What is it?
The indieweb is a movement to ‘de-corporatize’ the web. Too much of what is produced by and for surfers is owned and controlled by corporate entities. These is nothing inherent wrong with that, but when we cede ownership of our creative processes to the financial whims and policies of others we no longer control the life cycle of our data. Just remember Myspace. Where has all the information and wisdom and data that people spent time and perhaps money gone?
If the contributors to Myspace had owned their digital bits, their posts, links and whatever would still be easily available to them and others since Myspace would have been just another silo where that information emerged for people to see, share, discuss or whatever. That is one of the goals of the indieweb. If and when Facebook or Twitter or Linkedin becomes the next Myspace the data that people shared will still be available on personally owned websites, with links that can persist the passing of the portal of the times.
Who I am
Although somewhat technically adept I am not a programmer. That stopped a long time ago and have been professionally a Project Manager through several iterations. First I was a project manager for a major telecommunication company, then I worked as a consultant to international telecom companies as a Project Manager / Process Manager. Now I am the Executive Director of a non-profit in New Jersey.
Although I am not a programmer that doesn’t mean that I am unwilling or unable to hack/stumble around whatever I am trying to do in the digital world and find a way to make it work. (Whatever ‘it’ is.) So, when I stumbled into the Indieweb world, after hearing about it through Kevin Marks talking on TWIG I thought: “Sure, I can do that”. So here I am.
What I have done with Indieweb
Following the basic road map on the indiewebcamp web site I:
- Used my personal domain name tombruning.com which I purchased a few years ago and parked it waiting for an opportunity like this to use it;
- Found, through lifehacker.com the web hosting service dreamhost.com and set up WordPress with their easy one-click install;
- Set up domain sign-in and linked to my silos (Twitter, Facebook, Github) so I can easily sign into sites that support domain sign-in;
- Started publishing here, and syndicate to Twitter and Facebook so I OWN my content, and let others see it through those portals;
- Set up webmention and semantic linkbacks through WP plugins so when people comment or ‘like’ by posts there it comes back to me here (I haven’t been able to test this yet, but I’m looking forward to it happen)
Next Steps
I am going to continue to work on building this site, making it better, and blogging about ‘whatever’. I previously posted on Google+ and sent the posts to Twitter and Facebook. This new process will allow me to write longer posts and get the same coverage
Before I go any further, I would be remiss to not mention the people who populate the indiewebcamp irc channel. They have be extremely courteous and helpful. Following some of the conversations there is way beyond my pay grade, but when i ask a noobe question some people have switched gears and answered not only my question, but asked about what else I have done and offered componens to look at to get this up to a functioning indieweb site with a reasonable number of bells and whistles.
I am not a ‘Creator’, or even an ‘Apprentice’ on this platform, perhaps that will come, but I look forward to being an active member of the community, as best I can. The only reason I know about ‘Creator’ and ‘Apprentice’ is that I tried to sign up for the indiewebcamp this summer in NYC. I was somewhat chagrined about not being technically competent enough to participate, but understand the need to limit the campers to those who can most advance the goals of indiewebcamp. I will continue to work at this, learn and hopefully help some new participant as I have been helped.
I don’t plan on going away.