Today I had to leave Brighton to fly back to Germany. My flight was leaving at 15:30, so I had plenty of time and spent this morning strolling around the city and getting some writing done.

After using the excellent train connection to London Gatwick, I still had some time left until my flight departed. I started refactoring the templates for my website until it was time to board. The flight was ridiculously short and after another hour of driving I was finally home.

Although I didn’t really do anything today apart from walking, sitting and waiting, I’m really knackered. I guess travelling is really exhausting, no matter how long your trip is. At least, that’s what I learnt today.

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 I travelled to Brighton because I’m attending Indie Web Camp this weekend. I flew in today (on Friday) and I’m leaving on Monday. So if I count the days of arrival and departure that would be four days, two of which I’m out of office and not able to do any client work.

I used to beat me up over this a lot. Up until recently I couldn’t really enjoy travelling because I always thought I should be working instead.

But today I realised that there’s nothing wrong with taking the time to travel, especially if it is for the purpose of learning new things. And the client world didn’t go down either. Sure, I had to deal with some email but nothing so serious that it couldn’t be dealt with when I’m back. I guess I need to take things easy once in a while. That’s what I learnt today.