An IndieWeb talk at WordCamp Riverside in November 2018

I’ve submitted a talk for WordCamp Riverside 2018; it has been accepted.

My talk will help to kick off the day at 10am on Saturday morning in the “John Hughes High” room. The details for the camp and a link to purchase tickets can be found below.

Given that “Looking back to go forward” is the theme of the camp this year, I think I may have chosen the perfect topic. To some extent I’m going to look at how the nascent web has recently continued evolving from where it left off around 2006 before everyone abandoned it to let corporate silo services like Facebook and Twitter become responsible for how we use the web. We’ll talk about how WordPress can be leveraged to do a better job than “traditional” social media with much greater flexibility.

Here’s the outline:

The web is my social network: How I use WordPress to create the social platform I want (and you can too!)

Synopsis: Growing toxicity on Twitter, Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, algorithmic feeds, and a myriad of other problems have opened our eyes to the ever-growing costs of social media. Walled gardens have trapped us with the promise of “free” while addicting us to their products at the cost of our happiness, sense of self, sanity, and privacy. Can we take back our fractured online identities, data, and privacy to regain what we’ve lost?

I’ll talk about how I’ve used IndieWeb philosophies and related technologies in conjunction with WordPress as a replacement for my social presence while still allowing easy interaction with friends, family, and colleagues online. I’ll show how everyone can easily use simple web standards to make WordPress a user-controlled, first-class social platform that works across domains and even other CMSes.

Let’s democratize social media using WordPress and the open web, the last social network you’ll ever need to join.

Intended Audience: The material is introductory in nature and targeted at beginner and intermediate WordPressers, but will provide a crash course on a variety of bleeding edge W3C specs and tools for developers and designers who want to delve into them at a deeper level. Applications for the concepts can be of valuable to bloggers, content creators, businesses, and those who are looking to better own their online content and identities online without allowing corporate interests out-sized influence of their online presence.

I look forward to seeing everyone there!