artistic communities.
- Workshops with different organisations to help people dip their toe in the water.
- "Google this" vs. "search it up online"
- "web searched"
- Platforms are both format and audience; accept a smaller audience and do it on your own, or access a larger social media audience and be limited by format. Mastodon, AP, etc. turns this up on its head.
- Compelling proposition for artists potentially ^
- Is reach a problem actually?
- You go where your friends are. - Sara, and
- Reach /= scale.
- You go where your friends are. - Sara, and
- Social media taught us to value quality over quantity.
- It's harder to get people from an IG community to leave and switch to a different way of interacting.
- IndieWeb Carnival topic this month is friction -- what it takes to get your own website. It's a lot of work to get a website online and you don't get feedback immediately like you do on social media. IndieWeb_Carnival
- Open heart protocol as a way to get a "like"; it's only a click of a button!
- https://openheart.fyi/
- Mastodon as a step in a better direction, but it's still often running on others' infrastructure.
- Biggest advantage: Not run by a huge tech corporation that is trying to surveill you.
- Mastodon UI default UI is quantity over quality.
- What do we actually want? - James musing on how exciting it is that we can ask this question.
- We get to design tech :)
- We lose out when we replace our interactions with shallow interactions.
- If we get distracted by lots of options and none allow for high quality interactions, then something is lost.
- When all solutions solve a problem in the same way and none give us that community, there is a problem.
- Michael sharing story of sharing something on social media, someone clicking the link to a post, and eventually starting a discussion with Michael. The guy started browseing my website after reading the link I dropped, looked up my phone number and called me based on liking the site. We talked for about 45 minutes. Interesting dude, and nice to make a human connection via the website. βM.
- The role of websites in employment.
- Websites as an opportunity to stand out; shows intiative, that you have creativity.
- People are talking about making a website for portfolios / to help with employment prospects.
- Have full control of what they send out and how they get seen.
- Mindset of having to get something back from making a website. But what if you make your website for fun?!
- You don't talk about returns from flutes or paint sets.
- Your website doesn't have to be professional.
- Thinking about our identities; James removing "technical writer" from his bio because he wants his website to be more about himself, not profession.
- But some people prefer their websites to be professional!
- It's all about what you prefer :)
- Full circle: what do you want to get out of your website?
- Website making as a hobby
- Enjoy publishing and being yourself
- Adam: "My website is my hobby"
- James feels this way too!
- Indieweb Newsletter this-week-in-the-indieweb
- What we're doing on our sites
- Fixing things
- Reducing use of JavaScript
- https://dead.garden/blog/indieweb-bashblog-a-single-script-ssg-with-webmentions-and-more.html
- microformats rabbit holes
- Displaying races one has run on one's website
- sed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sed circa 1974. There are entire books about using sed.
- classic book: "sed & awk" https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/sed-awk/1565922255/ from O'Reilly
sed for Windows: https://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/sed.htm Surprising not directly included in the GNU Utilities for Windows: https://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/coreutils.htm
- "HTML is my database"
- I don't have a MySQL, etc.
- Markdown files have the same spirit -- plain files.
- Lots of us write posts in markdown.
- Running process -- thinking about website documentation
- Sign up for an event
- Train for an event
- Run the event
- Reflect on the race
- How can these be documented on one's personal website?
- Tantek shows RSVPs runs on https://tantek.com/
- Tracy has webmentions that link back to other posts on her website at https://tracydurnell.com
- Future posting -- write something for the future (letter to read next year; reminder of ideas; event you're going to)
Angelo's RSS feed: https://granary.io/url?input=html&output=rss&url=https://ragt.ag
Joe: Likes how Angelo's website has a sense of play not only of content but also the mechanics being part of the play; your website is not a boring framework or ops process. The whole site is the content, and the content has content.
- Going where people are.
- Angelo's story of a nature community connecting on WhatsApp
- We are used to there being a group that we can find. Running groups promoting on posters, in shops, etc.
- But a lot is now private and hard to find.
- An argument for posting on the open web ^
- If you are looking for a new group, go looking.
- It may take a while to find your people, but it's worth it.
- jwz, who owns a nightclub, asked recently, and earnestly, about how one advertises events: https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2025/01/13.html
- Starting one's own group may encourage others to join.
- Push and pull of events: creating ways to find your thing.
- Speaking of QR Codes, I have a non-public QR code generator, please feel free to use it for your event! https://apps.artlung.com/qrcode/?data=https%3A%2F%2Findieweb.org%2F
- Erin Kissane's writing was mentioned
- The Logoff https://www.vox.com/pages/logoff-newsletter-trump-administration-updates "The Logoff is a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life."
- There may be fragmentation in private groups; there being two groups for the same thing.
- Website stickers on your phone
- https:// conveys it is a website
- For Angelo Gladding https://apps.artlung.com/qrcode/?data=https%3A%2F%2Fragt.ag%2Fsp%2F
- Spaces being important to distinguish phone numbers from just numbers.
- https:// being the same for websites, www. too.
- https://github.com/google/libphonenumber