The web gray heads will remember the rallying cries of SPLJ from David Weinberger’s book championing a unified theory of the web being a shift away from enterprise platforms and tools made for us to ones we all stitched together ourselves. How far as edtech strayed from this ideal?
Alas, I am not here to wax nostalgic, but to look forward, and remind you that all remains possible and even more now in 2025. The basic glue of RSS still not only works, but works fantastically, reliably– the next time someone quips that “Google killed RSS” or “RSS is dead” ask them how they automatically get new podcast episodes. The feed reader that so many have tossed for the drip feed of social media remains the one technology that is not lying about saving time.
I will show you how a mixture of old school social bookmarking drives automated cross connecting separate spaces, using the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress to federate to Mastodon (e.g. for the DS106 Daily Create as well as the OEGlobal Voices podcast), posting to and from Discourse forums. I will show how I make use of Integrator services, just the simple IFTTT, but also Make and Zapier as a no-code route for joining small web pieces.
Raise your rally flag for small pieces loosely joined.
Session Resources:
- Small pieces loosely joined : a unified theory of the Web https://archive.org/details/smallpiecesloose0000wein
- Gizmo-ing Stuff to Mastodon https://cogdogblog.com/2022/11/gizmo-to-mastodon/
- The Indispensable Digital Research Tool I can Say, Without Lying, Saves Time https://cogdogblog.com/2017/09/indispensable-tool/
- WordPress Serving Posts at the Activity Pub https://cogdogblog.com/2025/04/wordpress-serving-activity-pub/
This one goes to 11(ty)
A lot of the web doesn’t need a database, server-side scripting, or a framework – good old HTML, CSS, and a smattering of JavaScript will do the job. A static site can work for the long haul without the admin overhead and the constant worry of getting hacked or spammed. Yet we don’t want to go back to the days of Stonehenge and manipulating code across pages and FTPing files to servers. Having the efficiencies and workflows that modern web platforms offer is ideal, but in a form that we can control and customise is where modern static site generators come in.
But why settle for a static site generator that only goes up to 10 when you can have one that goes to 11? In this session, we’ll explore how 11ty (Eleventy) cranks up the volume on modern web development by delivering maximum flexibility without the noise. This isn’t just one louder; it’s fundamentally different.
11ty lets you rock’n’roll without getting lost on your way to the stage, while its extensive customisation options ensure you can fine-tune every aspect of your design and build process. From simple blogs to complex enterprise sites, 11ty adapts to your needs rather than forcing you to adapt to its constraints.
By session’s end, you’ll understand why 11ty isn’t just another static site generator – it’s the one that goes to 11.
Keynote: Rewilding voice in a time of enclosure
In a world of feeds full of algorithmic reels and AI slop, what does it mean to write for ourselves? In a post-RSS, post-social media era, how do we navigate the enclosure and weaponization of the platforms that once networked the voices of the open web? And if we *do* push through the journey of crafting our own voices, our own narratives…does the breakdown of networks and fracturing of the open web mean our voices will echo, unheard? This session is aimed at tracing the sociomaterial shifts in what writing online has meant over the last 15-20 years, and convening a social, back-and-forth discussion via Mentimenter. It will explore and poll participants’ experiences and feelings about the various questions posed, and what answers and suggestions we can muster, as a collective. It will explore what’s been lost, but also what possibilities remain when the web is viewed as what Ursula Franklin called a ‘holistic technology’…as opposed to the prescriptive technologies that enclosure and automation offer us. The session will focus on ‘re-wilding’ ideas of voice and a commons even within our polluted information ecosystem, and on building capacity to connect with each other and to value each other’s voices.
Session Resources:
Franklin, U. (1990). The real world of technology. Massey Lectures. https://monoskop.org/images/5/58/Franklin_Ursula_The_Real_World_of_Technology_1990.pdf
Federating Your Second Brain: Rewilding Notes into Gardens, Newsletters, and Networks
Personal knowledge management (PKM) tools like Obsidian, Zotero, and Hypothesis often become private archives, second brains locked away. But what if we treat them as starting points for connection rather than endpoints of storage? This session explores federating as a metaphor: moving from private notes → to public contributions → to connected spaces across the open web.
I’ll share my workflow for moving ideas through different stages of growth (seeds → plants → evergreens) and how these notes branch outward into digital gardens, newsletters, and blogs. In this sense, a PKM system becomes not just a personal archive but a node in a larger ecosystem. Feeding many-to-many connections instead of staying siloed.
Participants will see practical examples of:
-
Designing PKM workflows that move ideas from private notes into public, open formats.
-
Building digital gardens and newsletters as “rewilded” spaces for knowledge-sharing.
-
Extending the spirit of Domain of One’s Own into personal publishing pipelines.
This won’t just be a show-and-tell. I want to hear from participants about their own workflows, questions, and whether they’d want to learn how to build this kind of system themselves. Together we’ll think about what it means to treat our second brains not just as vaults but as living, federated habitats for voice, creativity, and connection.
Session Resources:
PKM & Digital Gardens
-
Maggie Appleton’s “A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden” – https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history
-
Joel Hooks’ Digital Garden – https://joelhooks.com/
-
Andy Matuschak’s Garden – https://andymatuschak.org/
Tools & Open Infrastructure
-
Zotero – https://www.zotero.org/
-
Hypothesis – https://web.hypothes.is/
- Obsidian Digital Garden – https://dg-docs.ole.dev/
-
Quartz – https://quartz.jzhao.xyz/
Rewilding Knowledge
-
Jim Groom & Brian Lamb, Reclaiming Innovation – https://www.educause.edu/visuals/shared/er/extras/2014/ReclaimingInnovation/default.html
- Anne-Laure Le Cunff, How to set up your own digital garden – https://nesslabs.com/digital-garden-set-up
-
Craig Mod, Oh God, It’s Raining Newsletters – https://craigmod.com/essays/newsletters/
-
Robin Sloan, A Year of New Avenues – https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/new-avenues/
-
Ink & Switch, Local-First Software – https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/local-first/
Building a portfolio culture at Oneonta. Designing onboarding and simplifying WordPress for students.
At SUNY Oneonta, we convinced our leadership to continue to invest in open instead of purchasing commercial ePortfolio software. We will use our OpenLab and WordPress as the basis of a digital ePortfolio initiative. Over the summer, we have embarked on a project to simplify the onboarding experience for students, including commissioning a custom SSO solution for our WordPress Multisite that we call the OpenLab, writing a custom theme for our eportfolios, and simplifying Full Site Editing WordPress Experience through site templates, theme.json manipulation, and custom PHP code that removes parts of the Gutenberg editor for students.
Working with a team of student interns that serve both as designers and student voice into what students are looking for from a web solution. Students created or modified 58 patterns specifically designed for ePortfolios. Through their feedback, we disabled the WordPress.org patterns and provide only the patterns we have created that are made for ePortfolio work. We have also disabled appearance tools in the Gutenberg Editor removing the complexity of padding, spacing, margins, and advanced design tools. Other pieces of Gutenberg were removed from the Post Editor, but will still remain available to students in the Site Editor.
Students will still have access to the full features of WordPress through our other themes, but our custom starter theme is meant to provide a softer landing space as we introduce students to the world of ePortfolios.
Session Resources:
Test our custom theme Red Dragon Portfolio on WordPress Playground or download from Github.
WonderCat: An Alternative to Recommendation Algorithms
WonderCat is a relational database of human experiences with narrative. The project is designed as an experimental alternative to reading lists (in courses) and recommendation algorithms (in the real world). It is intended primarily as a discovery tool, helping users find creative works that have been valuable to real readers. It does not deliver personalized recommendations.
The tool is built around three taxonomies: Experiences, Narrative Technologies, and Impacts. The terms in these taxonomies and their definitions are published as glossaries, and we have designed a review process for glossary terms that allows any user of WonderCat to contribute to our ever-expanding understanding of narrative in the world.
The site is built with WordPress, which has been customized with ACF. Visualizations of this data are built with the R package Shiny, which pulls in Wikidata to provide dynamic visualizations of the experiences in our database.
Our presentation will focus on two goals we tackled in Summer 2025, presenting our solutions (so far) and inviting ideas from the Reclaim community. Our first goal was to make Shiny WonderCat load more quickly (we’ll share our experiments with cron jobs) and our second was to develop an editorial workflow that encourages the general public to engage with our editorial board (we’ll share our experiments with Gravity Flow).
We hope participants will leave the session inspired to develop their own alternatives to recommendation algorithms.
Session Resources:
Here is a public Zotero group library of resources informing our work on WonderCat.