Thanks to everyone in the IndieWeb chat for their feedback and suggestions. Please drop me a note if there are any changes you’d like to see for this audio edition!
“Allow user privacy, by limiting the data we gather, we can protect our users and reduce our own liability for holding user data. Indie Auth allows us to authenticate a user using only their domain name. Client Side APIs allow us to provide APIs which only expose select information without requiring us to give a third party information like our username or email address.”
Jonathan and Marty host the Baltimore Mayor's Christmas Celebration in Hampden! Live it like you were there as Jonathan spins the beats and get everybody pumped for the Mayor's appearance.
Thanks to everyone in the IndieWeb chat for their feedback and suggestions. Please drop me a note if there are any changes you’d like to see for this audio edition!
“For my new workflow, I still manually post the same photo to Instagram and my website, but now I copy the Instagram URL and add it as a syndication link on the original WordPress photo post. […] It’s not an ideal solution but for me, it works better than the other solutions I tried.”
Thanks to everyone in the IndieWeb chat for their feedback and suggestions. Please drop me a note if there are any changes you’d like to see for this audio edition!
Below are notes from the "broadcast" portion of the meetup.
martymcgui.re – Went to IndieWebCamp Austin, and it was great! Some notes on that below. IndieWebCamp Baltimore is scheduled and people are RSVPing and booking plane tickets, so he is very excited! The schedule now appears to be locked in and it's time to market it hard. Also demo'd the way he shows multiphoto posts on his site with CSS Grid (example). 2018-01-01 commitments progress: super happy with IWC Baltimore progress, expects to cut is close with his commitment to move his site to Hugo by 2018.
brksavage.com – Been working on a crash course in WordPress, HTML, kind of overloaded on it. Tonight worked on another project because of writer's block.
derekfields.is – Been geeking out on codrops – really nice visualizations and animations on the web with SVG, WebGL, and more. So pretty! Adding a blog page to his site (by hand). Researching how to incorporate Ghost into his site. Started a 100 Days of Code project! Similar to 100 Days of IndieWeb, the goal is to get an hour of coding done every day and tweet your progress. Missed a couple of days over the weekend, but enjoys sharing out his progress and the community support. Would like to have a buddy to support each other. 2018-01-01 commitment progress: working on apostrophe and a cloud service to host it, downloaded Ubuntu tools for Windows.
bouhmad.com – Site is down at the moment. Needs to get it back up and on HTTPS. Wants to do a blog post on experiences as being a dual full-time student and full-time employee out of high school, and the "full college experience". 2018-01-01 commitments: wants to get that blog post up, would like to commit to blogging at least once every two weeks in the new year capturing projects as a resource to others but also daily life as an archive for his future self.
jonathanprozzi.net – 2018-01-01 commitments: little progress on his pre-2018 commitment but still thinks he has time. Really wants to get his local WordPress + git setup going soon. A new near term goal: RSVP to IWC Baltimore!
Other Things:
Bitcoin! Coinbase! GDAX! How unreal the value is right now and how unusable it all is.
Talked about the WordPress Post Kinds plugin and how it might be useful to have a series of blog posts that explains how to get the most out of this plugin, tying that into details about the different types on the wiki and so on.
Talked a lot about IndieWebCamp Baltimore. It's shaping up to be very exciting! Aaron Parecki got the event and wiki pages looking good, so now we want to start getting the word out everywhere.
Thanks to everybody who came out! Due to the upcoming holiday around the next usual meeting, this will be our last meeting of 2017. We look forward to seeing you at the Digital Harbor Foundation Tech Center for the first meeting of 2018! We'll be meeting again on
Tuesday, January 9th
!
“Requiring the talent to interact with the readers and draw knowledge from them not only improves the journalism by broadening its base, it also binds the readers to the writers and gives them a stake in the final product because they joined in its formation.”
Marty and Jonathan discover that sculpting is not just an art form, its a way of life. Whole beach sand sculpting to works of art carved in ice are just a few of the skills they discuss. Also, another round of "Tis the Season."
Thanks to everyone in the IndieWeb chat for their feedback and suggestions. Please drop me a note if there are any changes you’d like to see for this audio edition!
As someone who spends a lot of time in the IndieWeb community, I spend a lot of time opening up various pages that I know are there. At times it feels tedious to open a new tab and type out the full URL.
I'm a big fan of Alfred, the launcher and general magic quick bar for macOS, I thought I could save myself some time by making a Workflow to open those pages for me.
The Workflow itself does only one thing: When you open Alfred (⌘-spacebar), type "iw KEYWORD" and press Enter, it opens https://indieweb.org/KEYWORD in your browser.
“I wanted to at least export my buddy list. I found a way using Javascript and browser dev tools. It’s not the most user-friendly, but it’s better than nothing.”
Kristen aka KMac asked me for my notes after I used some exercises from this workshop in a coaching session with Topiary. So, here they are! I hope they are useful to someone.
Any great ideas and brilliance in here are because of Rick and the other workshop participants. Any bad advice or mistakes below are my own.
Warm up - sound and motion hot spot
circle up.
someone enters center and does sound and motion alone.
a 2nd person joins and matches
1st person fades back into the circle.
2nd person morphs sound and motion into a new one.
repeat.
Level up:
same as above, but people come out in pairs.
watch as new pair discovers new sound and motion together
This workshop is about getting out of the way of that discovery.
We often improvise like people who need approval from the audience. It's exhausting for players and audience alike.
Black holes are detected by how their gravity affects things around them, warping light. An addict filters all decisions through their addiction. We are addicted to being interesting.
If someone tells you to do a cave scene, almost everyone's first idea will be "Oh no, we are trapped!" But have you ever been in a cave? Probably! Have you ever been trapped in a cave? Nope. So why don't people do scenes about just being in a cave?
Exercise:
2 people in chairs having a conversation
start w/ a word as inspiration
truthful conversation as if no audience
real facts and beliefs
real human interactions are believable. not like the people in Drive w/ Ryan Gosling (lol)
lots of surprises happen, and quickly.
"I love podcasts." "Oh, me too!"
The saying that you should wait for your third thought is garbage.
Also, the people in these scenes are strangers and that is fine and not awkward!
if people are affecting and reacting to each other, we like the scene.
if they are not affecting each other, no one cares about the scene.
Exercise:
Same as above, but instead of sitting the players are miming an unrelated activity.
Improvise with each other. Little things are not missed.
We notice odd things. "I want to hear more about that."
People ask questions in real life! it's not out of fear and trying to push along or push against a scene, but out of real curiosity.
Exercise:
Same as above, but each player adopts a weird voice or at least a different voice from their normal speaking voice.
e.g. more nasal or guttural, or change pitch
no affected accents
Only the first lines from each player needs to be true.
After that, follow what feels true for the character. it's a subtle change.
No need to overplay emotion. In real life we feel things like anxiety or shame but we don't come out and say it and we don't broadcast it by being obvious.
Exercise:
Extremely overplanned scenes.
Example: "You're coworkers at cocktails after a blowing outing"
Example: "One of you wants to buy a suit. The other is selling suits."
Goal: make it feel real.
We are afraid of starting conversations that we don't know where they're going.
Lots of improv is shortcuts to give us a problem to solve or a weird thing to talk about.
A deconstructed example:
input: "you're school dance chaperones"
players started by standing around awkwardly. one takes a breath as though they are about to speak, but thinks better of it. gets a little laugh.
this is kind of a manufactured nervousness, playing up the emotion unrealistically.
players suddenly talk at the same time.
this is playing off the previous bit. again, kind of false even if it gets a chuckle from the audience.
finally, this exchange is gold:
A: "I like this song. Who is this by? I can almost remember."
B: "It's Carly Rae Jepson"
A: "Oh, you know her work?"
B: "She is going to fucking save pop music"
This is a real discovery! An unexpected, genuine, super strong emotional stance.
Other thoughts:
We have lots of awareness in real life. we've been practicing being human as long as we have been alive. if we let ourselves take our time, we bring that listening to our improv.
People laugh all the time in real life. It is okay for your character to find humor in the scene.
People tend to like each other in real life.
In real life, conflict is like a squeaky door - awkward tension.
We don't look to pick fights. We don't make things impossible for others.
Working to have fun is different from working to be funny.
Marty and Jonathan find the best techniques for training dogs. Whether you always get bit or licked, there will be some good information for you. Also, more advice for your job changes on "Nothing Up Our Sleeves."
Thanks to everyone in the IndieWeb chat for their feedback and suggestions. Please drop me a note if there are any changes you’d like to see for this audio edition!
