I’ve worked in tech for many years, and one of the events that has been a constant part of the calendar is SXSW. I remember signing up for Twitter back in 2007 just after I heard about it while chatting in Roo Reynolds’ office at IBM, from a visitor who had been at SXSW where it first took off (referenced in a post back over here).

That was nearly 20 years ago now – and in all of that time, I never had the opportunity to go to SXSW for the tech part¹ of the festival…

This year, our friends at Flipboard created a side event they called Fediverse House, as a eye-catching label for a series of talks and sessions around the open social web

[yes, it was broader than the Fediverse; some other platforms and topics were represented, too. It was great to be able to talk about the Fediverse]
Image credit: Brooks Lawson @brooks
I was excited to be able to join the event², and even more so, I was honoured to be asked to join a panel moderated by the wonderful Mia Quagliarello all about building communities on the new social web. I briefly mentioned this trip on the most recent Mastodon blog post update for our updates during March, but I’m now able to include more about the content here.

Here’s the video of our panel discussion, available on Flipboard’s PeerTube – or, on YouTube for those of you that are not yet Fediverse-enabled, or who want to watch on your TV or something 🙂 I hope I did an OK job, representing the good people of the different communities on the Fediverse. I know that my own experience and perspective is not a universal one and I do my best to reflect that when I talk about our spaces.

flipboard.video/videos/embed/7…

As well as this panel, the event included some fantastic talks from folks such as Molly White and Cory Doctorow (clips are on PeerTube); it gave me an opportunity to learn more about the ATProto ecosystem from chatting with the nice folks from Bluesky; I was able to meet writers from one of the best publications on the web today, 404 Media; and, it also provided a chance to spend time IRL with friends from the Fediverse – including the excellent Jeff Sikes, and also people I greatly respect and appreciate from WeDistribute, Sean and Damon.
Guitar sculpture titled ‘Vibrancy’ by Craig Hein, located in downtown Austin
Anyway… I still haven’t actually been to SXSW 😄

This year, I did something better than that. Thank you to the Flipboard team for all your work in putting Fediverse House together!

1. I was in Austin one year during the music festival, and managed to get to a couple of sessions, but I wasn’t in town specifically for the event, that was a surprise bonus. ↩︎
2. Thank you to the Social Web Foundation for making my trip to Austin possible. ↩︎

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#100DaysToOffload #404Media #bluesky #fediverse #flipboard #mastodon #panel #PeerTube #publicSpeaking #speaking #sxsw #Technology #TheOnion #video #WeDistribute

🏕️ my adventures in #selfhosting - day 128 (a bit Clueless edition) 🎬​

Bonjour Fedi friends!

I'm having a really interesting week: 4 adult caretakers in a house with 3 little children... as I admitted to someone on here, self-hosting is FAR easier than being a referee in fights about LEGOs 😅​

Now, whenever the cousins are busy playing in the garden, I try to do a bit of work, namely: figuring out #PeerTube from the POV of a self-hoster.

Yesterday I finally understood how I could create a user account (other than "root" - the superuser created during the PeerTube installation).

Today I'm busy trying to solve another problem: how do you tell your followers you've moved to a new instance? Because yes, PeerTube is powered by #ActivityPub, but it doesn't support the MOVE function.

I rarely posted on my MakerTube account and only have 150 subscribers, who followed me when reading about it on my blog post about PeerTube.

But I have to admit, the whole "following" thing is really convoluted on PeerTube because you can follow an entire account or specific channels. And I'm a little lost regarding how I notify my followers about the change.

If you have any suggestions, I'm all ears!

Oh and some news for you first... here is my new PeerTube home: videos.elenarossini.com/a/ele/…

Special thanks to ​
@yunohost
for empowering me to set up my own instance ❤️​

#MySoCalledSudoLife #video