Good morning! Looking forward to seeing folks at IndieWebCamp Baltimore today!

Baltimore's December meetup for Homebrew Website Club met at the Digital Harbor Foundation Tech Center on December 12th.

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.
  
• IndieWebCamp Austin! Marty went and loved it. We went looked at the Sessions Grid and talked about each one at a high level.
• 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.
• Brianna Privett talk about using WordPress as a life log.
• Ways to put WordPress development into git, like Bedrock/Trellis, putting the whole site in version control, organizing child themes, etc.
• CSS Grid! It seems like magic!
• 2017 was an amazing year for HWC Baltimore. Thanks to everyone who made it a success. We can't wait to see everyone again and made an awesome 2018!

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 !

Tomorrow! Come on out to the Digital Harbor Foundation Tech Center at 6:30pm to work on your personal website, and build a web for you (not them)!

We’ll also be talking about what happened at IndieWebCamp Austin this past weekend.

Oh! And of course we’ll be talking about Baltimore’s very first IndieWebCamp, coming up next month! IndieWebCamp Baltimore will be happening at Digital Harbor Foundation on January 20th and 21st. Registration is open now!

Reminder! Homebrew Website Club Baltimore is on Tuesday this week.

Due to the holiday, this may be the final HWC Baltimore until 2018, so come on out, work on your website, and make a web for you (not them)!

Beyond excited to be co-organizing the first-ever IndieWebCamp Baltimore!

Join us January 20th-21st at the Digital Harbor Foundation Tech Center for a day of learning and discussions about the IndieWeb, followed by a day of working on projects for your own site!

Thanks to Jonathan for the great write-up for tonight’s Homebrew Website Club Baltimore! It is awesome that so many people came out and had such great discussions! I am sad to have missed it!

https://jonathanprozzi.net/indieweb/hwc-baltimore-2017-11-29-wrap-up/

Baltimore's second November 2017 meetup for Homebrew Website Club met at the Digital Harbor Foundation Tech Center on November 15th.

Below are notes from the "broadcast" portion of the meetup.

jonathanprozzi.net – Is back after lots of travel and writing a post about that, including a roadmap of getting back into things. Archived several posts from his old Hugo site into his new WordPress site. One of his 2018-01-01 goals is to practice posting status updates to his site instead of Facebook.

brksavage.com – Bought a new domain for a blog a couple of months ago, transferring it to BlueHost now. Been looking over old content. A 2018-01-01 commitment: small goal - write something small and publish it before end of year.

derekfields.is – Working on getting a JavaScript-based CMS called apostrophe.js working for his site. Probably going to host it on Heroku. Also learning the Windows subsystem for Linux, because developing on Windows "doesn't feel right" since he's not using .NET or similar.

bouhmad.com – Working on a first post to go up tonight! Realized the original scope for his "first post", which was going to compare multiple host-based intrusion detection systems, was going to take weeks! So, he's starting off with one, then planning to get back to it after he graduates (hopefully!) in December.

martymcgui.re – Been working on a new way to store and display webmentions on his site. Currently has one site that pulls them from webmention.io with JavaScript, and one site that polls webmention.io for new mentions every time it is compiled by Jekyll. Started building a webhook in Python but has now moved to PHP because it should be simpler. 

dariusmccoy.com – Just got started with his domain, just a landing page. Wants to add more content to it.

Other things:

• IndieWeb 2018-01-01 Commitments.
  
• echo-chamber.js - a fake commenting system that stores comments in the browser, so the commenter (and no one else) can see what they are saying.
• IndieWebCamp Baltimore 2018! We talked about what an IndieWebCamp is and how it is structured.
• IoT and the IndieWeb (mentioned the IndieWebSummit session on IndieWeb for Hardware).
• Twitter and Facebook business models and how they benefit from outrage.
• IndieWeb generations, specifically the way that participating in the IndieWeb right now almost requires you to be a developer.
• The creepiness of Amazon Key.

Thanks to everybody who came out! We look forward to seeing you at the Digital Harbor Foundation Tech Center for the next one! We'll be meeting again on November 29th.

Come on out tonight for another meeting of Baltimore’s Homebrew Website Club!

Work on your personal website, learn about the IndieWeb, and build a web for you (not them)!

Baltimore's first November 2017 meetup for Homebrew Website Club met at the Digital Harbor Foundation Tech Center on November 1st. 

Below are notes from the "broadcast" portion of the meetup.

bouhmad.com – Been working on a big post about security issues. Also, collecting resources for an Equifax-breach-themed CryptoParty in November, which will also go on his site.

djfalcon23.github.io – Buying his dream domain (TBA once it is registered). Been reading lots about getting into tech industry, dealing w/ impostor syndrome. Planning to turn some of these into notes and/or posts on his site when it is up.

martymcgui.re – Posted up the last IWC NYC 2017 interview (with Tantek). Would like to have one per week to put up, so will bring his mic to next HWC Baltimore, and may start asking people in IRC to do interviews over Skype, Zencaster, or similar. Also just reached the 100th episode of his comedy podcast.

Other things.

• Worries about Net Neutrality and the upcoming FCC proposals to break it by allowing pay-for-access fees to publishers. We looked at resources like battleforthenet.com and a video from Congressional Democrats about the issue.
  
• Podcasts about tech. Derek has been trying to find podcasts about cutting-edge tech, but been frustrated. For example, Friends Talk Frontend has good content, but he finds the hosts annoying. Adam recommend Talk Python to Me because it is funny and timely, focusing on new tech. Marty recommends the Contrafubilists because it is kind of an anti-cutting-edge tech podcast with very thoughtful hosts that take apart the marketing speak behind technology trends.
• Also got off into the weeds about good story-driven podcasts. 😅
• Talked about a theoretical "disruptive student" detection system that uses computer vision, motion detection, face recognition, to log "overactive" students and generate reports. Generated a lot of interesting discussion about unintended consequences of technologically "simple" systems.
• Talked about the problems of trying to digitize the rules of complex human systems and the problems of measuring outcomes, determining what "just" algorithms looks like, etc.

Thanks to everybody who came out! We look forward to seeing you at the Digital Harbor Foundation Tech Center for the next one! We'll be meeting again on November 15th and November 29th.

Looking forward to Homebrew Website Club Baltimore this Wednesday!

Join us at 7:30pm at Digital Harbor Foundation to talk about your personal website, owning your content outside the big social media silos, and making an IndieWeb for you (not them)!

Want some time to write a post, add a feature, or otherwise work on your website? Join us at 6:30pm for the (optional) quiet writing hour before the meetup.