Events | Chris Aldrich

IndieWebCamp East 2020: Save the Date and Call for Volunteers

Hello IndieWeb friends and family!

Save the Date

After some back-and-forth, several of us have carved out some time over the weekend of November 14-15 to co-host IndieWebCamp East 2020. We hope you’ll be able to join us.

If you’re interested in a weekend full of IndieWeb related activities, sessions, learning, creating, and coming together in a warm and inviting community of people who care about and help craft the web, please save the date.

As its title indicates, the camp will be organized around Eastern Standard Time in the Americas from the early morning to the late afternoon over Saturday and Sunday that weekend. Because we’re hosting the camp completely free and online, people of all ability levels and locales across the world are welcome to and encouraged to attend.

We hope folks will help us plan some surrounding social activities on Friday night before camp launches and the evenings of camp, but those details will be announced at a later date and time.

Details relating to (free) tickets and the ability to RSVP will be announced and available shortly. If you comment on this post or like/repost the syndicated copy on Twitter, we’ll be sure to notify you as details progress. You can also optionally sign up for the IndieWeb Newsletter to receive weekly updates that will include information about upcoming camps and events.

If you’ve never attended an IndieWebCamp before, we’ve written up some details about what you can expect at an IndieWebCamp to whet your appetite. You can also browse our archive of past camps with archived session notes, posts, and videos.

Call for Organizers/Volunteers

IndieWebCamps and related events are completely volunteer driven. This means we’ll need your help not only in seeing your bright, shining faces in attendance and actively participating on the days of camp, but in actually putting together and organizing the camp.

If you have some time to volunteer as a co-organizer or an area volunteer, please drop us a note in the comments below or in the IndieWeb Meta Chat Channel.

No prior experience or expertise is necessary. There are many of us around who have put together one or more parts of camp and related events before, and we’re here to help you learn if you need it. There’s also some helpful wiki pages with details. Helping to volunteer can be a great way to give back to the community. It can also be helpful if you’ve wanted to become more involved, but don’t know how. Perhaps if you’ve wanted to begin organizing other events like Homebrew Website Clubs, this could be a great stepping stone.

There are a variety of areas we could use help in as well as ideas for things we could be missing or might also be doing. A diversity and plurality of voices and ideas can help us continue improving our camp experiences. Below are a handful of areas we could use help/volunteers for:

Pre-camp

General organizing
Keynote ideas/invitations
Sponsor wrangling
Wiki gardening
Creating the primary camp landing page: https://2020.indieweb.org/east
Accessibility
Family friendly planning/programming (Kids track anyone?)
Outreach
Marketing
Surrounding social events / pre-party / etc.
Others?

During camp

Co-hosts for Zoom rooms to help on the tech side and oversee
Code of Conduct point of contact(s)
Note taking during camp and sessions
Wiki gardening
Welcoming newcomers
Ideas that may need help/work: Planning Notes and Brainstorming
Others?

Remember more hands make light work and the camaraderie and your ideas, inspiration, and effort can make everyone’s experience at camp even better and more fruitful.

You can start volunteering today, by saving the date and inviting a few friends to join you.

See you soon!

I and everyone else in the IndieWeb community look forward to seeing you at Camp in November or at upcoming events before then!

Domain of One’s Own Meetup (September 2020)

I’ll be hosting a Domain of One’s Own meetup on Tuesday, September 22, 2020 at at 9:00 AM Pacific / 12:00 PM Eastern / 6:00 PM CEST. Everyone who is interested in the topic is welcome to attend.

We expect there will be students, teachers, designers, web developers, technologists, and people of all ages and ranges of ability from those just starting out with a domain to those running DoOO programs at colleges or even people running their own hosting companies.

We’ll meet via Zoom for audio/video and will use an Etherpad for real-time chat and note taking for the event.

We will

Have discussions about A Domain of One’s Own and the independent web;
Get to know others in the space;
Find potential collaborators for domains-related projects you’re working on;
Explore new and interesting ideas about what one can do or accomplish with a personal domain;
Create or update your domain
Ask colleagues for help/advice on problems or issues you’re having with your domain;

Agenda

Welcome/Brief introductions
Main topic: This summer Reclaim Hosting launched Reclaim Cloud, but for many new and established Domains users, the “cloud” has been a nebulous buzzword with unclear meanings. In this meeting we’ll talk about what it is and why it might be important for gaining greater control over your personal cyberinfrastructure.
Group photo for those who wish to participate
Demos, questions, problems:
Ideally everyone should bring a topic, short demonstration of something they’ve built or gotten working on their website, a question, or problem to discuss with the group. Depending on time and interest, we can try to spend 5-10 minutes discussing and providing feedback on each of these. If questions go over this time limitation, we can extend the conversation in smaller groups as necessary after the meetup.

RSVP

To RSVP to the meetup, please (optionally) do one of the following:

Make a comment to indicate your attendance at the original event post;
Tweet your RSVP reply to this Tweet;
Comment your RSVP on the Reclaim Hosting Community post about the event;
RSVP to the event on events.indieweb.org
Extra bonus points if you can go full Domain of One’s Own and Publish an indie RSVP on your own website/domain and send a webmention to this post.

Future meetups

While the time frame for this meetup may work best for some in the Americas, everyone with interest is most welcome. If there are others in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, or other locales who are interested, do let us know what dates/times might work for you in the future and we can try to organize a time to maximize some attendance there. I’m happy to help anyone who’d like to take the leadership of other time zones or locales to leverage some of the resources of the IndieWeb community to assist in starting future meetings to cover other areas of the world.

Have a topic idea for discussion at the next session? Drop us a line by adding a comment to this post or one of the syndicated copies, ping me in chat, or track me down on your platform and means of communication of choice.

Invite your friends, colleagues, and students

Know someone who would be interested in joining? Please forward this event, or one of the syndicated copies to them on your platform or modality of choice.

Featured image: Hard Drive Repair flickr photo by wwarby shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

Making IndieWeb Friendly WordPress Themes: An IndieWebCamp Popup Session

The IndieWeb WordPress community could use some more theme options.

Let’s get together as a community and host a theme raising (a play on the idea of the old barn raising). We can all work/hack together to make some of the popular WordPress themes more IndieWeb friendly. We’ll discuss methods for adding the necessary Microformats and best ways to indieweb-ify a WordPress theme.

Either bring your own favorite theme or work from one on a list.

All levels are welcome!

Beginners and those without coding experience are welcome/encouraged to attend. We’ll try to help newcomers learn to begin tinkering with some WordPress theme code. If you don’t have a GitHub account yet, you might create one beforehand and we’ll show you how to use it for development, but even without it you can still do a lot with just a text editor.

Details

When: 2020-09-26 9:30 – 11:30 AM (Pacific) / 12:30 – 2:30 PM (Eastern)
Event page: https://events.indieweb.org/2020/09/making-indieweb-friendly-wordpress-themes-8fs9gAVX3OkV
hashtag: for social media and used to create an Etherpad for the session: #WPandMicroformats
Etherpad: https://etherpad.indieweb.org/WPandMicroformats for note taking during the session
Streaming video/audio platform: Zoom (link to come)
Demos: Yes – when we’re done, show off how well your new hacked theme works on your site.

RSVP

Newcomers can post a comment on this post below or reply yes via Twitter to https://twitter.com/ChrisAldrich/status/1300562134699393024. Or you can feel free to just show up on the morning of the event.

If you feel able, RSVP at Meetable or post an indie RSVP on your own website.

Prerequisites

Bring your own theme or a theme you’d like to make more IndieWeb friendly by adding Microformats v2 support. Ideas for possible themes can be found at https://indieweb.org/WordPress/Development#Themes

(Optional) Create a GitHub account which you can use/learn during the process. Those who don’t want a GitHub account can simply use their text editor of choice to modify the relevant theme files.

Volunteers

We’re always happy to have additional help! If you’d like to volunteer or help organize and run the session, please touch base with Chris Aldrich or David Shanske in the IndieWeb Meta chat room.

I look forward to seeing everyone there!

Finishing up my slides today for a presentation about IndieWeb to the WordPress Santa Clarita Valley Meetup on Saturday morning. Everyone is welcome!

Excited to host @ChrisAldrich this weekend to talk about owning your online presence with @wordpress. Grab your Saturday mid-morning, pop up your laptop, and join tin the discussion — RSVP at https://t.co/Y9mOJjjg2t @wordcampscv @joesimpsonjr pic.twitter.com/Euf1XXVpHG

— WordPress Santa Clarita Valley Meetup (@wordpressscv) August 17, 2020

It’s not a necessary prerequisite for my talk, but I’ll try to pick up where Tantek Çelik (@t) left off in his invited talk right before the State of the Word at WordCamp US 2019.

RSVPed Attending Design for Cognitive Bias Launch Party!

Come celebrate the launch of my new book, Design for Cognitive Bias. Each ticket includes the price of a copy of the book!

About this Event

Our users have biases and so do we. My new book, Design for Cognitive Bias, explores how design and content strategy can help keep them at bay (or use them for good). Let's celebrate the launch!

We'll start with a book reading

Then I'll chat with Tiny MBA author Alex Hillman about the book

Then we'll do audience Q&A

Then we'll do something called an idea exchange. (I'll explain later but I promise it'll be fun!)

Like I said, price of admission includes a digital copy of the book. YOU get a book! And YOU get a book! And YOU get a book! (You get the idea).

Special thanks to Indy Hall for virtually hosting this event!

I'm really looking forward to this. It's been a long road to get here and I hope you'll celebrate with me! :)

My remarkable friend David Dylan Thomas has a a new book entitled Design for Cognitive Bias coming out on August 25th from A Book Apart. Knowing his background and abilities, it will be a must-read for any web designer or developer.

We humans are messy, illogical creatures who like to imagine we’re in control—but we blithely let our biases lead us astray. In Design for Cognitive Bias, David Dylan Thomas lays bare the irrational forces that shape our everyday decisions and, inevitably, inform the experiences we craft. Once we grasp the logic powering these forces, we stand a fighting chance of confronting them, tempering them, and even harnessing them for good. Come along on a whirlwind tour of the cognitive biases that encroach on our lives and our work, and learn to start designing more consciously.

If you’re free on Friday, August 28th there’s also a launch party for the book! The price of admission also includes a discounted copy of the e-book. RSVP now.

I’m hoping I can talk him into doing a talk or presentation for my friends in the IndieWeb community. He’s a great and thoughtful person and speaker, so I expect to see him around the design and development talk circuit for a lot of the coming year. If you have a conference coming up, I recommend you book him now before he’s over-scheduled.

RSVPed Attending Santa Clarita Valley WordPress Meetup: Using WordPress to own your online data & social media presence w/Chris Aldrich

Online event
August 22, 2020 at 11:00 AM- 01:00PM

Corporate social media has been dominating the online space so significantly that the newest generation of Internet users now thinks that is what the "web" actually is. Fortunately, with WordPress as your platform, you can not only take back your online identity and presence, but you can use it to have a richer and fuller experience than the locked-down experience you get with the limits of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

Chris will explore some open web standards and technologies that open up WordPress to allow site-to-site interactions and easier posting functionality through the magic of a small handful of simple plugins. These are simple enough building blocks that the beginning WordPress user can do some powerful new things with their sites but are also rich enough that senior developers can build and extend them or find uses for them for business sites and even e-commerce.

I suppose since I’m the one speaking that I have to RSVP, right?! I hope everyone will come join me in talking about using WordPress and the IndieWeb.

You can also find a copy of the event on the IndieWeb Events calendar.

A Domain of One’s Own Meetup | July 23, 2020

I’ll be hosting a Domain of One’s Own meetup on Thursday, July 23, 2020 at at 10:30 AM Pacific / 1:30 PM Eastern / 7:30 PM CEST. Everyone who is interested in the topic is welcome to attend. We expect there will be students, teachers, designers, web developers, technologists, and people of all ages and ranges of ability from those just starting out with a domain to those running DoOO programs at colleges or even people running their own hosting companies.

We’ll use Zoom for this online meetup (here’s the link to the room which should be active about 15 minutes before we start). We’re planning on using an Etherpad for real-time chat and note taking for the event.

Attendees will be expected to have read and agree to the IndieWeb Code of Conduct which will apply to the meetup.

We will

Have discussions about A Domain of One’s Own and the independent web;
Get to know other colleagues in the space;
Ask colleagues for help/advice on problems or issues you’re having with your domain;
Find potential collaborators for domains-related projects you’re working on;
Explore new and interesting ideas about what one can do or accomplish with a personal domain;
Create or update your domain

Agenda

Welcome
Introductions: short 2 minute introductions of attendees with an optional brief demonstration of something you’ve done on your domain or purpose for which you’re using your domain.
Group photo for those who wish to participate
Main meetup: Ideally everyone should bring a topic, demonstration, question, or problem to discuss with the group. Depending on time and interest, we can try to spend 5-10 minutes discussing and providing feedback on each of these. If questions go over this time limitation, we can extend the conversation in smaller groups as necessary after the meetup.

RSVP

To RSVP to the meetup, please do one of the following:

Make a comment to indicate your attendance below;
Tweet your RSVP reply to this Tweet;
Comment your RSVP on the Reclaim Hosting Community post about the event;
RSVP to the event on events.indieweb.org
Publish an indie RSVP on your own website/domain and send a webmention to this post

Future meetups

While the time frame for this inaugural meetup may work best for some in the Americas, everyone with interest is most welcome. If there are others in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, or other locales who are interested, do let us know what dates/times might work for you in the future and we can try to organize a time to maximize some attendance there. I’m happy to help anyone who’d like to take the leadership of other time zones or locales to leverage some of the resources of the IndieWeb community to assist in starting future meetings to cover other areas of the world.

🎉 Invitations 🎉

Tim Owens, Aaron Davis, Cathie LeBlanc, Kartik Prabhu, Amber Case, Amy Guy, Greg McVerry, William Ian O’Byrne, Jim Groom, Kimberly Hirsh, John Johnston, Robin DeRosa, Audrey Watters, Ken Bauer, Will Monroe, Jeremy Dean, Nate Angell, Jon Udell, Adam Procter, Amy Guy, Kris Shaffer, Anelise H. Shrout, John Johnston, Mark Grabe, Rick Wysocki, Doug Holton, Jeffrey Keefer, Rayna M. Harris, Davey Moloney, Vicki Boykis, John Carlos Baez, Dan Scott, Taylor Jadin, Kathleen Fitzpatrick (mb), Blair MacIntyre (mb), Doug Belshaw, Adam Procter, Dan Cohen (mb), Dave Cormier, Scott Gruber, Kay Oddone, Kin Lane, Martha Burtis, Lee Skallerup Bessette, Adam Croom, Sean Michael Morris, Jesse Stommel, Cassie Nooyen, Stephen Downes, Ben Werdmüller, Erin Jo Richey, Jack Jamieson, Grant Potter, Ryan Boren (mb), Paul Hibbits, Maha Bali, Alan Levine, John Stewart, Teodora Petkova, Lora Taub-Pervizpour, Clint Lalonde, Clint Lalonde, Sonja Burrows, Jonathan Poritz, Chris Long, Mo Pelzel, Michelle S. Hagerman, Anne-Marie Scott, Tim Clarke, Amy Collier, Laura Pasquini, Martin Hawksey, Zach Whalen, Daniel Lynds, Tom Woodward, Mark A. Matienzo, Laura Gibbs, Autumn Caines, Chris Lott, Jess Reingold, Terry Green, Erin Rose Glass, Trip Kirkpatrick, Meredith Fierro, Lauren Brumfield, Helen DeWaard, Keegan Long-Wheeler, Irene Stewart, Christina Hendricks, Bill Kronholm, Xinli Wang, Tineke D’Haeseleer, Martin Weller, Jeremy Felt, Jane Van Galen, Tanis Morgan, Library Carpentry

Know someone who would be interested in joining? Please forward this event, or one of the syndicated copies (linked below) to them on your platform or modality of choice.

Hashtags: #phdchat, #DoOO, #edtechchat, #literacies, #higherED, #dh, #ds106, #educolor, #WPCampus, #openscience, #clmooc, #digped, #altc

Featured image: Hard Drive Repair flickr photo by wwarby shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

Getting Started with WordPress, an IndieWebCamp Pop-up Session

I’ll be hosting an introduction to IndieWeb using WordPress and invite everyone to join me via Zoom (link to come).

Saturday, August 1, 2020 9:30 – 11:30am (America/Los_Angeles)

This will be a broad-based introduction to the IndieWeb session specifically focused on using WordPress. Our aim is to help people get set up and running a self-hosted IndieWeb-based website with WordPress though some of our discussion will work for WordPress.com versions as well.

Grab a cup of coffee and get an IndieWeb site up and running in just a few hours.
Have questions or problems with your current WordPress IndieWeb site? Stop by and get some help.
Just figuring out what IndieWeb is about? Much of what we’ll discuss is applicable to other platforms and may be useful to other beginners as well.
All levels of experience welcome
(Note: for those without a domain registered or web hosting, we may have a brief pre-session to help you out so we can be more productive during the main session.)

Notes for the session will take place at: https://etherpad.indieweb.org/WordPressQuickStart
Create week: Following the session, we’ll give people a chance to create something for their site to do remote demos.
Demos: When we’re done, we’ll have a short online demo session so people can show off the new sites and maybe demo their favorite functionality.

Would you like to volunteer to help manage the session? Add yourself to the list on the IndieWeb wiki or contact the organizers in chat.

Code of Conduct: indieweb.org/code-of-conduct

I’m planning on setting up up a regularly recurring Domain of One’s Own focused online meetup in the mold of Homebrew Website Clubs or WordPress meetups. People can ask questions, get help, collaborate, demo technology and ways they’re using their domains.

I’m thinking monthly to start, but I’m curious what days of the week and times might work best for people, especially across time zones?

Let me know if you’re interested in helping to organize or would like to join us to participate.

Featured image: Hard Drive Repair flickr photo by wwarby shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

IndieWebCamp 2020 West: June 27-28, 2020

Some of us have been wishing there were a #Domains20, but it’s a LOT to organize and execute on an annual basis. To bridge a bit of the gap, I’m collaborating with some in the IndieWeb movement to do a free online-only (due to physical distancing) two day BarCamp-style conference on the weekend of June 27-28, 2020.

The broad ideas behind DoOO dovetail quite well and the IndieWeb community has a welcoming, inclusive, and helpful atmosphere with a solid code of conduct.

The upcoming event is called IndieWebCamp 2020 West (based roughly on the Pacific time Zone). I’ve already started proposing a few DoOO-related sessions on their organizing Etherpad. I’d encourage others in the community who are interested to register for the free two day camp to talk about what we can do with our websites and how we can improve them. Students, faculty, staff, and even hobbyists of all levels of ability are welcome. If you’ve got ideas for things you’re interested in doing on or with your website, feel free to propose your own topics (either now or the morning of day one).

We’d love to see everyone there.

Day one is a brief introduction followed by various discussion-based sessions on topics of interest to those who attend. (First time attendees are given the first opportunity to schedule topics.) Day two is a creator day on which people write, create, build, code, or otherwise improve something on their website. If you don’t yet have a website, people will be on hand to help you set one up, or get around obstacles you may have for being able to use and manage your website.

Details and RSVP information can be found here: https://indieweb.org/2020/West

If anyone has questions or needs further details or help proposing potential sessions, don’t hesitate to ask.

IndieWebCamp 2020 West is Officially On

IndieWebCamp West Coast is an online IndieWebCamp being held on June 27–28, 2020.

Tickets / RSVP

To RSVP and claim your FREE tickets, register here: https://ti.to/indiewebcamp/iwc-west-2020
Optionally, if you’re able to log into events.indieweb.org with your own website you can RSVP here OR if your website supports it, post an indie RSVP on your own website and send a Webmention to: https://events.indieweb.org/2020/06/indiewebcamp-west-2020-ZB8zoAAu6sdN

What is it?

Two days meeting up online to share ideas, create & improve personal websites, and build upon each other’s creations. Whether you’re a blogger, coder, designer, or just someone who wants to improve their presence on the web, there is something for you here. All skill and experience levels welcome.
If you’ve never attended an IndieWebCamp, we’ve got an article to describe what to expect.

I’m definitely attending, and I hope you’ll join us!

RSVPed Attending IndieWebCamp West 2020

June 27 - 28, 2020: Two days meeting up online to share ideas, create & improve personal websites, and build upon each other's creations. Whether you’re a creator, writer, blogger, coder, designer, or just someone who wants to improve their presence on the web, there is something for you here. All skill and experience levels welcome.

Coronavirus concerns have caused us to cancel the annual in-person IndieWebSummit 2020 , so I’m helping to co-organize this two day online event and welcome anyone who’d like to join.

Passionate about helping people to get online? Volunteer to help us out.

Save the Date

Call for Organizers/Volunteers

Pre-camp

During camp

See you soon!

Agenda

RSVP

Future meetups

Invite your friends, colleagues, and students

Details

RSVP

Prerequisites

Volunteers

RSVP (optional)

Now weekly!

Agenda

RSVP

Future meetups

🎉 Invitations 🎉

Tickets / RSVP

What is it?