A special episode to mark a milestone for the Micro Monday podcast. Manton and Jean talk with Patrick Rhone, who previously appeared on Episode 4. We take a look at how Micro.blog has evolved and where it’s going, focusing on these questions:
How important are independent blogs, considering what we have seen elsewhere in social media?
This week’s guest is Rom. According to his bio on Micro.blog, he is “geek to the max.” He is also an avid photographer, and especially enjoys sharing food photos. He shares a lot of photos on Flickr, and we talk a bit about how online communities evolve. Finally, we talk about a local delicacy, the purple yam, which can be used in many tasty dishes and condiments.
This week’s guest Jess shares her wide variety of interests, including linguistics, the indie web, a revealing Harry Potter sorting quiz, and her tabby cat Gidget.
Mandaris Moore, aka Manny, is this week’s guest. We talk about his journey from AIM to MySpace to Twitter before he landed on Micro.blog, a place that makes him happy. Check out his series of Swift Slowly posts, where he shares his journey of learning, and his photos of Lillie the adorable pandemic rescue dog.
This week’s guest, Nell is a literacy tutor based in New England, who enjoys exploring new worlds via books, blogs, and virtual realities. We share our favorite reads in science fiction and mysteries, as we acknowledge the many tangents our discussion could take.
This week’s guest, Greg, shares some warmth from the Gulf Coast of Florida. Greg tells us why his microblog is really his first blog, despite his years of experience building and maintaining websites. We talk about whether the notion of a “challenge” is helpful when it comes to maintaining a blogging streak. At the end, we nerd out a bit about Star Trek: Voyager.
On this week’s episode, Mario (@mariovillalobos) talks photography, social media pros and cons, finding Micro.blog by following Alan Jacobs’ (@ayjay) work, and the surprise that folks in distant places appreciate his photos of leaves in Montana.
Dominik has a lot going on. And we don’t even talk about the house he is building or where he got his internet handle @ohBananaJoe. (But you can check out the song on YouTube.)
Kicking off the new year with a chat with Ana, who lives in Portugal. It’s the third in our unintentional series of visits with microbloggers in that country. Ana talks about why she likes Micro.blog and what she’s learned as a member of the community, including the fact that there are more than a few introverts.
This week’s guest is Helge, a Norwegian living in Portugal. He’s been on Micro.blog since the Kickstarter launch in 2017, but he has become more active on his microblog during the pandemic. He has many interests and hobbies, from photography to German cinema to smoking meats. We try to cover them all in this episode.
Maique joins us this week from Lisbon. He worked for two decades as a photojournalist before becoming an independent photographer. He talks about the challenges of doing photography when you can’t travel, and how he copes as a new dad with the flood of baby photos.
We also chatted about the upcoming A Day In The Life global photo challenge and why we shouldn’t overthink our contributions:
I don’t think we can compete with a professional book made by 100 professional photographers, but at the same time, I don’t think 100 professional photographers would be able to do a Micro.blog book because they’re not part of this community.
Besides train travel, curry snacks, and photography, Bharath and Jean manage to talk a bit about microblogging and how it has helped Bharath reinvigorate his writing practice.
It’s given me the confidence to write more and to put myself out there more. It kickstarted a new creative phase in what I want to do.
Do I really want to spend my day looking at Facebook? Do I want to spend my life looking at Facebook? No, I do not! And yet, Micro.blog serves the purpose of feeling connected and getting new ideas, but it’s so much more manageable. It isn’t so addictive, and there aren’t the ads. You don’t feel like your supporting something evil by looking at it. It’s just enough. It’s just right.
Lisa Sieverts is a project management professional and teacher in New Hampshire. We talk about what you gain when you consciously give up a time-wasting habit (ref. Annie Dillard), and whether the time-honored art form of contradancing could be preserved during the era of social distancing with a microcast.
Jon Hays comes back to the podcast for the first time since Micro Monday Episode 6 in April 2018. We talk about the new version of Sunlit, soon to be released, and how photoblogging has encouraged more social interaction in the Micro.blog community.
This week’s guest is Jeremy Cherfas, a biologist and a science journalist based in Rome who is particularly interested in food and agriculture. He produces Eat This Podcast and even did a 32-episode microcast series about bread and wheat called Our Daily Bread for a daily podcast challenge.
We talk about the IndieWeb and share some ideas on how to get started in podcasting.
Joel Mearig celebrated the 101st episode of his microcast I’m Talkin’… this week. 🎉 We talk about how to get started with microcasting and how to keep it going, week after week. Joel uses Wavelength, the podcasting app from Micro.blog, which allows you to record, do simple edits, and then upload to your microblog.
Podcast and video hosting are available for an additional $5/month on a hosted blog. Micro.blog creates a separate RSS feed for your episodes: yourdomain.com/podcast.xml. You can add this feed to apps like Overcast or Castro, or register it with the Apple Podcast Directory. See the Micro.blog Help for more details.
Chris Aldrich is a modern-day cyberneticist, a trained biomedical and electrical engineer, and a talent manager/producer who has a “horrible IndieWeb hobby that probably takes up more time than it should.”
We talk about how he got into the entertainment business by building a 3D heart, and how he came to the IndieWeb via one of Leo Laporte’s shows on TWiT. We commiserate about the difficulty of getting people to move from Facebook to the IndieWeb, especially our parents.
With some effort and discipline, we managed not to turn this into a Buffy The Vampire Slayer podcast.
Scholar-librarian-doctoral candidate Kimberly Hirsh talks with Jean about how a blog post about being nice on the internet led her to a comment by Chris Aldrich, which led her the IndieWeb and Micro.blog, and… well, she fell down a rabbit hole and stayed up all night figuring out how to make her site follow IndieWeb principles.
We also talk about her dissertation, and how Final Fantasy has inspired her.
Jan Erik Moström is a computer science professor in Umeå, Sweden, as well as an avid photographer with an interest in martial arts. We talk about the talented photographers on Micro.blog, how the geographic diversity of the platform has grown, and why Jan Erik likes Hugo. And other stuff too.
This week’s guest, Amanda Rush is a web developer and accessibility practitioner who loves to cook and read. She also loves the IndieWeb movement and Micro.blog. Of her own blog, she says:
I want to own all my content and have control over it, and to that end I am constantly updating this site so that it contains as much of my data as possible from any silo I may have an account on. I decided to start doing this when I finally got tired of all the curated timeline nonsense and the social media design element that encourages us to be horrible to each other online for clicks.
We talk about what drew her to IndieWeb practices (spoiler alert: webmentions), and what she recommends to folks without tech experience who want to try out the Indieweb (another spoiler alert: Micro.blog).
This week’s guest is Natalie Hester, who is an Austin-based fundraiser for educational institutions and a new mom. We talk about the key role played by Facebook friends and gratitude journaling in Natalie’s discovery of Micro.blog. Transcript
A shout-out to @nataliekayh’s Facebook friends @drewcastillo and @caseymhunt, who helped her make the switch to Micro.blog. (We owe you a cake! 🎂🎉 Thanks for helping us spread the word.)
Like last year when I covered Episodes 1-10, I took advantage the quiet time between Christmas and New Year’s to gather up some clips from Episodes 11-20. If you’re new to the podcast, here’s another great starting point.
All the best to this wonderful community in 2020. xoxo
Manton Reece interviews Jean MacDonald about what it’s like to be the community manager for Micro.blog. We talk about Jean’s early expectations for the platform, talking to users on the podcast and at meetups, curating posts in Discover, how Micro.blog features are different than other platforms, and the advantage of starting small.
Vincent is the developer of Gluon, the iOS and Android app for Micro.blog. He just announced a public beta for the Android version (the iOS public beta was already available). We talk about his journey from pilot training to app building, what he likes about Micro.blog, and what you can do with inedible Christmas cookies. (Hint: watercolor)
With Micro.blog, I wanted to explore the API, which was really easy to get going with, and I really appreciated that. It’s not like some black box magic, you get raw JSON feeds and it’s really nice.
This week’s guest is Andrew Canion of Perth, Australia, who created a Blogvember challenge for himself and shared it with the Micro.blog community. He also inspired Microblogvember. Thanks to Andrew, lots of folks at M.b blogged a daily basis for a whole month!
This week’s guest, Ton Zylstra just celebrated his 17th year of blogging. He works as a consultant, assisting governments and private entities in being open by design, as part of a more comprehensive data governance approach. Together with his wife, he organizes a “birthday unconference,” a unique gathering which is part conference, part celebration, combining public and person interests.
This week’s guest is Chris from New Zealand. He’s a geek, an environmentalist, and a geologist. He is also known around Micro.blog for being a cricket fan. 🏏
Jean induces him to talk a bit about his specialty in geology, meteorites, which leads to a microcast-sized explanation of the origins of stars and planets, and how meteorites are dated. Chris even indicated he’d be willing to do a short microcast series about meteorites, if there is any interest. Meteorite Monday, anyone? 🌟🎙
Adam Tinworth was a journalist for two decades. He started blogging in 2001, “a transformational moment” for him. He now works as a consultant and trainer in digital journalism, social media and content strategy, teaching classes such as Social Media & Audience Engagement for Editorial.
Why he likes Micro.blog:
Random glimpses into humanity all over the place, doing different things, living different lives – I think that’s a wonderful antidote for the polarization we see in many places now.”
Tiffany is a Mac Nerd who writes articles on Apple, musings on personal things and observations, and productivity. We chatted about photoblogging, microcasting, and her personal blogging history.
I enjoy Instagram, but it’s a totally different thing. Micro.blog has its own vibe and I really enjoy it. It’s almost like there is no pressure there to stick out.
This week Jean catches up with Manton about what new features he worked on for Micro.blog over the summer. They talk about new emoji, upcoming iOS 13 support, the new photos page for blogs, Tumblr-related features, and creating test blogs.
This week’s guest just returned from Yellowstone National Park with some amazing photographs. Pratik talks about his approach to taking photos while on vacation. We also talk about blogging in a post-Facebook existence. And we go on a tangent about Star Trek fandom, and learn that Pratik can’t do the Vulcan “Live Long and Prosper” salute.
This week’s guest is Greg McVerry, associate professor of education at Southern Connecticut State University and a leader in the IndieWeb movement. He will be attending the IndieWeb Summit, coming up on June 29 & 30, 2019, in Portland, Oregon. We talk about what happens at the event and why it is a great place to come and learn, whether you are a beginner or an expert, whether you attend in person or remotely.
We also take a bit of a detour as Greg talks about the concept and history of the commonplace book. He quips that the instructions John Locke wrote in 1706 for maintaining one’s commonplace book could be considered the original blogging documentation. Many IndieWeb bloggers use their site as a digital commonplace book.
Greg believes in the power of people coming together to make the internet better by working on their individual blogs:
When you organize around people who share your values and goals, by focusing on yourself you are also helping the larger group become better itself. So: Find A Passion. Get A Blog.
Miraz tells us how she went from a teaching career to creating her own business as an internet instructor and co-authoring a book on Word Press. Then we take a look at the tutorials she’s created, starting with basic customizations that don’t require any special skills or experience. Miraz also recommends folks check out Mars Edit, the blogging software by Daniel Jalkut, which she used to author all the posts on How To Customise Micro.blog.
At 35 minutes, this episode is a bit longer than a typical Micro Monday, but for those interested in learning more about customizing their microblogs, there is a lot of great information to help you get started. (There is also a quail update.)
Manton returns to the podcast to answer questions from the Micro.blog community. We discuss new features, goals for the platform, audio players, encouraging people to stick with blogging, curation, t-shirts, and more.
Holly Honeychurch sings, plays harp, and hangs out with cats, per her user profile info. She also dances, house/catsits all over the UK, and writes quite a bit. When she first started out with Micro.blog, she was simply posting her harp videos. But an irresistible urge to write led to greater interaction with the members of the community.
“I really enjoy being part of the community and connecting with lovely people of the Universe. It’s brilliant.”
This week’s guest is Tim Smith who has been part of the community since the beginning. We talk about Bokeh, the private-by-default photo sharing platform that Tim hopes to launch with the backing of a Kickstarter campaign.
This week’s guest is William Schuth, who has been with Micro.blog since the Kickstarter. He celebrated his two year anniversary on the platform with a thank you to everyone in the community who has made it a great place to share thoughts and ideas. He might be doing a microcast next! We’ll see. :-)
David Johnson is originally from the UK and now lives in Maui. He’s a life coach who works with introverts and Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs), and has practiced Buddhism for over 30 years, so he evaluates the Micro.blog experience from some interesting angles.
It’s been an interesting six months. It’s almost like my creativity and my ideas are expanding more as well as my excitement for what I can do.