hello, hello! i hope your month has been going well so far, especially as we’re in the throes of the holiday season. if not, my heart is definitely with you. <3
i want to first call out that we’ve hit milestones on both the discourse forum and discord! we’ve surpassed 300 members on the forum, and 600 members on the discord server. hello to all new folks and welcome! :)
new year’s 2025
our holiday event kicks off tomorrow and runs through january 15, 2025. the theme this year is two-pronged:
- Year in Review
Tell us about your journey this year. What were the highlights and memories you made along the way? What did you learn and experience? Were there any goals you set and achieved? What has it made you want to achieve for the new year?
- Light in Darkness
What’s getting you through these cold, dark (or if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere these hot, entirely too bright) months. What is the lighthouse guiding you to shore through the tumultuous waves of life?
be sure to RSVP on this post if you’d like discourse notifications or RSVP on the discord event if that’s easier! the display page will be going up january 16, so be sure to get your pages and blog posts submitted by then!
our @event-planners worked really hard and on a condensed timeline to get this up, so thank you so much to them! <3
hearing from you
it’s been a year since we’ve done our last anonymous feedback survey, and it’s that time of year again! all questions are optional and 100% anonymous. :) it shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes to fill out. thank you for your time!!
looking forward
when i look back at all the things we accomplished this year, i’m so proud of us as a community and as a cohesive group. it feels like, after two years, we’re catching our stride in how we want our community to be and what values we uphold.
personally, i think so many of us are used to things we join being so demanding that, when we encounter a group that is self-directed and/or self-motivated, it can take us by surprise and overwhelm us a bit. if you’re new, don’t hesitate to reach out to the @baristas or any friendly member with open DMs to ask more about us, figure out how to get involved, or just find out about the culture. :)
moving forward into 2025, we’ve got some big plans, including giving some much-needed competition to free services online or some web services that the personal web just doesn’t have at the moment. (if you’re interested in joining us on those endeavors, be sure to join the @technomancers project team!)
we will also be writing more guides next year to hopefully round out the experience of what to do when you arrive in the independent web and start creating your own website. so far, our guides have been really helpful to a lot of people, but we want to do more! (interested in writing? join the @scribes team!)
finally, thank you so much for being here. feeling less alone on this side of the web is important, and the amazing work that all of you do on your own websites and in this community cannot be understated. thank you for keeping the web alive.