Taking back the Web
I’m at an event called Take Back The Web. It’s a cosy little unconference aimed at non-profits and activist groups.
There’s been plenty of education and discussion going on all day, mostly around things like blogs, wikis, RSS and podcasting. I followed up the RSS talk with a little spiel about APIs and how they can be used to pull in data from other places on the web.
I’m used to attending geekier events where everyone is fairly tech-savvy, but the crowd here is mostly made up of people on the ground who want to be able use technology but who aren’t necessarily from a technological background. It really brought home to me just how far we have to go in making this stuff less geeky and scary-sounding.
Just about everyone gets blogs, and it’s pretty easy to get started with them. Wikis are a little bit trickier, but still attainable. RSS becomes harder again: it’s still too hard to subscribe, and even the term “subscribe” is itself misleading, implying payment. As for APIs, that’s still all pretty much rocket science so I just gave a basic overview of the benefits without really discussing the nitty-gritty of programming.
Notice how the terms change in complexity along that scale: from the word blog to the term API. We’re using way too many acronyms and technobabble for this stuff. Of course, we can’t change the names without upsetting the geeky programmers.
I got a lot of food for thought from the day so far, even though I already know about the technologies. It’s been fascinating to see how people are using the web now and also how much more they could be doing.
The guys from mySociety/They Work For You are talking through their services now and I’ve just found about this nifty API. I’ll have a play around with that. I’ll quiz Matthew about it later; he’s staying over with me. More grist for the bedroll.