Yesterday, at the headquarters of Internet Archive Europe, I hosted the second Amsterdam edition of HTML Day! The first edition was hosted last year by Braxton Hall, who I was pleased joined us yesterday for HTML fun.

I figured three or four people show up, and I would host it at a park somewhere. Instead, Holly Zijderveld reached out to suggest we use the IAE venue right in the centre of Amsterdam. It was a very sunny day, and still 13 people gathered to work on HTML pages, talk about independent web publishing, and everything else that came floating by.

The participants

• Adi Ron made a page about books
• Sanaa Asim dedicated a page to popups with nostalgia-inducing images
• Christos made a portfolio with a light switch
• Vivian made a page that was a brochure
• Holly Zijderveldt made an intentionally poorly readable page about a playlist
• Elliott Cost made a page that was a window

My takeaways

• It is refreshing to write vanilla HTML. I came to HTML Day thinking about my uncle Peter. When I first began making websites age 11, I one day asked him a question about building software. He said to me: “you don’t build software, you write it.” I wanted to honour that by writing vanilla HTML without autocompletion, on my iPad. It was mildly embarrassing, cumbersome, and ultimately very good for my nervous system.
• I thoroughly enjoyed talking Indieweb shop with fellow enthusiasts!
• I explicitly told my coworkers not to show up thinking their technical understanding would overwhelm HTML newbies. It turned out, every person at the table was an IT professional. Sorry Panos!
• I loved how diverse the group of attendees was; in ethnicity, gender and sexual identity, and style of website making.