IndieWebCamp San Diego 2024

Last weekend was the second IndieWebCamp San Diego. I think it was a really successful and productive event. My friend Joe organized it, though he kept insisting (playfully) that I was a co-organizer due to my contributions. I resisted the label mainly because I’m not ready to take on that responsibility again. I am good with the wiki, though, and a lot of the processes from attending and organizing past IndieWebCamp events.

I advocated for a stronger health and safety policy for this event and really appreciated Joe being fully supportive. I borrowed parts of the policies from North Bay Python, XOXO, E&W, a local board game group, and mine. I think we did pretty well with the two policy aspects I wrote about before:

“1. They should be in place well before the event and communicated clearly in key places: on the website, during registration, in announcements, and discussed during the event.”

— More on Health and Safety

There wasn’t a formal registration process other than RSVPs on the event page, so I made sure to include the Health and Safety subheading with a one-line summary and link to the full policy on the wiki. I don’t think we discussed it during the event, but all attendees were masking indoors without being reminded, so I think having the policy in those places worked well.

The venue was this lovely little risograph publisher/zine shop/zine archive called Burn All Books, which I think was very well aligned with the IndieWeb principles. They very graciously provided the space for free, so I encourage attendees to support them with a Mail Bag membership — get art, poetry, and “real risograph magic” mailed to you monthly!

I didn’t go into the event with a solid idea of what I wanted to work on for my site. One of the things I love about these events, though, is that the attendees propose and facilitate the sessions. There’s a lot of opportunity to get inspired and that’s exactly what happened for me. There was a session on venue recommendations because Foursquare is imminently shutting down their City Guide app. Tantek wanted to find the simplest way he could export his recommendations and start sharing them on his own site. That inspired me to start sharing my own recommendations, so I started a food and drink recommendations page with subsections for different cities. I think this will be just as helpful to remind myself of places as it is to suggest places to others who ask.

The schedule page has links to all of the session notes. Most sessions were recorded, so videos will be eventually be posted on there as well.

If you’re interested in learning more about the IndieWeb, I recommend one of the virtual Zoom meetups, called Homebrew Website Club. There are regular ones held in the Pacific and London timezones; check the HWC tag on the events site and stop in sometime! Joe also regularly hosts a Front End Study Hall meetup focused on HTML and CSS, with all skill levels welcome.