Hugs and kisses for XOXO
Wes Cook's pastoral McDonald's panorama, via Cabel Sasser
I'm super grateful for the collection of people who gathered in Portland this weekend for (the final?!?!?!) XOXO festival.
Most notably the Andys (Baio and McMillan) who planned to do the closing festival in 2020 and then held tight to that dream for four years, through the pandemic, very changing economics, and their own personal lives.
A plethora of silly and serious art projects made me want to grab my sketchbook again:
The HTML Review by Shelby Wilson reminded me of the simple joy of beautiful typography on the web
One Million Checkboxes by Nolen Royalty, plus his earlier projects Stranger Video and Talk Paper Scissors, highlighted the delightful outcomes of connecting strangers
Moonlight, Dialup, and other projects by Danielle Baskin combined art, activism, and life design in joyful ways
Every Frame a Painting by Taylor Ramos and Tony Zhou opened up new layers of cinematic appreciation
A selection of inspiring speakers gave me hope for the future, notably:
Erin Kissane for her tireless and lifesaving work on the COVID Tracking Project, followed by a thorough writeup of Meta's role in the Myanmar genocide, and an exhortation to "fix the fucking social networks" before the next pandemic, climate crisis, or genocide happens.
Darius Kazemi for his Hometown fork of Mastodon, as well as his too-real sendup of "The XOXO Dream":
- go indie
- make the stuff you want to make
- make a living off it (optional??)
- move to Portland (required??)
- make the world at least a little better
(The two of them also just released social network governance recommendations from their 8-month study of governance on Mastodon)
Ed Yong for his powerful and impactful reporting during the pandemic, as well as his beautiful book An Immense World, and a personal story of the burnout recovery after all of that dedication.
Jason Kottke, Craig Mod, and Casey Newton (of Platformer) for sharing their indie media business experiences. I got a lot of ideas for my own sites.
Cabel Sasser, for preserving the truly ridiculous McDonald's mural shown below, as well as nearly-unknown artist Wes Cook's body of work, and reminding us to "appreciate everything endlessly"
