Welcome to the last IndieWeb Carnival of 2025. Having been a part of this wonderful community for years now and having thought about the IndieWeb from various perspectives, I have plenty of ideas about where I hope we are headed in the near future. And I am sure you do too.
So tell us, where do you see the IndieWeb in 2030, just five short years from now?
Read next:
If you have not participated in an IndieWeb Carnival before, if you would like to see how others are doing it, have a look at round-ups of past IndieWeb carnivals hosted by amazing people from around the world. And remember, the best time to participate is now – or at least before you get busy with everything else around the new year.
How to submit your entry
E-mail Send me your entires for this month by e-mail linking to your published post. My inbox is open to further discussions too, if you fancy it.
Social web You can mention me on Mastodon especially if you plan to share your writing there anyway. I am also on BlueSky if you prefer that instead.
Webmention Webmentions are working on this website so please feel free to link back to this page. You can check if I have received your webmention by looking for your name near the bottom of this page.
In any of these cases, if you have not heard from me after three days, please do not hesitate to send me an e-mail reminder.
A round-up post will appear on this website by the first week of January. You can subscribe by RSS in the meanwhile or check back manually on the IndieWeb carnival wiki.
Some prompts and more about the theme
Why five years? It is one thing to have a vague idea about the IndieWeb, it is a completely different thing to have concrete, achievable desires. It is the latter in which I am interested, but please feel free to write about longer-term wishes that serve to highlight your vision.
Ideally, I hope that the roundup of submissions by the end of this month can serve as a pot of ideas for developers to work on for the technological infrastructure powering IndieWeb features, if not prompt some new lines of thinking; for fellow bloggers/gardeners/wordsmiths to get together and create something new on their corner of the IndieWeb; for everyone, generally, to try their hand at new ideas and practices that others might put forward; or even to find like-minded individuals for some new collaborative projects.
At the very least I hope the submissions for this carnival stand as a time capsule that records what we all thought of and wished for for the future of the IndieWeb as 2026 came knocking.
There has been some chatter on these lines already, such as on self-hosting and whether more approachable tech is necessarily the right answer for a more populated IndieWeb (eg Bix’s roundup from October), how sometimes the IndieWeb can be difficult, and much more besides. If you have written about something like this a few times in the recent past, it would be great to see a consolidation of your thoughts submitted to this carnival.
Below are some prompts – should you need them – to help you get started with your own piece. While arguments may predominantly favour one view, counterpoints are welcome and even encouraged.
- What existing features of the IndieWeb bother you, either technologically or philosophically?
- How better can the IndieWeb stand up to the CorpoWeb in the coming years?
- Does the IndieWeb feel lonely, and if so how can we make it feel more like a community?
- What radically new idea do you have for the IndieWeb that you haven’t been able to communicate to someone with the skills to build it?
- If you are new to the IndieWeb, hold a mirror up to the IndieWeb folk: help us see ourselves differently, improve and become better.
- If there is something about the status quo that you especially like, what is it and why should it be protected at all costs?
- Are you building something for the IndieWeb? This would be a great time to showcase it, whether alpha, beta or production-ready.
- How has participating in the IndieWeb, even if only by writing regularly on your blog, affected you and how do you see it affecting you in the years to come? In other words, cast aside the broad IndieWeb for a moment and tell us where you see yourself in this context five years from now.
Feel free to address as many topics as you like or go all-in on a specific feature, practice or idea you feel passionate about.
About the IndieWeb Carnival
Each month someone hosts the IndieWeb Carnival with a theme of their choice. Anyone can write essays/short posts about the theme, publish it on their own website, and share the link with the month’s host.
At the end of the month, the host rounds up all submissions and publishes them – sometimes along with some commentary – as a compilation of that month’s edition of the IndieWeb Carnival.
If you have never been part of a carnival before, the time to get involved is now. You will find the IndieWeb is a very welcoming space.
This is a note: a brief thought (well maybe this one was not so brief) or excerpt from my commonplace book. For longer writings, please turn to the ‘Essays’ section.
