HTML Day and celebrating websites

We did an HTML Day in Boston!

Cynthia and I co-hosted the event in a park, in parallel with an incredible number of other HTML events that sprouted up in places all across the world. The turnout was amazing — lots of gratitude to people who shared the social posts and got the word out. (Shout-out to Neocities, too, who had a special HTML Day link in the banner of their site!) It was also really energising to share tips and resources with other organisers in the period leading up to the day, and to feel how much passion there was from everyone who wanted to make this happen.

It was an excellent event, and it's always so rewarding to spend time with people in real life, in community; how different it is from staring into the slick barrier of a social media feed. It also helped me reflect more on what's so special about HTML and about websites.

The idea of "HTML Energy", to me, is about celebrating the web and celebrating websites — handmade websites, indie websites, websites made with raw materials; painfully, delightfully personal and human websites. Websites, not as anonymous sources of data for machines to slurp up, but as creative expression, as digital homes, as graffiti alleys, as studio spaces, as portals, as safe havens.

At the event, people commented on how refreshing and warm it felt to gather and talk about HTML. "It's kind of quirky," said one person — in an age of hype around how endlessly bigger and faster and smarter tech can be, they thought this event felt surprisingly quaint and charming. We were talking about tech, sure, and it was a group of people who were interested in tech, in general, but we were there intentionally to look through the lens of a technology and medium that can feel almost retro. Leaning into the literal point of it, we wrote a handwritten HTML page on poster paper, which I later adapted into a digital artifact.

Relative to other kinds of programming languages and technical skills, there isn't a very high barrier to being able to write HTML (though, of course, there are still things we need to work on to make it more accessible to beginners and in educational settings). Once you know the general principles, and you know a few elements, and maybe some ways to style the page, you're well on your way to making a website, and from there — the places you can go! Even if website-making isn't for you, I think it's so wonderful and powerful to feel that the internet isn't a mega-mall but a public space for the commons. We can take back the internet.

As we sat in the park, sharing ideas (about websites, overall, but extending and weaving into many creative and invigorating worlds beyond), I felt the energy of these intentions reverberate in the air: "yes, you can, and yes, you're allowed — nay, indeed, you must!"

The thing is that the line keeps going up, and the news continues to make itself, and I don't want to give myself over. I don't want to give myself to unnatural men — machine men with machine minds and machine hearts. I don't want to stir up anger and despair within myself in the chase to stay informed and ready for battle. I want to devote my one wild and precious life to making things that are true and beautiful. I want to feel how human we are when we make lopsided things with our hands, guided by the joy of simple pleasures.

I hope you had a happy HTML Day, if you participated, and I hope you visit many lovely websites today.