IndieWeb Homebrew Website Club Asia Pacific: ReflectionsSkip to main content
Naty S<br>(she/her).<br>A tech enthusiast who enjoys blogging with SSGs, tinkering on her computer, and promoting IndieWeb principles.<br>(Elsewhere:<br>Mastodon)
A recap and summary of the first ever Homebrew Website Club: Asia Pacific IndieWeb event.<br>/blog/inaugural-hwc-ap-recap/<br>[2026-08-18]2026-08-18 | 1409 words —<br>7 min#blaugust2026<br>#events<br>#indieweb<br>#homebrew website club<br>#100DaysToOffload<br>#indienews
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Preface<br>I haven’t had the chance to share my thoughts on the first virtual Homebrew Website Club (HWC) event I hosted two weeks ago! Here’s a post about my experience being a first-time organizer of such an event.<br>Background<br>Having attended this meetup in the US time zones for the last eight months, I have been thoroughly inspired and captivated by the awesome individuals in the IndieWeb community—participant and organizers alike. Seeing the gap in the Asia / Pacific time zone felt like a good opportunity for me to step up and give back to the community which I have very much fallen in love with!<br>I’d like to especially thank my IndieWeb “heroes” (as it were):<br>Joe, David, Gregor, and James.<br>These great humans showed me the ropes around how events are run, how to use the wiki, Etherpad, and chat. Thank you all for always being helpful, supportive, and approachable! I will probably never be as good of a facilitator/host as Joe or James, but I’m always trying to learn from him and keep improving!<br>Overview<br>Some of my thoughts about the first HWC: Asia Pacific (HWC: AP).<br>The turnout was substantial; 13 of us in the call and I am thankful everyone was well-mannered and raised their hand before speaking (because I’ve seen the other side of the coin; it can be a tough job!)<br>I hope everyone got their chance to speak and ask questions! Both the US HWCs (Eastern and Pacific time zones) are two hours long. If the conversation feels unfinished, I may extend the current 1 hour 30 min limit to 2 hours.<br>Seeing a mixture of old and new faces was truly a treat for me. I’m keen on getting newcomers onto the IndieWeb ship and spreading the joy I personally had from joining this community; but at the same time, I love learning from those who are experienced with web development, how to write on the web, and small web best practices.<br>Having some of my web “role-models” or “inspirers” show up at the meeting was a fan girl moment for me personally!<br>As it was the inaugural meeting, time was a bit short to do any demos or sharing what’s new on our sites. I hope in the next few sessions we can get into a rhythm of “show and tell”. Please do not hesitate to join if you’re new and don’t have anything to show yet; the IndieWeb community is open to everyone with any level of experience.<br>I used to organize a lot of events in my school days, but haven’t done so recent times. Hope I get back into the groove of talking more and being a better communicator.<br>AI Incident<br>Unfortunately, there was a disturbing incident that kind of tarnished the event; where a cluster of AI agents which claimed to be separate “individuals”, with their own online presence / website, tried to participate in the shared Etherpad notes. One of them actually joined the Zoom call at the beginning (unbeknownst to me at the time, that they might not have been human) for a short period of time before they dropped off. They tried to join again, but by then, I caught on (that it was an AI agent/bot and not human) and did not let them back in the call.<br>From what I gathered, this group of AI agents was deployed by one individual, but they never showed up in person. The bots caused havoc on our Etherpad mid-meeting by hijacking and deleting all the notes taken by minute takers (mainly by Zachary, James, and I). Luckily James recovered the notes—but this never before seen (in the world of IndieWeb events) incident really shook me. I tried to keep my composure as much as possible and continued with gently steering the conversation. I apologize if the incident caused anyone to feel confused, upset, intruded, or uneasy.<br>Post-Mortem<br>After the event, I brought the issue up to the IndieWeb organizers. I will try my best to keep this place an AI bot/agent-free and safe space people can chat about websites. If stricter measures are required to prevent this from happening again, I will update the event description. Tantek is one of the IndieWeb organizers, and he wrote a post about this incident if you want to read more about this incident. (Thank you for checking if I was okay after the incident!)<br>But There’s More<br>Three days after the incident, one of the AI agents at the meeting emailed me—but I wasn’t the only one—at least two other HWC: AP participants also got an email too. 😐 And what’s more, is actually another IndieWeb organizer received emails from this very same...