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Jo 
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An instant photo I took of people at the event
I attended IndieWebCamp Berlin 2024 in person on (yesterday).
I had a great time yesterday at my first IWC! It was my first time meeting everybody there in person — some people I knew from zoom meetings but also many people I had never met before.
The event was for people to discuss their personal websites and various ideas of what we individually and as a community can do on the web.
I made a day trip of it, leaving the house at around 5:30-ish to catch the train for Berlin at 6:30-ish. When I left the city was pretty empty, it being a Saturday and all. The train wasn't very busy and it took me around 2h to get to Berlin. There Sara picked me up at the train station — which I am very grateful for because I probably would've felt pretty lost. Neither of us was exactly an expert in Berlin, but Sara knew where to go.
We took the regional train to the Ostbahnhof and took a stroll by the wall to look at the graffiti. Before going to the mozilla offices, where the meeting was, we went to a little café and I got my second coffe of the day.
The sign showing there's an IndieWebCamp inside.
On our way in we met Taís, who had also never been to an IWC before, like me.
A selfie I took in one of the pretty fancy bathrooms at mozilla.
The mozilla office was really cool, and had a nice view of the river. While the organizers were setting up the tech, I looked around, chatted with people and took some stickers. I also eventually remembered I had brought snacks, which were a hit (especially the bag of Hanuta). I also wrote a tag with my name and website.
We gathered in one of the conference rooms and everyone introduced their sites. In the background David recorded the zooms and such from the US.
Not everyone had a site, but here is a list of people's sites (I hope I didn't miss anyone):
After introductions we came up with topics to talk about for the day. I ended up going to the How to make the web queerer / stranger, Non-technical collaboration on the internet, Writing with Images and Design for Dummies discussions. It's a shame the last three could only be half an hour long each, because we were late after lunch and took a long time to set up.
Delicious sushi. Tho I wish I had gotten some soy sauce with it? maybe there was some on the table and I didn't see
For lunch we went out and got vegan sushi in a restaurant. My meal looked very pretty. It was nice to chat with people. I took an instant photo of the table but it turned out really bad.
James also gave me a sticker of his blog mascot, a cat with a coffee-to-go cup on its head. It was hard to figure out where to put all the new stickers on my laptop, because it's already full of stickers. I ended up putting the cat over the unnecessarily large sticker of the GNU nano logo (like, the text editor).
My laptop
It was nice to talk to people in real life, and to meet so many people that I had only heard of or never seen nor heard of before. I liked discovering their sites and I'm thankful for anyone who complimented me on my website! I think I didn't show that enough because I often wasn't sure if we were talking about my site or not.
It was also cool to find out that my sites inspired someone, I think Nina said she was inspired by my old portfolio site, that eventually became the /art section of this website. Huh! I never really think of my sites as inspiring or anything. So that was nice to hear.
Table lamps set to slightly different shades of pink (or perhaps it was the brightness)
At 5pm we had to leave the mozilla office and some of us went to a hotel lounge. I had planned in a lot of buffer time before and after the event so I still had a few hours until I had to leave for the train. Not all of us sat at the same table, but it was nice to keep chatting. We talked about the day, languages and music. The theme of the hotel was very pink.
Train sushi
I left the hotel at around 7pm and let Google Maps guide me back to the main station. It was of course very dark and I thought it would be a little scary to walk through Berlin at night alone but it was kind of nice. Despite the smell of urine.
At the main station I got myself boxed sushi to eat on the journey back. It was even shorter, at about 1h 45m. I'm glad I booked train tickets early and payed under 30€ for the trip. I could've gone for free but it would have taken about 5h with regional trains. So definitely worth it.
Here are some more pics that didn't fit inside the layout anymore:
Sara's nametag
James and his small images
bathroom at nhow hotel
Wall decorations at nhow lounge
I just thought it was cool we were at mozilla so I took this pic apparently
yet another bathroom selfie
I had a lot of fun and I am so glad I came. I thought I would be really tired because I had only slept 4h, but it wasn't until I sat on the train back that I started to feel tired. All the same, I slept about 11h today to make up for it.
Also posted to Indienews.
Tags: indieweb, cons
PS: I wrote most of this during the Zoom meeting for IWC, but I usually write listening to music. Maybe I'll start ending my posts on whatever I am listening to at that moment? So here it is
Category: personal
