This Week in the IndieWeb Podcast

Every week, after the release of the this-week newsletter, Marty McGuire creates an audio edition.

The process:

Summarize the newsletter into a script.
Record the new sections of the newsletter.
Assemble the final recording using a previous episode as a template.
Export as an MP3
POSSE
- Use Screech to post to martymcgui.re
- Syndicate to:
  - Huffduffer
  - Twitter
  - Facebook

Summarization into a Script

The audio edition is broken into the following sections:

Intro

"Hello and welcome to this week in the IndieWeb, audio edition, for the week of START DATE through END DATE, YEAR."

Reusable clip:

This Week in the IndieWeb is a weekly digest of activities of the IndieWeb community at indieweb.org.
It contains recent and upcoming events, posts from IndieNews, and a summary of wiki edits. This Week in the IndieWeb is sent out Fridays at 2pm Pacific time, with this audio edition appearing the following day.
You can find the web edition of This Week in the IndieWeb, including all links and an archive of all past editions at indieweb.org/this-week

Events

Homebrew Website Club

Reusable intro:

Homebrew Website Club is a bi-weekly meetup of people passionate about or interested in creating, improving, building, and designing their own website.
Most meetings take place every other Wednesday, from 6:30pm to 7:30pm.

"Homebrew Website Club met on DATE, with meetups happening in CITY, CITY, CITY, ... and CITY. (also mention virtual HWCs if any)."

"The next regularly scheduled Homebrew Website Club will meet on DATE, with CITY, CITY, ... and CITY confirmed so far. (also mention virtual HWCs if any confirmed)."

Reusable clip:

If you're an organizer, please remember to update the wiki with information about your venue, times, and how to RSVP.
And remember you can always find info about the next upcoming Homebrew Website Club meetups at indieweb.org/next-hwc
Interested in starting a Homebrew Website Club in your city? It can be as simple as grabbing a friend and heading to your favorite coffee shop, bar, living room, or any other meeting place.
You can find plenty of information about Homebrew Website Club, including tips for how to organize your own, at indieweb.org/hwc

Other Upcoming IndieWeb Related Events

Events in the newsletter Events section that aren't HWCs or IWCs. I typically announce ones that are coming up, but not ones that have passed. Use your discretion.

IndieWeb Camps

Met in the past week: "IndieWebCamp CITY met on DAYS. You can find links to notes and videos from the session at indieweb.org/YEAR/CITY"

Coming up soon: "IndieWeb CITY is coming up on DAYS. You can learn more and register at URL."

Reusable clip:

All IndieWeb events are volunteer-run, so if you are interested in helping organize, getting the word out, finding sponsors, and more let us know in the chat at chat.indieweb.org.

Podcasts

For each podcast (other than This Week in the IndieWeb), create a summary:

"PERSON NAME shared a link to EPISODE NUMBER of the PODCAST NAME podcast, titled TITLE. The episode discusses ..."

IndieNews

Reusable clip with background music:

Here is a brief summary of posts collected this week by IndieNews, a community-curated list of articles relevant to the IndieWeb. You can read more, or submit posts of your own, at news.indieweb.org.

For an article that somebody posted on their own site: "PERSON at THEIR WEBSITE published a post titled TITLE. In it, SUMMARY."

For an article that somebody shared from another site: "PERSON at THEIR WEBSITE shared a post by AUTHOR at AUTHOR'S SITE titled TITLE. In it, SUMMARY."

Wiki Updates Summary

These are usually the bulk of a newsletter's content, and the newsletter does not make an attempt at summarizing them, so this is where the bulk of the work goes in creating a script.

The newsletter contains three kinds of wiki updates:

New Community members (new /User:...) pages.
New wiki pages
Changed Wiki Pages

Exclusion/Inclusion Criteria

The first step is to decide which links to exclude. Entirely. This saves time opening links that don't need to be read.

I don't include new pages or edits to /User:* pages - these are considered personal scratch space.
I don't include meta-pages about the wiki, e.g. "Main_Page"
I don't include meta-pages about event organization because these are covered in the Events section. This includes
- YEAR/* pages related to planning and running IWCs
- events/YYYY-mm-dd-homebrew-website-club pages related to running HWCs

After that, I open all new pages in tabs. Most new pages are excluded - they are often one-sentence definitions prompted by discussion in the chat. There are exceptions for high quality new pages with explanatory text, community examples, links to other pages, and/or links to external articles relevant to the IndieWeb.

After that, I open all the diffs for existing pages in new tabs. This is done by clicking the link that says "X edits" next to a page. Exclusion criteria includes:

Wiki gardening, such as:
- Changing markup
- Linkifying text
- Adding screenshots without explanations
- Categorizing pages
New "IndieWeb Examples" without other changes on the page
See-Also links that also appear in the IndieNews section
Documenting things that are more than a year old. E.g.
- Silo-deaths that are more than a year old (unless there have been new developments)
- Documentation or references for old standards

Any tabs that are still open after an exclusion pass are ready to be included!

Each tab should be assigned a "category". Currently these consist of:

Community and Concepts
- IndieWeb meta
- Events that are in the wiki but not the Events section
- Expanding on high-level concepts like "POSSE" or "marked-safe"
- ...

Services and Organizations
- site deaths
- articles about silos
- newly documented silo features or silo changes
- newly launching platforms, software, or services

IndieWeb Development
- any new software coming from the indieweb community
- advancing of standards (e.g. micropub, webmention) from the indieweb community
- newly documented tools, techniques, markup, etc.

Each entry becomes a statement that summarizes the update.

New pages begin with "A new page was created for PAGE NAME. PARAPHRASED VERSION OF THE DEFINITION."

Changed pages begin with "The PAGE NAME page was updated with ...".

Follow-on examples include:

"... a link to an article/video/etc. by AUTHOR at SITE titled TITLE. In it ..." - similar to IndieNews
"... new documentation about how to ..."
"... with indieweb examples of community members who have ..."
"... with improved instructions and markup ..."
"... WHATEVER NEW DISCUSSION HAPPENED ..."

These are then slotted into the correct section in the script.

Wiki Updates Script

Reusable clip, with background music:

And now, a selection of this week's updates from the IndieWeb wiki at indieweb.org.

Reusable clip:

Community and Concepts

... entries that fall under "community and concepts" ...

Reusable clip:

Services and Organizations

... entries that fall under "services and organizations" ...

Reusable clip:

IndieWeb Development

... entries that fall under "indieweb development" ...

Ending

Reusable clip, with background music:

That's going to do it for this week. Thank you for listening!
This English version of This Week in the IndieWeb, audio edition was read and produced by Marty McGuire. If you have suggestions for improving this audio edition of the newsletter, please feel free to contact Marty in the IndieWeb chat
This Week in the IndieWeb and the IndieNews services are provided by Aaron Parecki.
Learn more about the IndieWeb at indieweb.org, and join the discussion via Slack, IRC, or the web at chat.indieweb.org.
(ALSO CONTAINS MUSIC CREDITS)