Tag: XOXO

My first year with XOXO

General

Still processing XOXO and the profound effect it has had on me since I first learned about it. Which was way back in 2013, the second year for it. I’d missed the first incarnation entirely despite being, even back then, chronically online. I knew who Andy Baio was: chief technology officer (CTO) for Kickstarter, an amazing crowdfunding platform, and also the blogger behind Waxy.org. To me, he was the guy who creates and finds cool things on the internet. Finding out that he lived in my hometown, and that he was behind an art-tech festival, I knew I needed to see it and maybe be a small part of it.

In August of 2013 I had quit my job out of depression and grief and had no plans to go back to work. I emailed the info email account for this festival, XOXO, and asked if it was too late to volunteer and help. I got no answer, but I resolved to watch for it again next year.

For the year after that, I tried scraping nickels off the internet using Mechanical Turk, a far more exploitative crowd-sourcing app, only falling farther and farther behind on rent and other expenses. But in the summer of 2014, I saw on Twitter that they were again asking for volunteers for this festival, and I immediately emailed. I got a response from Andy McMillan almost immediately, and I was in. I could be with the cool kids. I wasn’t a cool kid, but at least I could help them run their show.

It’s funny to me now that I have almost no blog posts about that. I have one, and it focuses on one single lesson I learned: do the things you love often, make it a habit. That lesson is one I have learned from many different sources, and clearly, as I blog here for the 149th day in a row, a lesson I am still putting to good use. If for nothing else, Jonathan Mann, the Song-A-Day guy, thank you for reinforcing that drive in me.

But holy cats the other speakers that year! Dan Harmon, who I only knew as the creator of Community, inventor of the Story Circle, and Harmontown host, was there, doing a version of his podcast live from the stage at XOXO. Before the show, wandering around, I saw him talking to a woman, and screwed up my courage to go tell him that I loved his work. I politely waited while they exchanged some kind of tense argument, and the woman pointed at me and said something about me being his typical fan.

I mean, sure, I was (and am) a chubby, bald, cis, white dude. Fair, I suppose. I considered myself a feminist and socialist at the time, although many miles of travel down those roads still stretched before me (and still do) so it stung a little. But then Dan Harmon defended me. “What is that supposed to mean?” he challenged her. “This guy is just some random guy, he’s here at this festival the same as you. What is it you’re trying to say?”

I didn’t stick around and I don’t remember how the conversation went. It is entirely possible my memory is incomplete or a fuzzy confabulation. But I remember Dan being argumentative, I recall the woman being dismissive, and I remember feeling awkward. I was glad I got to tell Dan I loved his work though. I still do. He taught me to acknowledge my failings, because that’s the only way to overcome them.

That year I told many creators and writers and artists that I loved their work. What’s funny is, I never saw myself as a creator, writer, or artist. Not then, even with 10 years of blog posts and two first drafts of novels under my belt. I didn’t think what I was doing was on the same level as the folk at XOXO 2013, because my blog traffic was tiny, and I never published those drafts, and the only drawing I did was for myself.

But I am a writer, creator, and artist. I do it because I can’t not do it. I blog here. I make amazing maps for my D&D game and craft stories and lore that my players tell me is deep, rich, and engaging. I do it because I love doing it, and have fun doing it. I’ve been living the XOXO dream, whether I allowed myself to admit it or not. Thank you, Andy B. and Andy M. Your inspriation and energy are a positive force in the world.

Portland and XOXO

Portland

I would have to do a search to confirm it, but I think I have said that, to me, XOXO is a reflection of the best parts of Portland, in so many ways. As a native Portlander who has spent the vast majority of my nearly 6 decades of life here, I feel somewhat qualified to speak on the topic of what is Portland? And if you accept my premise that XOXO reflects Portland values, I can speak to that, as well.

This is a first draft so it may be a bit rambly and disorganized. That’s a reflection of me, the author, because I am pulling together some of the thoughts and dreams this past weekend stirred in me, along with the duty and desire to keep posting at least 500 words a day here. My streak is reaching 150 days, which feels great but not enough, somehow. Anywho, bear with me.

Portland, to me, is intentional. For good or bad, everyone here has an idea of how the world should be. The best parts of that, then, would be intentions to make the world a better place for as many people as possible. Some examples of Portland’s intentionality would be the Urban Growth Boundary, and the regional governmental agency of Metro. The idea was to limit sprawl and to make sure that city growth did not encroach on farm or natural lands. It’s a progressive goal to prevent using up natural resources necessary for everyone living in the city.

Another aspirational part of Portland is the drive to create. Curiosity, a drive to build something cool and new, the hope to see what works and what doesn’t. I could cite examples like our 1% for Art law, or the Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC), but the better examples, to me, are the artists and musicians who live here. Portland has always had a thriving local music scene, art galleries tiny and large, neighborhood festivals and street fairs. The tech industry liked Oregon and proximity to Portland for many reasons. There are at least three large comic publishers in and around Portland, challenging the Big Two of DC and Marvel: Image Comics, Dark Horse Comics, and Oni Press.

The stereotypical view of Portland is as a leftist utopia, and I admit that I am a leftist, politically. Our city government, however, has not been very progressive for a while now. In fact, I acknowledge that the Oregon territories were settled in large part to create a white utopia. White supremacy exists on the streets and in our city halls, and I condemn it with my whole chest. And that brings me to another Portland value: we are not afraid to see the pitfalls, the dangers, and the destructive elements, and we speak up about them. Daddy Bush called Portland “Little Beirut” because we were never afraid to speak truth to power. Protest is in our blood. I know it can be a bad thing when used to punch down, but again, I am speaking of the best parts of Portland, and when we are speaking up in defense of the oppressed, that embodies Portland, to me.

At least it was here

Community
Close-up selfie of the author, a white man wearing glasses and a "The Rebound" baseball cap, from the nose up. A lit sign hangs above him that reads, in simple sans-serif font, "Lower your expectations". It's night time, and the trees in the background are lit up by off-screen lights.
The official unofficial motto of the festival this year.

I have so many notes and so many pictures relating to this weekend and the XOXO Festival, enough for a half-dozen posts about events at the festival alone, and what feels like enough creative energy to not run out of ideas for posts in general and the urge to create through the end of the year at least.

I also have a lot of feelings about it all, like my shame in discovering that I’ve been telling a lie and 2014 was my first year volunteering, or the shame in being so broke and despressed that I could not bring myself to volunteer for the last few events (2016, 2018, and 2019) even though I have been a fairly active member of the Slack community during that time, and the massive “I don’t fit in here with all these amazing creators” imposter syndrome I carry with me, and the “don’t be a weirdo” shame spiral.

While the guests over the years have talked about the amazing things they’ve done, they have always also included the down sides. The pushback, the backlash, the struggle to persist when it feels like they have no spare resources (money, attention, focus, protection, rights.) It’s a hard path, independence.

It’s not all negative. XOXO as a dream has caused me to take action on my own creative efforts over the years. The fact that this blog is active again after ho-ho-holy shit 21 years of posting is testament to my desire to write, to share, to communicate, and to be a member of a community, is energized by Andy B. and Andy M. and all the other XOXO people in my social sphere. The urge to be useful, to help out, to spread the word — all buoyed up by the spirit of the founders, staff, guests, and attendees. And the feeling that I get, sometimes, rarely: the feeling of belonging. That’s the dream for me. Kindness, inclusivity, community, creativity. And those things help counterbalance the downsides.

Processing all the notes, pictures, memories, faces, shame, joy, and belonging, is going to take some time. And maybe many posts from me, first drafts, unedited, just posting to the wind to try to gather my thoughts and give my readers something useful to take with them. But I can at least give you this much: this place is mine. It reflects my interests, my fears, my joys, my mistakes, my learnings, and my distractions. It’s me, in written form.

XOXO is about independence from the structure and policy of media companies. Those companies use their massive wealth to confine, restrict, and narrow the voices of the people who give them content for their platforms. XOXO founder Andy B. said “everyone should have a home on the web not controlled by billionaires.” and Lunar Obverse is my home.

This may be the last XOXO festival but it has built a community of weirdos, not-actually-imposters, influencers, artists, writers, dreamers, fighters. You might not know their stories but hopefully I can share some or many of theirs, while also continuing my own creative story. The spirit of XOXO lives on all over the place but also here. I’m glad you’re here, too.

This post isn’t about that

General

I am very sleepy tonight. Not sure why I’m so tired today except of course for the disordered sleeping from the past couple of nights. I go to bed early, wake up in the middle of the night, can’t get right back to sleep, and by the time I do there’s only a few hours left until the alarm goes off. A couple of nights of that would be enough to tire out anyone, I think.

Still need to write something, so I’m relying on habit, as is my usual tactic. It’s warm in this room even though the weather has cooled a bit. The room is warm because this is where my computer sits, and my computer, being a gaming PC, produces a lot of excess heat. I am not using the extra graphics capability right now. Right now I’m typing out green words on a black background, my writing style of choice. This green-on-black reminds me of terminals, and command lines, and old old writing programs. I don’t stop to examine why I like it, I just do.

Spent most of the day wishing I could be thinking and writing D&D stuff but instead, I had to do work stuff. Boring, stressful, work stuff. Not going to talk about that now, though. I’d rather not think about it. There must be something else for me to write about?

Would it be D&D? I have to set up a WordPress site for Biscuit Con at some point. That’s D&D related. I have some really fun ideas for the next few sessions of my campaign. I can’t really post about them here because my players might see it, but let me just say that this next phase of the campaign is set in and around a druid grove. I think my players think of the druids as bad guys. I’m not going to say one way or the other. They, like all my other factions, have their goals, and what they would do to achieve those goals, and not everyone in the faction agrees on either of those points 100%. This should be a nice break, though, from fighting undead and kobolds for them. I get to use other enemies. Fun stuff.

XOXO is coming. My first volunteer shift is this coming Thursday after work. I can’t remember what I’m doing but it’ll be good to be among the techno-artists again. I have severe imposter syndrome for my own sake but I really like the hopeful, progressive, creative, and techno-focused vibe from the founders, staff, volunteers, guests, and attendees for this conference. I wrote about what it is a few days ago; go check out that post.

If you’re reading this and you’re an XOXO-ian, say hi! I think somehow I got a burst of traffic from there. This isn’t an XOXO focused post, though. I’m just fumbling my way to 500 words so I can go rest. I’m pretty close now, so perhaps you’ll forgive me if I don’t try to find a nice “button” ending. But thanks for reading. I love you all.