DWeb Seattle Social Trip Report
An overview of our diplomatic mission to Seattle
“Interdependence” is a key value highlighted in the DWeb Principles. Local community-building is core to the DWeb movement, striving for more technical agency and an equitable world. There are DWeb Nodes popping up all over the world, but I believe we it is also important to link nearby nodes into a wider DWeb network. The best way to do that is in person so a few of us from the Vancouver DWeb node piled into my car (other Canadian friends took the train or the bus) and made a pilgrimage across the southern border for the DWeb Seattle Social. This is a first pass trip report of the event to share some of photos and next actions.
We had DWebbers from Seattle, Victoria, Vancouver BC and Vancouver WA, plus other surrounding communities gather as a first step to knit together the greater bioregion, what we have dubbed DWeb Cascadia. 68 signups came for pizza, drinks, connecting, and some short talks. Since this is Handmade Seattle week we even had a few earlybird friends from that conference join us. The Internet Development Studio, a cool new hub for creative technology right down in the Pike Place Market area of Seattle, hosted us in their wonderful space for the evening.
After a sketchy border crossing 😅 me and my small crew arrived early and greeted people as they trickled in throughout the afternoon. Once pizza arrived and everyone had a drink in hand, DWeb Seattle Node activator Nigini Oliveira and I opened the evening talking about the DWeb movement, re-igniting the Seattle Node, and DWeb events being planned for 2025. Then we rolled into some short talks, including:
- Bryan Newbold from Bluesky gave us an update on atproto progress
- David Lücke demo’d a local first DWeb Chat app
- Arturo Martinez gave us a peek into some upcoming work from the Tor Project
- Ronen Tamari demo’d some new features of the SenseNets tool which collates scientific social media activity for use in “nanopublications”
Afterwards the drinks, discussion, and pizza (?) flowed on into the evening. Personally, I was able to make a number of interesting connections to follow up on before the Vancouver crew had to leave and drive back north through the Bomb Cyclone. Luckily we made it home just after midnight through the strong winds with only a minimal amount of rain and debris on the road.
I have been collecting images from the event and posting them to the below album. We did have some video cameras going so we may post videos later.
Next steps
Nigini is planning on holding more regular DWeb events in Seattle so if you are in the area please sign up for the meetup. Already the DWeb YVR crew is planning our next event in Vancouver which we plan to invite our new Cascadia friends. Sign up to the DWeb YVR newsletter or Luma calendar to get notified for that.
Here are some links so you can stay in the loop and join the community:
- https://getdweb.net
- Sign up for the Decentralized Web Seattle Meetup group
- Join the conversation on the DWeb Discord
- Get updates via the DWeb newsletter
- Follow on Bluesky @dweb.bsky.social or Fedi @dweb@social.coop
Check the main DWeb website to learn more about the movement and how to start your own community node. Then reach out via Discord so we can link up! I hope to see more of you in the future.
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