Sessions

Making the web fun again

*
Accepted Session
Culture
Short Form
Beginner
Scheduled: Thursday, June 25, 2015 from 3:45 – 4:30pm in B202/203
Session notes

Excerpt

When Geocities shut down, it did much more than delete a bunch of obnoxious dancing baby GIFs and Limp Bizkit MIDI files. It deleted the ability for people to easily create web sites, and learn how to be in complete control of the content and presentation they provide to their audience. To the economically and socially disenfranchised, it was a disaster that prevented countless people from learning programming. So we brought it back, and open sourced the entire thing (including our financial data). Leave your nostalgia at the door - let us show you our efforts to pave a better future for tech startups, the tech community, and the future of the web itself.

Description

When Geocities shut down, it did much more than delete a bunch of obnoxious dancing baby GIFs and Limp Bizkit MIDI files. It deleted the ability for people to easily create web sites, and be in complete control of the content and presentation they provide to their audience.

Today, most people online express themselves in tiny square text boxes with artificial restrictions on what they can do. The result has been a proprietary, consumption-driven internet where people have become disconnected with the way the web works, and are no longer feel empowered to make things with it. Can we break this vicious, destructive cycle, or are we doomed to become unwitting employees of Facebook sharing pictures of ourselves eating food?

Since the Geocities shutdown, a web revolution has happened: HTML5, JavaScript and CSS3 have propelled the web into a beautiful, dynamic, and rich way to express yourself with nothing more than an HTML file. But we’ve lacked the portals to allow people to learn and utilize and this expressive power without delving into time-consuming, byzantine systems administration.

That’s why we built Neocities: to bring back the lost creative web that allowed everyone in the world to have their own free creative space, regardless of their income or social privilege, powered by the rich, expressive tools of the modern web.

The result has been a fascinating, chaotic, fast growing and rewarding experience that has completely changed our minds on what’s next for the internet (hint: it’s not social networks).

We’ll talk about the issues we’ve had completely open sourcing our site (and financial data), the issues associated with hosting third-party HTML on a hostile internet, and the technical choices we made to stay in budget. We’ll show how individuals, educators, and even other companies are using Neocities to learn how to be creative again, and form meaningful online communities about things that matter to them.

We don’t think this is nostalgia, we think it’s the future of the web. Let us show you why, and how. Web surfing was fun – let’s bring it back!

Tags

html5, css, web design, web sites

Speaking experience

Many talks. 141,630 views on slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/kyledrake

This will be the first talk Victoria (the co-founder) and I do together.

This is a new talk for this conference, it has not been presented before.

Speakers

  • Cyber

    Kyle Drake

    Neocities

    Biography

    Professional Cyberpunk

    Sessions

    • * Making the web fun again
      • Title: Making the web fun again
      • Track: Culture
      • Room: B202/203
      • Time: 3:45 – 4:30pm
      • Excerpt:

        When Geocities shut down, it did much more than delete a bunch of obnoxious dancing baby GIFs and Limp Bizkit MIDI files. It deleted the ability for people to easily create web sites, and learn how to be in complete control of the content and presentation they provide to their audience. To the economically and socially disenfranchised, it was a disaster that prevented countless people from learning programming. So we brought it back, and open sourced the entire thing (including our financial data). Leave your nostalgia at the door – let us show you our efforts to pave a better future for tech startups, the tech community, and the future of the web itself.

      • Speakers: Kyle Drake, Victoria Wang
  • Goldengatebridge

    Victoria Wang

    Neocities

    Biography

    Art and code, contrarianism and civility. I’m a web designer and developer.

    Sessions

    • * Making the web fun again
      • Title: Making the web fun again
      • Track: Culture
      • Room: B202/203
      • Time: 3:45 – 4:30pm
      • Excerpt:

        When Geocities shut down, it did much more than delete a bunch of obnoxious dancing baby GIFs and Limp Bizkit MIDI files. It deleted the ability for people to easily create web sites, and learn how to be in complete control of the content and presentation they provide to their audience. To the economically and socially disenfranchised, it was a disaster that prevented countless people from learning programming. So we brought it back, and open sourced the entire thing (including our financial data). Leave your nostalgia at the door – let us show you our efforts to pave a better future for tech startups, the tech community, and the future of the web itself.

      • Speakers: Kyle Drake, Victoria Wang
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