This was a week of many firsts for me. My first time in Canada. My first time in Vancouver. My first(ish) time in the PNW. My first trip with Air Canada (they have free beer and wine??). My first time meeting dozens of friends I had only interacted with online. My first time faci…
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if you are reading this and already know me from the internet, the conference, or another atproto meetup, there's gonna be some exposition here. I want to catch up everybody else on what I've been up to the last few months. This one is for family, friends, old classmates, old nei…
I've been obsessed with tech ever since I was a child. I was that kid who bounced between iOS and Android with every phone, just to get a taste of what was happening on both. My first phone was an iPhone 4s, which @reckless.bsky.social will agree ('s' notwithstanding) was the bes…
Pretty quickly I took to making and building. I made several Iron Man cosplays under the mentorship of @blackbuzzard.bsky.social, combining arts and crafts with my first forays into electronics. Yes, the glove and chest piece lit up. I even added a laser pointer to the gauntlet.
In high school I joined a FIRST Robotics team. School was alright, but team 4468 is where I gained experience. I made lifelong friends who later became college roommates and now my groomsmen. My coaches and team built me into a capable leader. They lead me to my dream undergrad p…
College was an absolute blast. I met my now-fiance. I learned so so much about design, interaction, organizations, people. GT will always be a home for me. I landed a full time offer at the beginning of my senior year by way of coursework and an internship with my now employer. I…
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My path to my current employment was so smooth, I worried that I wouldn't survive in the fires of today's job market. I struggled to frame my experience and skills in a package that would attract recruiters. I felt unhireable. Even if I ever wanted to ditch corporate and do somet…
When I graduated and we moved to Boston for @alanascorner.online's masters program, I had a rough bout with depression which lasted several months. I've always been the 'no medical conditions shockingly stable' person, so this was hard to swallow at the time. I had just gone from…
We did get there. I joined a Discord server aptly named "Make Friends After College In Boston". I did make a friend. We hit it off and I started to feel better. Then I looked for a new robotics team to join as a mentor. A couple emails later and I was in the lab of @lobstahbots.c…
So all this time I'm jamming to The Vergecast, reading all about platforms and the internet and the destruction of our global information ecosystem. You know, normal reading. I became quite interested in the developments of distributed social networks. Mastodon and ActivityPub se…
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The atproto community and ecosystem were still in a nascent state at the time. I have long had a distaste for the 'front door' entrance to employment, especially in the current landscape of automated applications and filtering. Most of my success I found through 'side entrances',…
Over the course of the summer I spent more time with Bluesky and started exploring other atproto apps. I made friends by hanging out in the Atmosphere feed by @cameron.stream. I joined a couple DWeb calls, where I met @bmann.ca and @bnewbold.net. In August I attended the ATProto …
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I guess you could say this was always going to happen. That I would find a community of people who care about the same things I do. I was confident I would too, but was scared of how long that could take, and if it would really work out.
My plan back in the summer of '25 was to play the long game. Spend the time and energy to become a notable part of the community, and opportunities will follow. That was my prediction. At this point I can safely say that prediction was correct. In less than a year, I went from so…
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Needless to say, the plan worked. Not only do I have a pathway to a career, I am a part of a community. I've met great people I can trust because we share an optimism for the future.
HOLY SHIT THIS PLACE IS GORGEOUS. UBC campus is incredible. There's cherry blossoms here?? I now understand why the first custom feeds were about moss and trees. Great food, great people. I'd love to come back and explore the city properly.
I gave a talk! At a tech conference! They paid me to do this! Seriously, I want to express my immense gratitude to @atprotocol.dev for sponsoring my conference travel and lodging. I was lucky enough to convince my boss to let me not take PTO in exchange for a report on the confer…
After meeting @ronentk.me at the NYC Hack we started @atproto.boston. I've been running monthly meetups since then. On the Friday of AtmosphereConf I had the thought to get together all the organizers of local atproto meetup groups to talk about how we run our nodes and to provid…
This past December, @christian.bsky.social put up a forum post asking if anyone would be interested in helping facilitate design and strategic action research in the atproto ecosystem. I, having been looking for an opportunity to plug in with my particular skillset (not dev), jum…
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Relationships
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It's hard to know how strong of a bond you are forming with someone when all your interactions are online. Dozens of faces are now familiar to me after a few months of chronic skyline surfing. When those bonds are not just likes and replies but a shared recognition of the immense…
This community, this movement, this ecosystem, it's all still delicate. The room got real quiet on Saturday afternoon when Jay announced Attie. Productive conversations are happening about that situation. Refer to @trezy.codes last two blog posts for the story. What Attie put int…
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Decentralization isn't about servers. It's about power.
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They hold the power in this ecosystem in public attention, in users, in capital, and in protocol governance. That power needs to be carefully considered and distributed as soon as feasibly possible. Otherwise, well we've seen that movie enough times. I hope Bluesky's negligence d…
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Momentum
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Being together in person is catalyzing. I know that from working remote for three years. Bonds form stronger and faster. Ideas flow. Action is viral. I love the amount of momentum spurred by the conference. I expect it to continue, especially as aptroto.local spreads far and wide…
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What gives me hope is this community. Not the technology persay. Technology is just a means. Like Rudy says, "community is the only moat." This community has the best, most joyful and hopeful culture of any tech community I've ever observed, let alone been a part of. If the whole…