September 24th and 25th—those are the dates you should put in your diary. That’s when this year’s Indie Web Camp Brighton is happening.
Once again it’ll be at 68 Middle Street, home to Clearleft. You can register for free now, and then add your name to the list of participants on the wiki.
If you haven’t been to an Indie Web Camp before, it’s a very straightforward proposition. The idea is that you should have your own website. That’s it. Every thing else is predicated on that. So while there’ll be plenty of discussions, demos, and designs, they’re all in service to that fundamental premise.
The first day of an Indie Web Camp is like a BarCamp. We make a schedule grid at the start of the day and people organise topics by room and time slot. It sounds chaotic. It is chaotic. But it works surprisingly well. The discussions can be about technologies, or interfaces, or ideas, or just about anything really.
The second day is for making. After the discussions from the previous day, most people will have a clear idea at this point for something they might want to do. It might involve adding some new technology to their website, or making some design changes, or helping build a tool. For people starting from scratch, this is the perfect time for them to build and launch a basic website.
At the end of the second day, everyone demos what they’ve done. I’m always amazed by how much people can accomplish in just one weekend. There’s something about having other people around to help you that makes it super productive.
You might be thinking “but I’m not a coder!” Don’t worry—there’ll be plenty of coders there so you can get their help on whatever you might decide to do. If you’re a designer, your skills will be in high demand by those coders. It’s that mish-mash of people that makes it such a fun gathering.
Last year’s Indie Web Camp Brighton was lots of fun. Let’s make Indie Web Camp Brighton 2016 even better!