When I booked the flights for Indie Web Camp in Brighton, I couldn’t wait for it to happen. After attending my first Indie Web Camp in Düsseldorf, I was curious what to expect this time.

It has been such an inspiring weekend. There were lots of interesting discussions like sharing location data and checkins, security issues concerning webmentions and how to make publishing on the web easier for people that are just starting out – a subject that I’m particularly interested in.

But what struck me most this time was the beauty of simplicity that the basic building blocks of the indie web are built upon. Instead of reinventing the wheel, things like microformats and webmentions use already existing tools and techniques like classes in HTML and HTTP requests to enhance the functionality of our websites. As a result, these things are really easy to implement and in my opinion it’s that pure simplicity which makes these things so powerful.

Being in a room with people who also care about this stuff for two days is both encouraging and inspiring. Getting people interested and helping each other out is key to move the indie web forward. Jeremy and Charlotte were even thinking about some kind of regular meetup in the spirit of the Homebrew Website Club.

I’ve also been inspired to have similar regular meetups in Germany and maybe someday even an Indie Web Camp in Heidelberg. I’m leaving Brighton this afternoon, full of ideas and things to do.

Today was the first day of Indie Web Camp in Brighton. The schedule is similar to the first Indie Web Camp I attended in Düsseldorf. On the first day, there are barcamp like sessions, and on the second day, everyone gets down to build something.

Although I already have marked up my posts with microformats, I attended a session about this topic. I’m really intrigued by this very pragmatic approach to enrich what’s already there with useful information. Today, Glenn referred to this as “building an API for your site by just adding a few classes” because when microformats markup is parsed, it contains a lot of information which could be used in any way we want to.

I hadn’t really thought about it that way but I realised that it’s entirely true. I’m fascinated by the fact that something very powerful can be achieved by such easy measures. And that’s what I learnt today.