/reader

• Well, I think I'm done. I've got the outline for the slides complete. I can't possibly talk about all the stuff that's in the slides. Once I leave tomorrow I think perhaps I'll post a link for the slides and maybe offer a place to comment. Maybe. #
• I get very nervous about these things and then remember when I've prepared as much as I have for this, the talk goes quickly and people generally are nice, though I've been ambushed a few memorable times. Let's see -- Austin, Cambridge, San Francisco and Nashville come to mind. ;-)#
• In Austin it was because I was privileged. I was being honored because it was the 25th year of my blog, and I was one of the keynoters. I told the promoter his people wouldn't like me, and then I forgot I said it when it happened. I was stuck, I didn't want to get into a public argument with anyone. (Had I wanted to rebut, I would have said everyone in this room is privileged, just look around at how well fed and educated everyone is. We all flew in here. We live in a rich country where we are the elite of the elite. Now STFU, in my dreams.) #
• There have been times when I welcomed an argument...#
• In San Francisco, I was invited to lead a panel from the music industry about how great Napster was. This was probably in 2000 or 2001 when Napster was at its peak. It was an ambush. All the panelists made me the issue, and then they voted to kick me off the stage. I stayed there and waited until they exhausted their rage, and then asked them a question about music and Napster. Acted like nothing had happened. I had earned my place there, I was a very early industry adopter of Napster. I loved what it did for us. Imagine until then you either had to buy an album to listen to music, build a collection, or wait until it was played on the radio. (What is radio? Kind of an early form of podcasting.) People were talking about music in supermarkets and airports. This could not be stopped, I was sure of it, and they were acting like babies. I stood up and prevailed.#
• In Nashville, I was invited to be a sort of keynoter for a conference that was patterned after BloggerCon. I did not organize it, but I led a session, which was attended by a famous right wing blogger who I had invited to the Harvard BloggerCon. He brought a bunch of his friends, and they each said no one was listening to them but we were listening to them. I eventually sat down and let them have a session dominated by a few people repeating themselves. It was boring. #
• Finally I was set up by the promoters of a CMS conference which Berkman hosted at Harvard. I was the master of ceremonies. No one told me that one of my most virulent trolls was there, and when he got up to rage at me I asked him to sit down, but Charlie Nesson who was the senior educator there, and kind of naive about internet trolls, said he should speak his mind. I should have walked out at that point. I knew what was coming. It really shook me. #
• In Nashville a columnist in a local paper who said I caused the riot, btw. I swear to god I always take my discussion leader role seriously. I gave them all a chance to talk and they all said the same thing, almost as if they had been told to say it. #

• Let's remember how the web could have worked.#
• The ideal is to write in our blog space, and publish everywhere.#
• That's what we have been trying to do since Twitter came along. #
• Write on your main blog, cross-post everywhere it belongs. #
• This could have worked, and it still can. #
• But it can't work until we get agreement on what text is. This will be much-discussed at WordCamp Canada this week, based on what WordPress is doing and what Evan Prodromou will speak about and of course what I am speaking about.#
• Getting back on track is as simple as agreeing what text is on the web. For that we have two very good models: HTML and Markdown. #

• Here's my slide.#

It's funny because it's true#

• Working on my slides for WordCamp Canada next week.#
• I don't think I'll actually use the F-word in the slide. #
• But it makes me laugh when I see it.#

• It's funny because it's true.#

I know so many people around my age that were never told this simple truth that I heard Steve Jobs say in a video the other day. Paraphrasing -- the people who made the rules you think you have to live by weren't smarter than you. Once you accept this as fact, then if you can find the leading edge you can make it work the way you want it to. You can be one of those people. #

The social network of the web#

• I was just catching up on tweets and saw an announcement earlier this week that Matt Mullenweg is going to lead a town hall discussion at WordCamp Canada next Friday in Ottawa. A week from today. I find that exciting. I'll in the room for sure, and blogging it. Why not? ;-)#
• I am presenting the day before, where I'll do a demo of the new WordLand, explaining how it's now twice the product it was last time you all saw it. It is still centered on WordPress as the place where all the user's writing is published. And somehow through the magic of software, we manage to make it into a social network. And the cool thing about the whole stack of software we build on, all of it is replaceable and of the web, in every sense.#
• There are things that Bluesky and Mastodon can do that WordLand can't. But there are also many many things we can do with the structure that WordLand creates that the others can't touch. There's a simple reason for that, if implementing something, no matter how attractive, without limiting the web-ness of the system, we didn't do it. This is the social network of the web. That means all the pieces connect with each other in fantastic unforeseeable ways. And anyone can discover these connections. That was the joy of the early web, the thought "Hey I think I can do that" and when you try, it works! We're back there again, if the people come. The technical challenge is still there but now is smaller. Getting people to look and fall in love (hopefully) is the big challenge.#
• After WordLand 0.8 is ready, real soon now, who knows what's next? That's the glory a bootstrap. Every step tells you where to go next. That's how you know you're hitting a target.#
• I don't know if Matt will be there for my demo, I hope he is. He and Automattic and the community have created a fantastic platform. Finding WordPress has a super powerful API that I didn't know about is like finding a new web. Let me know if you see it too. ;-)#
• So thanks Matt for your great contribution. I hope to be able to thank you for that personally in Ottawa next week. Perfect timing.#
• Cross-posted from the WordCamp Canada site. #

• Note this is for the 0.8 release of WordLand coming soooon. Not in the current released product. #
• A friend asked for this feature a few months back, before we had a Markdown mode in WordLand. #
• As I'm reviewing the product for first beta I realized I could now implement the feature he asked for.#
• How to..#
• Copy a URL to the clipboard.#
• Open WordLand, bring it to the front.#
• Go into Markdown mode by clicking the M icon. It turns green.#
• Select the text you want to be a link.#
• Paste the URL copied in step 1.#
• It creates the link for you, in Markdown syntax of course. #
• To see it in HTML, just flip the Markdown button off.#
• I call this feature Cute Paste. :-)#
• A video demo.#