Me and Indie Web Camp Baltimore

Group photos — Aaron Parecki

This weekend I attended Indie Web Camp in Baltimore. It’s a fun gathering of people who believe we should own our online identities — pictures, thoughts, short and long posts (and even check-ins in some cases). Post to your own domain, then syndicate to social networks, but remain in control. Core principles of the movement are listed on indieweb.org.

A breif personal indie web history. I’ve been blogging and building websites and CMSes for as long as I can remember. When I was 12 living between Kursk, Russia and Imatra, Finland, I published an online zine called “Superfun”. I had some strong web design and writing skills:

After the zine I was blogging in Russian, English and Finnish on my domain, switched to LiveJournal for a couple years:

then coded a static site generator — first one in PHP, later replaced by a newer version in Node.js — and went back to publishing on my domain.

A good chunk of my work at Baguette studio was also dedicated to setting up, designing and coding independent blogs and websites for people and small businesses.

Naturally, I enjoyed the weekend meeting like-minded people and spending some quality time sharing ideas and working on my site and admin interface Tent (2 min video of me presenting it). I learned more about microformats (last night I had a dream about adding microformats somewhere, not kidding), micropub, webmentions and other cool indie web technologies. More info can be found on the camp’s wiki page (and the wiki itself is a great resource on everything indie web).

Tent interface

Big thanks to Marty, Jonathan, Amy, Aaron, Gregor and others for all the fun!

Slightly indieweb-themed improv comedy

I didn’t get to spend much time exploring the city, but I got the important parts.

Quality coffee at Ceremony: