IndieWebCamp Nuremberg
Nuremberg is a beautiful Bavarian city. At least, I think it is, my undecidedness the result of spending much of my time there sat inside Orpheum for border:none and Tollwerk for IndieWebCamp.
Apart from Friday, when I took myself to the DB Museum, the few chances I got to see the city were in the dark. All the more reason to plan a return. The same can be said of IndieWebCamp. This was my first attendance at this event since 2019, and my first on foreign soil.
IndieWebCamp’s are all about building and developing your own website, with an un-conference on a Saturday followed by a hack-day on Sunday. Ever the contrarian, I decided to spend my time improving the ecosystem that supports this goal by documenting the iconography currently used around the IndieWeb and proposing a more cohesive vision.
Running a session on this topic proved really helpful. I was keen to understand if others agreed with the issue I described, where iconography would be useful and how I could build consensus around my proposal so that it didn’t end up languishing on a page on the wiki.
One concern that arose was that of gatekeeping. Might creating icons for protocols inadvertently imply that only by using or implementing these could you participate in the IndieWeb? When the most empowering ideas are comparatively simple, perhaps foundational concepts should be represented too?
Taking this feedback into account, I expanded my proposal to include icons for having a personal domain, cross-posting (using either POSSE and PESOS) and popular Microformats. I documented my proposal on the wiki and on the train home created a repository containing all the icons in SVG format with a simple website to preview them all.
I’m now using these icons on Indiekit’s documentation website, and Manton has created a page that explains how Micro.blog uses the different IndieWeb ideas and standards — it’s exciting to see these icons get early adoption.
This was the first and likely only IndieWebCamp to be held this year. While smaller meets and pop-ups have taken place, this 2-day in-person format has undoubtedly suffered since the pandemic. As a coda, I’m posting this later than planned as I recover from COVID, which I caught during this trip.
However, with excitement building around how we might reinvent the social web, be that via federated networks or independent blogs, now is the perfect time to revisit the ideas of the IndieWeb at similar events next year. Who knows, maybe there could even be an IndieWebCamp in Brighton?