We need to critically examine all of our assumptions about conferences. How they are run. Who leads them. What kind of learning should happen there?
Author: Chris Aldrich
I’ll try creating a discovery sub and we’ll see what happens?!
On Blogging Infrastructure
I’ve also seen some tangential mentions among the Blogging Futures crowd of Webmention, which is essentially a standardized web technology that allows notifications or @mentions between websites on different domains and running completely different software. I know that Tom Critchlow, who is a memeber of the blogchain, has recently set up webmentions, so I’m curious to hear his impression of what a blogchain means after he’s begun using webmention. (Difficultly, he’s using a static site generator, which will tend to make his experience with them a tad more fraught compared with services that have it built in or available by simple plugins.) To me there’s more value in combining the two ideas of Webmention and blogchain wherein each post is able to webmention the other posts within a particular blogchain and thereby create a broader web of related ideas.
Of course this is all very similar to ideas like IndieNews and Kicks Condor’s IndieWeb.xyz aggregation hub which allow users to post to them by means of Webmention. In some sense this allows for a central repository or hub that collects links to all of the responses for those who want to to participate. These responses could obviously be sorted by topic (aka tag/category), author, and even date. Naturally if each post includes links to all the other pieces in such a blogchain, and all the sites accept and display webmentions, then there will be a more weblike chain of discussion of the topic rather than a more linear one.
I’m not aware of it being done, but I’ve always sort of wished that someone would add webmention support to a wiki platform. Many has been the time I wish I could have added a link into the See also section of the IndieWeb wiki simply by linking to a particular page and sending a webmention. Lots of my online documentation references that wiki and it would be wonderfully useful for links to my content to automatically show up there. Later, others could add some of my content back into the wiki in a more fully fleshed out way, but at least the references would be there. Imagine how the world’s knowledge would be expanded if a larger wiki like Wikipedia had the ability to accept incoming links this way!?
I’ll mention that both the aggregation hubs and the wikis can help to serve as somewhat more centralized means of discovery on the web, which also helps to fuel idea and content production.
All the people I know who have added Webmention have generally fallen in love with it as a new means of posting into and interacting within a rejuvenated blogosphere. There’s more power in posting to one’s own website while still being able to interact in a more social sort of way.
Jessie Stommel distills assignments down to a roughly similar 8 words, but then smartly relies on students to fill in the complexity of the idea with their own work. In the West Wing framing, he’s asking students to give the next 10 words and then again and again. Filling out the complexity of ones’ ideas is really where learning takes place.
His idea is closely related to the one I had been making about Trump’s communication style. Though even in the completely made up versions of things like the Turbo Encabulator, teachers will need to be careful about what’s coming back in the assignments.
Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who was ousted from her position, is scheduled to testify Friday, Nov. 15, in a public hearing as part of the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. The hearing comes the same week that two other diplomats-- George Kent and William Taylor, testified that they believed Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, tried to dig up dirt on former vice president and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Kent testified that Giuliani also orchestrated a smear campaign against Yovanovitch in an attempt to force her out. The impeachment probe has entered a new, public phase and centers on Trump’s dealings with Ukraine—particularly a July phone call in which he asked Ukraine’s president to investigate the Bidens. Watch Yovanovitch’s full testimony here.
Perhaps another interesting place to start thinking about this is Mike Caulfield’s post The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral, which also looks closely at wikis as a separate framing?
Other than a blog, another common pattern is to have a /Now page which describes what you’ve been up to lately. (The problem with this is keeping it up to date on a frequent basis, and you might get back to the problem of having a blog which hasn’t been updated in a while.)
Of course, why not take back control of all of your social presence and put that on your site too? That way your social stream on your site will more frequently be up to date. This is roughly what I do on my site at /blog. It’s not just a stream of longer articles, but of all my social posts, photos, checkins, and other interactions. Of course if you just want the longer form stuff, that’s available too.
For some examples on portfolios, perhaps try the IndieWeb wiki which has some examples and links to other resources.
I like John Mark Troyer’s idea of mini-ebooks and collections of projects. I’ve got a collection of some of my IndieWeb experiments with WordPress that touches on his idea, but eventually I’ll roll some of it up into a book of some sort.
I’ll also indicate another idea being that of having a site that acts like a digital commonplace book, which is roughly how I use my website. I keep a lot of the content primarily for myself, but it does have some social interest for those who may appreciate that I’ve aggregated it in one place.
I guess that mixed up with speculating if we need personal sites at all when the conversation has shifted to social platforms? Should we publish our everywhere and use IndieWeb/Fediverse tech to syndicate to a central place?
— John Mark Troyer (@jtroyer) November 14, 2019
While the conversation has (temporarily?) shifted to social platforms, I don’t think that it’s always going to stay there. The barriers and issues with owning, controlling, and maintaining a website are coming down every day. Why would one want/need dozens or more social sites to communicate when they should be able to do it in one place–on their own site? Just like I can use my phone and phone number with AT&T service to call you on your phone number with Sprint service, I should be able to use WordPress on my domain to chat/@mention you on your domain running any other CMS. Eventually social media will decentralize, though there still may be a place for aggregation hubs for discovery. I’ll mention passingly that individual websites can also act as stand-alone members of the Fediverse. While not the prettiest thing at the moment because of limitations of the Fediverse, you can follow my website here @chrisaldrich from Mastodon and other Fediverse instances. Simultaneously feed readers are improving to better allow users to read what they want without relying on social services to control it for them.
Two sides of a mirror for sure, although the mf’ers always like to make the API-posted content uglier, and there’s an ineffable “presence” that can get lost with POSSE. Are you “there” or are you just dropping off your posts like some flyer for lessons on a store bulletin board?
— John Mark Troyer (@jtroyer) November 14, 2019
In the past, many people have indiscriminately syndicated material from one social site to another, but it generally never looks good unless it’s done very carefully. Naturally none of the corporate silos make this type of syndication easy because it’s not in their financial interest to do so–they’d rather you used their services exclusively. This is part of what makes it look like one is dropping off fliers. However, I would suggest that with a more IndieWeb approach that syndicating via POSSE and using appropriate backfeed via webmention, that one can have not only a reasonably organic experience, but you can add a lot more to a much bigger (and hopefully more substantive) conversation. POSSE is a temporary bandaid until we’ve been able to reshape the web the way we want to consume it rather than being forced into consumption on social media services’ terms.
Hopefully this post itself is an example of a response to a larger stream of content that provides a bit more space than Twitter’s 280 character limit would have otherwise allowed. This post might also indicate that a conversation online doesn’t need to be so forced and linear or crammed within Twitter’s restrictive confines. Twitter forces us into a stream as a means of getting us to scroll endlessly rather than think, mull, and respond. It’s not unnoticed by me that the tweet that started this thread has branched off into half a dozen different, but related conversations. This makes even Twitter’s UI difficult to navigate and respond to appropriately. We definitely need (and deserve) something better. If they won’t do it for us, then why not take the means of production and do it ourselves.
You’ve asked some excellent questions. I can’t wait to see your experiments and what you end up making John.
This website, à la carte, started in 1999 as what was then know as an ‘e-zine’, an online magazine. It’s subject was French food and the French culinary experience. After nine years of posting a new, lengthy article each month, I found my interests broadening to a wider view of food, and my time available to write for the site reduced.
I wanted to spend more time producing general food interest videos, and by 2011, I was also posting a new, mostly original small-dish recipe each week. These posts came to an end in 2015. All 235 were gathered into a single, long (≈250,000 words) article.
In the future, expect to see the occasional new article or video as time allows. Rest assured, à la carte is alive and well, and its creator is busy expanding his knowledge to produce more content.
WordPress Transients API offers a simple and standardized way of storing cached data in the database temporarily by giving it a custom name and a
Finally began working on the new instance of Fortress. The goal is to have the main site attempt to register and acknowledge accounts for sites that expose a h-card. It’ll just show the authorization endpoint found when attempting to resolve the site as well as a normalized [h-card] for the URL in question. Ideally, I should have that much ready for testing for the IndieWeb before this week’s newsletter is out!
Node list and statistics for The Federation and Fediverse
It’s time for our annual user and developer survey! If you’re a WordPress user or professional, we want your feedback. It only takes a few minutes to fill out the survey, which will provide an over…
Saying "I Love You" In Neurodivergent:https://t.co/m9BN3vNWSI
— SaveTheNeurotypicals (@SNeurotypicals) November 18, 2019The Collected Thread: Saying "I Love You" in neurodivergent.
— SaveTheNeurotypicals (@SNeurotypicals) November 16, 2019
- Saw this article/site & wanted to share with you
- here is a thing about your favourite thing
- I would spend unstructured time with you
- you can share my silence
- I researched your problem, here are your options/1- I love your project so much I thought of some ways to make it even better
— SaveTheNeurotypicals (@SNeurotypicals) November 15, 2019
- do you need a ride home from your mundane errand that should be no big deal but is actually a Big Deal?
- I see you're freaking out. That's cool I will chill here in silence until you need me.
- (thumbs up)- I will make that phone call/book that appointment so you don't have to.
— SaveTheNeurotypicals (@SNeurotypicals) November 15, 2019
- I knew you would forget so I did X- this is your reminder to do the self care thing.
— SaveTheNeurotypicals (@SNeurotypicals) November 15, 2019
- do the self care thing.
- do the self care thing.
- I'm not getting off the phone until you confirm you have done the thing.- we made plans and I had a shitty day on the day but I didn't cancel because I knew I would enjoy seeing you more than I would enjoy staying home.
— SaveTheNeurotypicals (@SNeurotypicals) November 15, 2019
- You screwed up something people don't usually screw up and you're probably embarrassed so here is a story of my best screwup.- You once told me about a completely irrational thing you hate and now I remember not to do it/to keep it away from you every time.
— SaveTheNeurotypicals (@SNeurotypicals) November 15, 2019
- I learned your allergies/sensitivities. Please confirm if these ideas I have for avoiding them are helpful.- You mentioned one of your health conditions the other day and I have no background in it but I read everything I could and now I have follow up questions.
— SaveTheNeurotypicals (@SNeurotypicals) November 15, 2019This went viral! Some points to clarify:
— SaveTheNeurotypicals (@SNeurotypicals) November 16, 2019
- "neurodivergent" is an umbrella term for people with conditions like autism, ADHD, OCD, DID, bipolar etc.
- no, neurotypicals don't "do this too". NDs do these things repeatedly and sometimes exclusively, & put in a shit ton of time. (hand pointing down)I suspect this is so relatable because these are things anyone with anxiety might be drawn to, instead of more theatrical/socially demanding forms of love. NDs often have social anxiety or other issues impacting our relationships, and NTs may as well, for different reasons.
— SaveTheNeurotypicals (@SNeurotypicals) November 16, 2019
Saying "I love you" in neurodivergent
– I saw this article/study/website and wanted to share it with you
– here is a thing about your favourite thing
– I would spend unstructured time with you
– you can share my silence
– I researched your problem, here are all your options /1— SaveTheNeurotypicals (@SNeurotypicals) November 15, 2019
oh my gosh: how did I not know about this counting-out system called Yan-Tan...?!
— Laura Gibbs (@OnlineCrsLady) November 15, 2019
I was looking up something about the nursery rhyme Hickory Dickory Dock, which some people think is a counting out rhyme, and that led to this British sheep-counting system: https://t.co/NWfJgyicB6 pic.twitter.com/azXjrpo8ob