I gave a very rambling and unstructured session on the indieweb at Halima’s open house event. Here’s some notes for those that wanted more details!

tl;dr

what?

my indieweb site is… this site
it’s a collection of my notes (microblogs), bookmarks, photos, listens, reads, etc
- i.e. the kind of things you’d do on various social media websites
- i have one main feed, and feeds of different types (e.g. tracks I like)
i post to it with various different clients
- shpub (command-line)
- omnibear (browser plugin)
- indigenous (mobile)
i read and interact with (e.g. like, repost) what other people are writing
- together (web)
- indigenous (mobile)

own your identity
own your data
decentralize
- avoid big centralized silos
- they control your data, and they control what you see
- and they have a habit of abruptly vanishing, along with all your content

client-to-server publishing with micropub
- implement a micropub API endpoint on your site
- any client that implements this protocol can publish to your site via the endpoint
- authentication to publish is via indieauth
server-to-server communication with webmention
- send webmentions to let someone know you’ve mentioned them
- receive webmentions to know someone has mentioned you
  - display the mention on your own site
staying in touch with existing friends/sites
- POSSE – Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere
- PESOS – Publish Elsewhere, Syndicate to your Own Site
- brid.gy for posting to and getting interactions back from the silos
content is marked up with microformats
my site is WordPress with lots of plugins, but you can use any technology you like to build it
- and things like micro.blog exist for those who don’t want to build something themselves

Chat – 24/7 online chat across timezones, by web, Slack, Matrix, or IRC
Homebrew Website Clubs – regular meetups in person
HWC London
Indie Web Camps and Indie Web Summits – bigger meetups where people travel to places around the world