DWeb Local-First Weekend roundup
Roundup of Local-First Weekend on January 11th & 12th. Speakers, hacking, and more all weekend long.

On January 11th and 12th 2025, more than two dozen technologists gathered in Vancouver, coming from as far away as Seattle, Vancouver Island and Salt Spring Island to hear talks from some of the people on the forefront of the local-first movement, and then learn together in a collaborative hackathon.
Saturday started with a hearty brunch featuring locally made breads, meats, cheeses, and baked goods. Participants pulled themselves various coffees from the Z-Space espresso machine, and then settled at tables and couches in the main room to hear some talks.



Guest speakers for the event
On stage Peter van Hardenberg, broke down the concept of local-first software design, demonstrating the syncing capabilities of Automerge to the crowd through some incident-free live-coding.
Brooklyn Zelenka spoke about access control for local-first and her work on capabilities and delegation for the Beehive project at Ink & Switch. The presentation was not only enlightening, but elicited laughs from the crowd due to Brooklyn's signature presentation style.
Finally, David Lücke gave a walkthrough of his local-first chat project, a simple chat system that does not require a server and works offline. This chat was used at the back-channel for the weekend-long event.
Late into the evening participants gathered in small groups to discuss software development, user agency, end-user programming, and other techno-social concepts while sharing food and drink.

On Sunday morning the crew gathered once again for brunch, and continued to collaborate on the lo-fi tech from the day before.


Hackers share a meal in a very sunny Z-space
Here are a few comments from participants:
It provided a refreshing counter-narrative to the prevailing narratives in the tech industry, and I was impressed by the maturity of the various projects. — Guy
It was fun to pick up new tech… and build out rapid features. — Yas
People were extremely friendly… the snacks were excellent... hacking happened! — Gord
Demos
Participants presented some of the successes (and failures!) of their hacking and projects on late Sunday.

- Several people were hacking on the local-first chat, adding new features and getting familiar with the much more simplified local-first development workflow.
- Gord added Markdown support for new messages
- Yas added the ability to like messages
- Karl made several style and usability improvements
- Will added the ability to react with emojis
- Guy Bedford ported the chat application to work without the need for any build tools (like a TypeScript or React compiler)
- Jim Pick demoed hex.camp, a project that gives any location on earth their own web address
- Erik did a live migration to a self-owned Bluesky personal data server (PDS) using the bluesky-account-migrator
- Jonny gave an overview of wordltree.online, the data hub that connects Z-Space with the digital world.
- Peter showed the Ohm grammar editor to live-edit domain specific languages (DSLs)
At the end, each person took home a laser cut wooden coaster made by Bosswood Creations to commemorate the event.
This DWeb #LoFiWKND community event was supported by Feathers Cloud, Hypha Cooperative, Ink & Switch, and a number of DWeb YVR and Z-Space volunteers who ensured a constant supply of fresh coffee, healthy snacks, and good vibes.

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