2014-05-06-iiw-intro-indieweb

= Introduction to the IndieWeb IIW Session =

Notes taken mostly by Aaron Parecki, with some remote notes by Tantek Çelik at IIW on 2014-05-06 on https://etherpad.mozilla.org/iiw - archived here.

Word document (per IIW convention): copy paste this into a Terminal window:
 * echo "http://indiewebcamp.com/2014-05-06-iiw-intro-indieweb" | textutil -stdin -output iiw-2014-05-06-intro-to-indieweb.rtf -convert rtf

benwerd - Introduction to the IndieWeb

the real promise of the web is that we can all connect and learn from each other and you're not giving up control of your data and identity selfdogfooding - get something up and running for yourself and live it. if you expect people to live by a standard or principle, live it yourself first

building blocks - make it easy to get started quickly


 * microformats - encode machine-readable data into HTML, rather than trying to create huge backend system for things
 * webmention - has become one of the key building blocks of the indieweb - people are using this today and forgetting about the technology and actually having real site-to-site conversations

because each of the building blocks are so small, people can pick up one of them and experiment and build something that works in a day.

how many people have their own domain name? all but 2 raised their hand [nice! -t]

how many people post regularly? most - does annual count?

"i used to" - 'why did you stop?' - twitter, it's faster

benwerd: I get to choose to syndicate to twitter and other silos

aaronpk: one of the challenges is to have a user interface to post to your own site that is as easy as Twitter. Some folks have built user interfaces on their own sites as simple as Twitter.

aaronpk: not everyone wants to build their own user interface. micropub lets apps post to indieweb sites.

kevinmarks demonstrating noterlive
 * put in a hashtag and speaker name
 * posting to twitter, but also collecting HTML into the page
 * when he finishes, copies the HTML to his site
 * wants to add micropub to automatically post the HTML to his site instead of manual copy/pate
 * this interface is *more useful* than twitter for tweeting

benwerd demoing his site
 * showing aaron's photo of this session
 * clicking reply button in firefox plugin for idno
 * typing a reply, hit save
 * posted it first as a comment on his own site
 * automatically shows up at the bottom of my photo as a comment
 * url: http://aaronparecki.com/notes/2014/05/06/4/iiw-indieweb
 * http://werd.io/2014/great-to-see-so-many-people-here
 * demoing RSVPing to tomorrow's homebrew website club indie event
 * these plugins took about an hour to build each

would love to find a way to post HTML5 games so indie game developers could quickly host games. high scores could be received back with webmentions.

There's the IndieWebCamp wiki and IRC channel. Everyone is welcome. There is no mailing list: http://indiewebcamp.com/FAQ#Is_there_an_IndieWeb_mailing_list
 * http://indiewebcamp.com/
 * http://indiewebcamp.com/IRC

Q: can the "big guys" withdraw the APIs? A: of course! but it's not like they can disable an API key and the whole indieweb goes down. but it's also useful to note that we don't necessarily need them to have indieweb conversations. also they can't turn off their own HTML.

Q: if Google+ doesn't have an API, do they even really exist?

... Freedom box ... from Austria ... just got back from ouishare in Paris following indieweb on the sidelines ever since FSWS one of the powerful ideas of the indieweb is that it's loosely defined, so it's easy to get going and start using building blocks

Q: this is really interesting from a hacker perspective, but how mainstream can it go?

A: aaronpk, pretty much every question has an answer on the wiki. E.g. for this, see https://indiewebcamp.com/generations - right now we're mostly a hacker community. We saw the internet go from a hacker community and go completely mainstream. This is how it starts.

A: benwerd: 10 years ago, social web, people would say what? it's not mainstream. ... We're more likely to get there by iterating on working code.

KevinMarks: one of the arguments is, how much can you push statically? a bunch of us are doing this.

Aaronpk: when your website is a pile of HTML files and you can put it on any FTP server and still communicate with other sites? You end up with using a webmention service.

[12:37] its key to eventually get that service data INTO the html file itself. working on that now

KevinMarks: part of the point here is to NOT just build a monoculture. https://indiewebcamp.com/monoculture

because we started with 6 people writing their sites in 6 different programming languages, it made monoculture way less likely to happen

Getting Started:
 * buy a domain
 * find space to host it
 * put up a simple home page with an h-card with your name and links to other profiles

idno - currently PHP + MongoDB. going to be PHP+MySQL

idno -> known / withknown.com (sp?)

benwerd: As Kevin said, monocultures are bad. This only going to work if there are a number of platforms out there. Idno is one. p3k is another. Interesting things with WordPress plugins. Taproot. See https://indiewebcamp.com/projects

If anyone is here in this area, or Portland, or Chicago, there's a Homebrew Website Club every two weeks.

SF one is 18:30 on Wednesday:
 * http://indiewebcamp.com/events/2014-05-07-homebrew-website-club

Portland one is usually hosted by ESRIPDX or MozPDX but not this week.

Chicago one is usually at Intelligentsia.

KevinMarks: Do we want a satellite one here in MV?

Benwerd: not looking forward to driving back in rush hour

KevinMarks: we can grab a table at the Firehouse and make that the MV HWC

re: idno/known: "Known" is the company name. And the software name for now.