News on Handmade Cities | Quality Tech Events

When: Friday, June 19th, 2:30pm - 5pm

Come and work around other Handmade folks, or just come to hang!
Grab food or drinks - it’s good to support our hosts.
There are outlets around, still good to come charged.
At 5, we’ll discuss where to go for dinner or a drink.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, and otherwise, see you on Friday!

All good things,

Peter

HMC Weekly Recap - 6/16

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 02:56:09 +0000

Mariano Uvalle is our server admin. You may reach the author at mariano@handmadecities.com

Dear Handmade folks,

As many of you know, I started a new job a few months ago, and it’s taken way more of my free time than I anticipated. Luckily things are stabilizing now, so I hope to tackle more of our backlog in the upcoming weeks. Speaking of:

Permalink for Public Roadmap

roadmap.handmadecities.com hosts the TODO items for community / server work. Currently it simply redirects to an instance of Vikunja that I self-host; we might consider migrating to another tool in the future as the number of collaborators grow, but the link above will remain stable.

I’ve onboarded three contributors to the HMC Gitea so far. I kindly ask them to take a look at the roadmap and let me know which tasks they’re interested in. If you’re also interested in helping out, email me at u.g.a.mariano@gmail.com (sadly, my @handmadecities email is still down)

Using #Maintenance for Community Requests

We encourage community members to post their community / server requests under #maintenance in the Handmade Revolt. The requests can be about Revolt itself, but also anything to do with handmadecities.com: the website, newsletters, RSS feeds, RSVP system, the upcoming library, etc.

This lets Abner and I review everything from a single place and then decide whether to take something on. Finally I can triage the tasks and assign them to interested contributors.

Gitea Runners

The initial testing for the dedicated CI/CD VPS went poorly, it was undersized and container image builds for handmade revolt were timing out. Abner was kind enough to get us a larger VPS instance. My final testing today went much better, and image builds now succeed on our runner. I’ll keep stress testing over the next few days.

Your server admin,
Mariano

Reminder: Friday Co-Working in Kirkland - 6/12

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 19:15:19 +0000

Abner Coimbre is our Handmade Cities founder. You may reach the author at abner@handmadecities.com

Dear Handmade folks,

I’ll see you tomorrow for our usual Kirkland co-working session! River returns from vacation soon and will host the next session onwards. In the meantime I’m delighted to run this one:

Details

When: Friday, June 12th, 2:00 - 5:00 p.m.
Where: Thruline Coffee - 136 Park Ln, Kirkland, WA 98033

If you’re a new member just ask at the counter for the Handmade group and they’ll point you in the right direction. We’re not hard to find though: find the table full of laptops and nerds!

At every session we briefly mention what we’re each working on and then get down to business. Come chill with like-minded friends and stay productive. I don’t know about you but if I’m alone on a Friday afternoon I rarely get anything done.

Until tomorrow,
Abner Coimbre
Founder, Handmade Cities

HMC Weekly Recap - 6/9

Tue, 09 Jun 2026 17:30:14 +0000

Abner Coimbre is our Handmade Cities founder. You may reach the author at abner@handmadecities.com

Dear Handmade folks,

Our server admin Mariano should be returning next week. In the meantime yours truly will enlighten you with the goings on at Handmade Cities~

The June Meetups Announced So Far

Seattle, Boston, London, and Denmark events are confirmed for June. (Seattle always happens on the last Saturday of every month.) However, Boston requires a different venue from their usual Boston Public Library. If you live there consider helping the meetup host with some advice!

Community member Scott is hosting Seattle’s second Zig Day next weekend! I heard the first one was very enjoyable: let’s show him some support and drop by.

Abner Wonders If You’re Harold Bloom

I wrote a blog post on the uncanny resemblance I seem to have with the late Yale professor, because I always sound like him when talking about AI usage. This essay is a funny reflection to anyone who can relate.

Practical to Self-Host Email?

As a rabid fan of the Linux Prepper podcast it still never occurred to me I could run my own mail server. However, user vincent.lee does exactly that and now I’m digesting the possibility. Perhaps we’ll invite Lee to the Homelab & Modding Party so he can show us how it’s done… I know I’ll need two-to-three months to feel more comfortable with this haha!

Pinball Convention: Is it Handmade?

User tstack made us aware of another community that (at first glance) appears completely unrelated to Handmade Cities. Allow me to quote Mr. T:

There is a growing community of homebrew pinball makers. There’s some really creative folks and the convention is a nice place to let people try out their games and to chat. I managed to get the ball stuck in this Fallout-themed game. I saw the builder looking through the logs later on and went to mention what happened. They said it was the first time it had crashed and were trying to figure out what was going on. The machine runs Ubuntu and they took off a panel to show some of the guts.

Visit our server to see pictures and links of homebrew pinball! I know I’ll be checking it out in my free time. What I’ve learned in life is we can always find Handmade devs in unlikely places.

AllenW’s Home Garden

Ever since I added a new #off-topic channel my favorite thing is the ongoing pictures of user AllenW’s garden. It started with him buying the soil for a garden bed… and now he’s moved on to hot composting new soil on the cheap. The latest pictures are starting to show the (literal?) fruit of his labor. Please don’t stop posting these :)

Have a lovely week and Mariano will hopefully greet you at the next recap!

Your community organizer,
Abner

2026-06-05 Handmade Meetups Denmark - Dates for June and July

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 20:07:52 +0000

Patrick Jakobsen is our Denmark meetup host. You may reach the author at patrick@handmadecities.com

Hello everybody!

Nobody sent in availabilities, and we are five days into June. I know that I have not given a proper deadline. I simply forgot, and now I have to roll with it. I have picked the last Saturday in each month, as I am available on those Saturdays.

The meetup dates are June 27th and July 25th.

Both meetups will be held at Rugårdsvej 220, 5210 Odense NV, from 13:00 to 17:00.

Best regards,

Patrick “Zelaven” Jakobsen

Seattle Co-Work, Friday 6/5 Meetup

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 20:54:36 +0000

Peter Slattery is our Seattle co-working host. You may reach the author at peter@handmadecities.com

Hey folks!

It’s time for another Seattle Co-working session! I’m headed up to Vancouver for the Handmade Network Expo and I won’t be there, so Abner will be stepping in as host. Come, hang out and work with other Handmade community folks, wrap up work, or work on side projects. As always, anyone is welcome to drop in for some or all of the time.

Event Deets

When: Friday, June 5th, 2:30pm - 5pm

Come and work around other Handmade folks, or just come to hang!
Grab food or drinks - it’s good to support our hosts.
There are outlets around, still good to come charged.
At 5, we’ll discuss where to go for dinner or a drink.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, and otherwise, see you on Friday!

All good things,

Peter

HMC Weekly Recap - 5/31

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 07:15:31 +0000

Abner Coimbre is our Handmade Cities founder. You may reach the author at abner@handmadecities.com

Dear Handmade folks,

Forgive the delay on this May 31st recap. Our server admin is temporarily indisposed, but will return to us again in future updates. That doesn’t mean we haven’t been cooking! Read on.

HMC Server Tasks

We’ve filled up the community roadmap with our current priorities! Note that jmug is Mariano’s username: he’s self-hosting our TODO list for us.

If you’re interested in server work, shoot us a message at support@handmadecities.com and I’ll be happy to guide you through the process. You can also email us just to add new tasks to the roadmap if you think they’re important enough for our community.

To our contributors who successfully onboarded: stand by for marching orders within the coming days.

Official May 2026 Memo

I just published the memo for May 2026. The first ever Homelab & Modding party was announced and, like always, I would love your input or volunteering efforts if possible.

Welcome Lobster Friends!

After announcing a Handmade meetup in Lobsters for the first time, we’ve swelled our ranks with awesome new folks. I just want to greet you properly, and I’m glad you’re part of Handmade Cities now!

Until the next recap.

Your community organizer,
Abner Coimbre

Handmade London Meetup, Sunday June 14th

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 21:12:06 +0000

Jacques Heunis is our London meetup host. You may reach the author at jacques@handmadecities.com

Hey everyone

This is your regularly scheduled announcement that the next London meetup is happening soon! The next meetup will take place at:

14:00 on Sunday the 14th of June (RSVP here)

As usual we’ll book a table at The Fellow (a pub near Kings Cross Station, N1 9AA). There’s no agenda so anybody is free to bring any topics or demos that they’d like to discuss. If anybody wants to bring a laptop or gadget or what-have-you to demo something then that’s awesome and we’d love to see it! No pressure though, mostly its just a casual chat about recent projects or topics of interest. People tend to hang around for anywhere between 2 and 5 hours, so feel free to stay for as much or as little time as you fancy. The only ask is that attendees grab a drink or some food to compensate the pub for so kindly allowing us to use their space

Since that space is limited, if you plan on attending please do respond on the event page here by the end of Sunday the 7th of June, just so that I can make an appropriate reservation.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Jacques

Handmade Meetup this Saturday - RSVP! (5/30)

Thu, 28 May 2026 20:00:12 +0000

Abner Coimbre is our Handmade Cities founder. You may reach the author at abner@handmadecities.com

Seattle folks,

The last Saturday is upon us, which means our monthly meetup takes center stage. RSVP your seat at the earliest opportunity!

The Add to Calendar button should work just fine.

The details:

We’re right next to Roosevelt’s Light Rail. We can’t miss it if we have Apple/Google maps:

Where: One Bite Cafe (in Seattle)
When: Saturday, May 30th, 2-4PM
Parking: There is street parking around the block. However, the most reliable place to park is “Green Lake Park & Ride”

The entire shop is reserved for Handmade, so let’s order snacks and drinks to support this family business!

Saturday’s Presentations (2-4PM)

We start with community news from yours truly, followed by featured presentations. Time permitting, we wrap it all up with roundtable discussions.

Featured Presentation #1

Alex Robbins is tech lead for an educational video game company. Opinions here do not represent his employer.

Alex is super interested in fluid simulations and he very kindly let me try a demo: I was flabberghasted by the progress so far. To read it in his own words:

“I’m imagining I would do a general overview of the fluid algorithm at work, how to keep a physics simulation like this stable and performant, as well as specific optimizations I’ve made.”

Now that’s what we call a worthy presentation for Handmade Cities.

Featured Presentation #2

Blake North is a former student at DigiPen who studied audio programming and sound design. He is currently part of Google’s Summer of Code.

I was shocked to realize half of you have never heard of modular synthesizers (!) and Blake is in my estimation a real expert compared to the rest of us. In this presentation he will introduce us to the wonderful world of creative play through digital audio: which software to use and how, what kind of hardware devices or peripherals are available and so on.

When Blake saw my intro for him he wanted to add the following, which gave me a good chuckle:

“Blake North is doing contract work for a few different people right now. This technically makes him his own employer, so opinions here do represent his employer.”

I can’t wait for these two Handmade demos.

Seattle After Dark (4-7PM) 🍕

As always, between 4:00 - 4:30PM we will wind down the official meetup and make our way to dinner and drinks. “After Dark” is optional, but during this time I moderate very little, which lets community members get spicier with their takes on our industry as a whole. It’s a hoot.

See you Saturday at 2PM,
Abner Coimbre

No Kirkland Co-Work Tomorrow (5/29)

Thu, 28 May 2026 18:42:35 +0000

Abner Coimbre is our Handmade Cities founder. You may reach the author at abner@handmadecities.com

Dear Handmade folks,

Tomorrow’s Kirkland co-working session is cancelled. Our lovely host River is unavailable to host the next few sessions. And although we have backup hosts I failed to procure their services on time. You have my apologies. (I blame Memorial Day weekend a little bit!)

Meanwhile Saturday is the official monthly meetup, which means I won’t have time to host Friday’s co-work. Let’s keep an eye out for the Saturday invite instead, which we’ll send out momentarily!

Your community organizer,
Abner Coimbre

HMC Weekly Recap - 5/25

Mon, 25 May 2026 14:44:29 +0000

Mariano Uvalle is our server admin. You may reach the author at mariano@handmadecities.com

Dear Handmade folks,

Happy Memorial Day weekend! I hope everyone took the chance to decompress and spend time with loved ones. I certainly did! In the spirit of holiday reflection, let’s begin our update by thanking the unsung heroes from our community.

Thank You Meetup Hosts!

Sometimes we might take Handmade meetups for granted, but behind every event is a single person volunteering their time to organize something. This organizer’s a human being with a busy life or bad days like the rest of us. Yet they still find a venue, prepare a written newsletter, and expend social energy to keep everyone at the meetup: not to mention finding fun presentations / demos for the group.

So huge kudos to the hosts keeping Handmade Cities going! If you, the reader, wish to engage in this noble endeavor, read the HMC Guide for details. (We can always use backup hosts as well.)

Chat Discussion: Battle for the Soul of the Industry

There’s an interesting discussion around the nature of software employment in #General right now. Community members are sharing their experiences in this new era, while Abner offers practical ways to stay sane and keep our conscience intact.

Considering dropping in your two cents as well!

Final Reminder: Hiring

As I mentioned in the last weekly recap, the creator of Outer Wilds is actively looking for software engineers, and some of the roles would be perfectly suited for the folks here who enjoy gamedev.

The deadline is this Thursday so don’t wait too long and apply now!

That’s it for the time being. Abner’s still in the middle of populating the public roadmap, therefore I’ll talk more about that next week.

Until next time,
Mariano, Server Admin.

Handmade Meetups Denmark - Planning June and July

Mon, 25 May 2026 14:34:58 +0000

Patrick Jakobsen is our Denmark meetup host. You may reach the author at patrick@handmadecities.com

Hello everybody!

With the April and May meetups concluded, it is about time we get June and July scheduled!

I know these are primitive means, and that options like Doodle exist. I am however hesitatant to involve the use of such third parties. Feedback on this point is much appreciated.

My own availabilities for June and July are these:
‘Y’ means “Yes” and ’n’ means “no”.
06-06: n
06-13: Y
06-20: Y
06-27: Y
07-04: Y
07-11: Y
07-18: n
07-25: Y

Best regards,

Patrick “Zelaven” Jakobsen

Handmade Boston Meetup 05/23 Reminder

Sat, 23 May 2026 04:22:24 +0000

Margret Riegert is our Boston meetup host. You may reach the author at margret@handmadecities.com

Meetup Details

Date: May 23rd, 2026
Time: 2pm-4pm
Address: 700 Boylston St, Boston, MA 02116
RSVP: https://rsvp.handmadecities.com/event/0U95MDFA
Handmade Cities Revolt: https://revolt.handmadecities.com

The Agenda

Software Project Demos: Bring a project you’ve been working on, ask questions, get constructive feedback, etc.
Presentation: Give a mini talk about something you’ve been working on and that you think others in the handmade community would find interesting
Special Topics: Talk as a group about anything relevant in the handmade community
Social After: Afterwards, we can head out and grab something to eat

You’re not required to bring a project or anything; showing up is good enough!

Getting there

We’ll be in the mezzanine conference room #3.

If you enter through the Boylston Street entrance, you want to head to the left and look for where it says Community Learning Center.

Seattle Co-Work, Friday 5/22

Thu, 21 May 2026 10:18:57 +0000

Peter Slattery is our Seattle co-working host. You may reach the author at peter@handmadecities.com

Hey folks!

Event Deets

When: Friday, May 22nd, 2:30pm - 5pm

Come and work around other Handmade folks, or just come to hang!
Grab food or drinks - it’s good to support our hosts.
There are outlets around, still good to come charged.
At 5, we’ll discuss where to go for dinner or a drink.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, and otherwise, see you on Friday!

All good things,

Peter

2026-05-21 Handmade Meetups Denmark - Reminder: Meetup Overmorrow!

Thu, 21 May 2026 09:32:18 +0000

Patrick Jakobsen is our Denmark meetup host. You may reach the author at patrick@handmadecities.com

Hello everybody!

I would like to simply remind everybody of the meetup this Saturday.

May 23rd 13:00 to 17:00, at Rugårdsvej 220, 5210 Odense NV.

I will send out a call for availabilities for June and July Soon™. I just need to sort out my own availabilities first.

I am looking forward to seeing you all!

Best regards,

Patrick “Zelaven” Jakobsen

HMC Weekly Recap - 5/17

Mon, 18 May 2026 05:56:50 +0000

Mariano Uvalle is our server admin. You may reach the author at mariano@handmadecities.com

Hey everyone!

I’ve been traveling for a friend’s wedding these past few days, so this week’s recap is a bit late, but also packed, so let’s get on with it:

Expanding Server Resources

We’ve got two new contributors, Charles E. and Sam C. who will be helping us out, thank you! Remember to shoot me a message if you want to volunteer for Handmade Cities server projects. For a taste of the things we’ll be working on, head on to the newly restored public roadmap which we’ve begun populating, with lots more to come.

Abner also granted my request to obtain a second Ubuntu VPS for our Gitea runners. I previously hosted runners on a personal Linux box in my home network, but they’ll now live in dedicated hardware to improve our security hygiene, and in preparation for a unified observability stack for our internal systems.

Hiring

I want to remind everyone that my current employer is hiring in many areas, and a good chunk of them (kernel, virtualization, low level networking, firmware) are a good fit for handmade-minded folks. If you see anything of interest on the careers page, please reach out and I’ll both give you a referal and walk you through the process.

Handmade Revolt user polymer posted a jobs announcement he found from Mobius Digital, creator of Outer Wilds. Since many of us at Handmade Cities are gamedevs I think this is a great opportunity for you to apply. Check out the roles available, you never know!

BretHudson has a contact looking for a NES dev. Very unique opportunity if you have the skillset.

Final Reminder: Linux Spreadsheet

We appreciate the new folks who filled out info about their Linux setup after my last request. I just wanted to blast one more reminder for Abner’s benefit here: This knowledge will help him prepare our Homelabbing & Modding Party. This party will be announced in an official memo later in the year. (It’s still early days until the Handmade Library has shipped!)

Until next time,

Mariano, Server Admin.

Handmade NYC Meetup - May 2026

Sun, 17 May 2026 21:50:11 +0000

Nick Aversano is our NYC meetup host. You may reach the author at nick@handmadecities.com

Hello, everyone!

The next meetup will be on:
Thursday, May 28th at 7pm

Please RSVP here: https://luma.com/uacdc7zc

I look forward to seeing you there!

– Nick

Reminder: Friday Co-Working in Kirkland - 5/15

Thu, 14 May 2026 17:05:31 +0000

River is our Kirkland co-working host. You may reach the author at river@handmadecities.com

Hey, Handmade folks!

This Friday, May 15th, we’ll be hosting another co-working session in Kirkland at the usual time and place. Whether you’ve got a cool personal project that you want to show off or need to lock-in for $DAYJOB, you’re welcome to attend. Come hang out, have a coffee, and talk about what’s been tickling your brain lately.

When: Friday, May 15th, 2:00pm–5:00pm

Where: Thruline Coffee Co. - 136 Park Lane, Kirkland, WA 98033

I unfortunately will not be present at the Kirkland co-working sessions until June 26th, beginning this week. Taylor will be taking over as host for this week’s session, so you’ll be in good hands. 😊

HMC Weekly Recap

Sun, 10 May 2026 05:59:04 +0000

Mariano Uvalle is our server admin. You may reach the author at mariano@handmadecities.com

Hey everyone! For those of you that know me, yes, I’m alive and doing well; it’s nice to write to you again. For those that don’t, nice to e-meet you! I’m Mariano, your server admin. I took over some of our server and infra duties to free up Abner’s time (let’s hope it turns into a steady stream of Terminal Click features), I also occasionally write to you about what’s happening in our community. Without further ado:

We Patched the “Copy Fail” Vulnerability

The recent and notorious CVE-2026-31431 has been patched for our community server. Unfortunately, Handmade Revolt user lunar also flagged some new ones:

y’all will want to mitigate DirtyFrag too. tldr: disable esp4, esp6, and pxrpc kernel modules. It’s CVE-2026-43284 and CVE-2026-43500.

It’s curious to see this spike in serious CVEs. Let us hope it’s not the new normal… but if it is we’ll be on guard all the same!

Open-Source Contributions

I finally have the ability to invite users to the HMC Gitea (notice the new branding as well!) That means I’ll be onboarding contributors to help with my endless TODO list. If you’re interested in improving our community server, shoot me a message at u.g.a.mariano@gmail.com (my handmadecities alias is temporarily out of commission).

Volunteers for the HMC Library

Abner published an official memo laying out his summer plans for a community library! Please email support@handmadecities.com if you have items to lend or donate for the cause.

Reminder: Linux Spreadsheet

We’re still very interested to know what your Linux setup looks like! Fill out the sheet and give us your deetz: Abner is particularly interested because he intends to host a homelab & modding party later this year (in Seattle and other cities as well.)

Until next time,

your friendly Server Admin

Co-Work Today + Handmade Library Reminder!

Fri, 08 May 2026 19:15:16 +0000

Abner Coimbre is our Handmade Cities founder. You may reach the author at abner@handmadecities.com

Dear Handmade folks,

Just a reminder to come chill at Armistice Coffee & Cocktail Bar this afternoon for Peter’s co-working session in a couple hours:

We’ve also released an official memo seeking volunteers for the upcoming Handmade Library. Other cities are encouraged to join in the fun, because the system will of course support meetup locations outside Seattle.

I’m excited to inspire a habit of lending or borrowing among community members.

Enjoy Mother’s Day Weekend,
Abner Coimbre

Vancouver Meetup this Saturday 5/9 (please RSVP)!

Thu, 07 May 2026 20:23:01 +0000

Gabriel Dechichi is our Vancouver meetup host. You may reach the author at gabriel@handmadecities.com

Hi there Vancouver folks!

Friendly reminder that our next meetup will be this Saturday, May 9th at 2pm PST.

Same location as usual, right next to the Brentwood Town Centre Station.

Location: 1955 Alpha Way, Burnaby BC V5C 0K6
Date: Saturday, May 09th
Time: 2pm - 4pm

In this meetup we are going to talk about Allocators and Memory Management in C, so if you’re interested in attending, please RSVP here.

Also, for a more direct communication channel, you can join our Discord group.

See y’all soon!

Seattle Co-Work, Friday 5/8

Thu, 07 May 2026 04:52:30 +0000

Peter Slattery is our Seattle co-working host. You may reach the author at peter@handmadecities.com

Hey folks!

Event Deets

When: Friday, May 8th, 2:30pm - 5pm

Come and work around other Handmade folks, or just come to hang!
Grab food or drinks - it’s good to support our hosts.
There are outlets around, still good to come charged.
At 5, we’ll discuss where to go for dinner or a drink.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, and otherwise, see you on Friday!

All good things,

Peter

Handmade Boston Meetup 05/23

Mon, 04 May 2026 18:41:42 +0000

Margret Riegert is our Boston meetup host. You may reach the author at margret@handmadecities.com

Meetup Details

Date: May 23rd, 2026
Time: 2pm-4pm
Address: 700 Boylston St, Boston, MA 02116
RSVP: https://rsvp.handmadecities.com/event/0U95MDFA
Handmade Cities Revolt: https://revolt.handmadecities.com

The Agenda

Software Project Demos: Bring a project you’ve been working on, ask questions, get constructive feedback, etc.
Presentation: Give a mini talk about something you’ve been working on and that you think others in the handmade community would find interesting
Special Topics: Talk as a group about anything relevant in the handmade community
Social After: Afterwards, we can head out and grab something to eat

You’re not required to bring a project or anything; showing up is good enough!

Getting there

We’ll be in the mezzanine conference room #3.

If you enter through the Boylston Street entrance, you want to head to the left and look for where it says Community Learning Center.

Reminder: Friday Co-Working in Kirkland - 5/1

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 05:10:06 +0000

River is our Kirkland co-working host. You may reach the author at river@handmadecities.com

Hey, Handmade folks!

This Friday, May 1st, we’ll be hosting another co-working session in Kirkland at the usual time and place. Whether you’ve got a cool personal project that you want to show off or need to lock-in for $DAYJOB, you’re welcome to attend. Come hang out, have a coffee, and talk about what’s been tickling your brain lately.

When: Friday, May 1st, 2:00pm–5:00pm

Where: Thruline Coffee Co. - 136 Park Lane, Kirkland, WA 98033

We often get a table in the back; if you don’t see us when you first walk in, make sure to check behind the counter on the right. Our usual spot is just around that corner and isn’t visible from the front door. Outlet space is limited, so I recommend you charge your laptop ahead of time, but I’ll have a surge protector with me if you need to charge mid-session.

Vancouver Handmade Meetup RSVP + Discord!

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 18:28:41 +0000

Gabriel Dechichi is our Vancouver meetup host. You may reach the author at gabriel@handmadecities.com

Hi there Vancouver folks!

It’s been a while since my last email - if you signed up since then: Hi, I’m Gabe, nice to meet you! :)

We are planning a meetup for Saturday, May 9th at 2pm PST, in anticipation of Handmade Network Expo which we are all very excited about!

In this meetup we are going to talk about Allocators and Memory Management in C, so if you’re interested in attending, please RSVP here.

Also, for a more direct communication channel, you can join our Discord group.

See y’all soon!

Handmade London Meetup, Sunday May 10th

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 21:29:01 +0000

Jacques Heunis is our London meetup host. You may reach the author at jacques@handmadecities.com

Hey everyone

This is your regularly scheduled announcement that the next London meetup is happening soon! The next meetup will take place at:

14:00 on Sunday the 10th of May (RSVP here)

As usual we’ll book a table at The Fellow (a pub near Kings Cross Station, N1 9AA). There’s no agenda so anybody is free to bring any topics or demos that they’d like to discuss. If anybody wants to bring a laptop or gadget or what-have-you to demo something then that’s awesome and we’d love to see it! No pressure though, mostly its just a casual chat about recent projects or topics of interest. People tend to hang around for anywhere between 2 and 5 hours, so feel free to stay for as much or as little time as you fancy. The only ask is that attendees grab a drink or some food to compensate the pub for so kindly allowing us to use their space

Since that space is limited, if you plan on attending please do respond on the event page here by the end of Sunday the 3rd of May, just so that I can make an appropriate reservation.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Jacques

Handmade Boston Meetup 04/25 Reminder

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 22:39:45 +0000

Margret Riegert is our Boston meetup host. You may reach the author at margret@handmadecities.com

Meetup Details

Date: April 25th, 2026
Time: 2pm-4pm
Address: 700 Boylston St, Boston, MA 02116
RSVP: https://rsvp.handmadecities.com/event/KROuVTyq
Handmade Cities Revolt: https://revolt.handmadecities.com

The Agenda

Software Project Demos: Bring a project you’ve been working on, ask questions, get constructive feedback, etc.
Presentation: Give a mini talk about something you’ve been working on and that you think others in the handmade community would find interesting
Special Topics: Talk as a group about anything relevant in the handmade community
Social After: Afterwards, we can head out and grab something to eat

You’re not required to bring a project or anything; showing up is good enough!

Getting there

We’ll be in the mezzanine conference room #3.

If you enter through the Boylston Street entrance, you want to head to the left and look for where it says Community Learning Center.

Co-Work Today, Meetup w/ Walter Tomorrow

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 17:00:43 +0000

Abner Coimbre is our Handmade Cities founder. You may reach the author at abner@handmadecities.com

Dear Handmade folks,

Happy Friday! Come chill at Armistice Coffee & Cocktail Bar this afternoon for Peter’s co-working session.

Then tomorrow we will meet the creator of D at our regular monthly meetup. DON’T FORGET TO RSVP. Time’s running out there.

Catch you soon,
Abner

Seattle Co-Work, Friday 4/24

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 02:02:15 +0000

Peter Slattery is our Seattle co-working host. You may reach the author at peter@handmadecities.com

Hey folks!

Event Deets

When: Friday, April 24th, 2:30pm - 5pm

Come and work around other Handmade folks, or just come to hang!
Grab food or drinks - it’s good to support our hosts.
There are outlets around, still good to come charged.
At 5, we’ll discuss where to go for dinner or a drink.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, and otherwise, see you on Friday!

All good things,

Peter

2026-04-22 Handmade Meetups Denmark - Remember Odense Meetups this Saturday

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 21:35:10 +0000

Patrick Jakobsen is our Denmark meetup host. You may reach the author at patrick@handmadecities.com

Hello everybody!

I would like to simply remind everybody of the meetup this Saturday.

April 25th 13:00 to 15:00, at Rugårdsvej 220, 5210 Odense NV.

The May meetup date is known as well, 2026-05-23!

I am looking forward to seeing you all!

Best regards,

Patrick “Zelaven” Jakobsen

Handmade Meetup ft. Walter Bright (Creator of D)

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 00:15:20 +0000

Abner Coimbre is our Handmade Cities founder. You may reach the author at abner@handmadecities.com

Seattle folks,

The last Saturday is upon us, which means our monthly meetup takes center stage. RSVP your seat at the earliest opportunity.

Note: The “Add to Calendar” button was fixed last month, thanks to our server admin Mariano!

The details:

We’re right next to Roosevelt’s Light Rail. We can’t miss it if we have Apple/Google maps:

Where: One Bite Cafe, Seattle WA
When: Saturday, April 25th, 2-4PM
Parking: There is street parking around the block. However, the most reliable place to park is “Green Lake Park & Ride”

The entire shop is reserved for Handmade, so let’s order snacks and drinks to support this family business!

Saturday’s Presentations (2-4PM)

We start with community news from yours truly, followed by our featured presentation. Time permitting, we wrap it all up with roundtable discussions.

Featured Presentation: Walter Bright

Walter is the creator of the D programming language.

We were fortunate, some years ago, to invite Walter to our Handmade conference. Indeed, his presentation on ImportC was well-received and is still relevant today.

I’m especially fascinated by Walter’s long-standing company Digital Mars: there he created a systems language which truly inspired (one way or another) the ones we often discuss today: Rust, Zig, Jai, Odin, C3 and so on. This is my favorite Wikipedia quote of all time:

“D resulted from Bright’s frustration with the direction of the C++ language and from his experience implementing it.”

I’m in awe at how Digital Mars managed to ship a production-grade C compiler. (My condolences for supporting C++ as well.) The company also made a video game which I’d love to learn more about!

I asked Walter to discuss anything that tickles his fancy: it’s important to listen to our veteran systems programmers, especially in our present climate. Naturally, I hope he doesn’t mind us peppering him with questions during our roundtable :)

Seattle After Dark (4-7PM) 🍕

DON’T FORGET TO RSVP. SEATS ARE LIMITED.

See you Saturday at 2PM,
Abner Coimbre

Reminder: Friday Co-Working in Kirkland - 4/17

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 17:53:00 +0000

River is our Kirkland co-working host. You may reach the author at river@handmadecities.com

Hey, Handmade folks!

This Friday, April 17th, we’ll be hosting another co-working session in Kirkland at the usual time and place. Whether you’ve got a cool personal project that you want to show off or need to lock-in for $DAYJOB, you’re welcome to attend. Come hang out, have a coffee, and talk about what’s been tickling your brain lately.

When: Friday, April 17th, 2:00pm–5:00pm

Where: Thruline Coffee Co. - 136 Park Lane, Kirkland, WA 98033

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out by either replying to this e-mail or shooting me a message on Revolt or Discord (@lhea).

Handmade Meetups DC, 18 April: Writing Handmade apps

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 16:43:18 +0000

Felix Ulmanu is our D.C. meetup host. You may reach the author at felix@handmadecities.com

This Saturday, 18 April 2026, from 2pm to 4pm, we’ll come together to talk about writing custom apps. Macoy Madson will show how he applied Handmade principles to creating a custom CAD application for a manufacturing company. He will go over the various features and his criteria for what he picked to build vs buy, as well as lessons learned from the shortcomings of his choices. If we have time, we’ll also look at compiling native code to WebAssembly.

We’re meeting at the West End Library, 2301 L St NW, Washington, DC 20037, in Meeting Room 2. See you this weekend!

Contact

_felixu_ on Discord, or reply to this email

Note that it appears Gmail may send this announcement to “Promotions”. To prevent this, you can set emails from this address to always go to your primary inbox. (We will never send spam!)

Seattle Co-Work Today

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 16:35:27 +0000

Abner Coimbre is our Handmade Cities founder. You may reach the author at abner@handmadecities.com

Dear Handmade folks,

Come chill at Armistice Coffee & Cocktail Bar this afternoon for Peter’s co-working session

I’m also very pleased seeing members invite others to our community by vouching for them.

I can now return my attention to our upcoming library system. For now, I’d like you to start thinking about computer books you own but don’t read anymore. Perhaps there’s an old raspberry pi stashed in a drawer? Make a mental list of them!

See you in a bit,
Abner

Seattle Co-Work, Friday 4/10

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:11:55 +0000

Peter Slattery is our Seattle co-working host. You may reach the author at peter@handmadecities.com

Hey folks!

It’s time for another Seattle Co-working session! Come, hang out and work with other Handmade community folks, wrap up work, or work on side projects. As always, anyone is welcome to drop in for some or all of the time. We’ve had a growing number of folks show up and we’re stretching the capacity of Armistice - this week, lets discuss how everyone’s feeling about this venue and see if we want to stay or move.

Event Deets

When: Friday, April 10th, 2:30pm - 5pm

Come and work around other Handmade folks, or just come to hang!
Grab food or drinks - it’s good to support our hosts.
There are outlets around, still good to come charged.
At 5, we’ll discuss where to go for dinner or a drink.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, and otherwise, see you on Friday!

All good things,

Peter

Handmade Meetups Denmark - April and May

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 18:48:10 +0000

Patrick Jakobsen is our Denmark meetup host. You may reach the author at patrick@handmadecities.com

Hello everybody!

I have received only a few responses wrt availability, so I assume we will be modest in number.
The best availability I have found for April is Saturday the 25th. The official meetup timespan is 13:00 to 15:00.
As for location, my parents have offered their house as a meetup location, which means free coffee for you all. Because it would be silly to refuse free coffee, we will meet at Rugårdsvej 220, 5210 Odense NV.

In short: April 25th 13:00 to 15:00, at Rugårdsvej 220, 5210 Odense NV.

Because planning ahead is good, I announce already now that the May meetup will be on the 23rd. The planned timespan is likewise 13:00 to 15:00.

I am looking forward to seeing you all!

Best regards,

Patrick “Zelaven” Jakobsen

Handmade Boston Meetup 04/25

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 14:11:59 +0000

Margret Riegert is our Boston meetup host. You may reach the author at margret@handmadecities.com

Meetup Details

Date: April 25th, 2026
Time: 2pm-4pm
Address: 700 Boylston St, Boston, MA 02116
RSVP: https://rsvp.handmadecities.com/event/KROuVTyq
Handmade Cities Revolt: https://revolt.handmadecities.com

The Agenda

Software Project Demos: Bring a project you’ve been working on, ask questions, get constructive feedback, etc.
Presentation: Give a mini talk about something you’ve been working on and that you think others in the handmade community would find interesting
Special Topics: Talk as a group about anything relevant in the handmade community
Social After: Afterwards, we can head out and grab something to eat

You’re not required to bring a project or anything; showing up is good enough!

Getting there

We’ll be in the mezzanine conference room #3.

If you enter through the Boylston Street entrance, you want to head to the left and look for where it says Community Learning Center.

Handmade London Meetup, Sunday April 12th

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 21:36:57 +0000

Jacques Heunis is our London meetup host. You may reach the author at jacques@handmadecities.com

Hey everyone

This is your regularly scheduled announcement that the next London meetup is happening soon! The next meetup will take place at:

14:00 on Sunday the 12th of April (RSVP here)

As usual we’ll book a table at The Fellow (a pub near Kings Cross Station, N1 9AA). There’s no agenda so anybody is free to bring any topics or demos that they’d like to discuss. If anybody wants to bring a laptop or gadget or what-have-you to demo something then that’s awesome and we’d love to see it! No pressure though, mostly its just a casual chat about recent projects or topics of interest. People tend to hang around for anywhere between 2 and 5 hours, so feel free to stay for as much or as little time as you fancy. The only ask is that attendees grab a drink or some food to compensate the pub for so kindly allowing us to use their space

Since that space is limited, if you plan on attending please do respond on the event page here by the end of Sunday the 5th of April, just so that I can make an appropriate reservation.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Jacques

Handmade NYC Meetup 2026 [RSVP]

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 01:34:47 +0000

Nick Aversano is our NYC meetup host. You may reach the author at nick@handmadecities.com

Hello, everyone!

The next and first meetup of 2026 will be on:
Thursday, April 9th at 6:30pm

Please RSVP here: https://luma.com/s4mpyl6j

I look forward to seeing you there!

– Nick

Seattle Co-Work Today, Monthly Meetup Tomorrow!

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 17:00:25 +0000

Abner Coimbre is our Handmade Cities founder. You may reach the author at abner@handmadecities.com

Dear Handmade folks,

Come chill at Armistice Coffee & Cocktail Bar this afternoon for Peter’s co-working session

Then tomorrow, just a block from Armistice, I will be hosting our monthly meetup at One Bite Cafe!

Don’t forget to RSVP for it! For those attending No Kings tomorrow, we hope to greet you at our co-work instead :)

Catch you in a bit,
Abner

Seattle Co-Work, Friday 3/27 Meetup

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 15:19:16 +0000

Peter Slattery is our Seattle co-working host. You may reach the author at peter@handmadecities.com

Hey folks!

Event Deets

When: Friday, March 27th, 2:30pm - 5pm

Come and work around other Handmade folks, or just come to hang!
Grab food or drinks - it’s good to support our hosts.
There are outlets around, still good to come charged.
At 5, we’ll discuss where to go for dinner or a drink.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, and otherwise, see you on Friday!

All good things,

Peter

Handmade Meetup this Saturday - Please RSVP!

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 04:02:46 +0000

Abner Coimbre is our Handmade Cities founder. You may reach the author at abner@handmadecities.com

Dear Handmade folks,

Happy Spring! The last Saturday of the month is upon us, which means our monthly meetup takes center stage. RSVP your seat at the earliest opportunity!

Note: Our server admin Mariano fixed the Calendar bug! The RSVP system is now shiny and brand new.

The details:

We’re right next to Roosevelt’s Light Rail. We can’t miss it if we have Apple/Google maps:

Where: One Bite Cafe (in Seattle)
When: Saturday, March 28th, 2-4PM
Parking: There is street parking around the block. However, the most reliable place to park is “Green Lake Park & Ride”

The entire shop is reserved for Handmade, so let’s order snacks and drinks to support this family business!

Saturday’s Presentations (2-4PM)

We start with community news from yours truly, followed by featured presentations. Time permitting, we wrap it all up with roundtable discussions.

Featured Presentation #1

Community regular Taylor Robbins needs no introduction!

At the last meetup Reuben showed us how zig build made a huge difference for Orca. However, might we EVER see an alternative to zig build which is just as compelling? Well, Taylor’s been cooking up one for several months now, and I think it’s healthy to see competition in this space.

Let’s keep it all shrouded in mystery to get you to join us.

Featured Presentation #2

How can you stay a (profitable) indie dev while getting contributors to your codebase? I’m pleased to announce I’ve enlisted some legitimate help for Terminal Click, so in this presentation we’ll offer a progress report on what that looks like.

Roundtable Discussion

By popular demand our roundtable will be off-the-cuff this month in particular. Sounds like there’s some pent up rage against our (ex-)employers and we need an outlet for venting or dark humor. That’s why I love that our events are sponsor-free :)

So if you’ve got burning questions for your fellow colleagues, or just a funny piece of gossip, go ahead and let it rip this Saturday.

Seattle After Dark (4-7PM) 🍕

See you Saturday at 2PM,
Abner Coimbre

Zig Day Today, Handmade Meetup Next Saturday

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 17:30:13 +0000

Abner Coimbre is our Handmade Cities founder. You may reach the author at abner@handmadecities.com

Dear Handmade folks,

Some of you are attending Zig Day today and I hope it goes well! Zig did not sponsor nor ask me to promote them, but Scott is a regular at Handmade Cities and I wanted to give the shoutout.

The earlier link should give us the means to follow Zig Day events.

Meanwhile, Saturday March 28th is our Handmade monthly meetup and I’ll send the RSVP invite sometime next week as usual. The last one was packed with seriously cool demos and rountable discussions. The coffee shop even gave free snacks to the early birds: although I still strongly encourage you to order drinks or food to support them.

Finally, I’m aware it will be No King’s Day, but our meetup will be taking place regardless. Of course I’ll take zero offense if you have to skip our event! There’s the Seattle co-working the day before, so you’ll have options.

See you soon.

-Abner

Handmade Meetups Denmark - Planning April and May

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 15:35:25 +0000

Patrick Jakobsen is our Denmark meetup host. You may reach the author at patrick@handmadecities.com

Hello everybody!

I know March happened at a very short notice. April is approaching fast, and I am arguably already running late on planning for it. For this reason I am also starting planning for May so we can finally get ahead of the curve.

I am going to ask you to send me your availabilities by sending them to me, using the format I use below. Please mark only the days where you would actually attend, and if you are going to attend please do fill out your availabilities. Please respond only once.
The information is important for planning, as I will likely need to make a reservation if several people attend.

I know these are primitive means, and that options like Doodle exist. I am however hesitatant to involve the use of such third parties. Feedback on this point is much appreciated.

My own availabilities for April and May are these:
‘Y’ means “Yes” and ’n’ means “no”.
04-04: n
04-11: Y
04-18: Y
04-25: Y
05-02: Y
05-09: Y
05-16: n
05-23: Y
05-30: Y

Best regards,

Patrick “Zelaven” Jakobsen

Snowed In! Seattle Co-Work Canceled

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 16:36:02 +0000

Abner Coimbre is our Handmade Cities founder. You may reach the author at abner@handmadecities.com

Seattle folks,

You may have seen Peter’s invite yesterday, asking me to step in as he is out of town. Most tragically, I am snowed in in my area!

According to Apple maps I’ve been under “Heavy snow for the next hour” since three in the morning. Seattle Roosevelt appears to be without snow, but conditions are icy cold and may create sleet on the streets.

Therefore I am canceling today’s session. I’m excited to see you next Friday at Kirkland, and then we’ll bounce back to Seattle thereafter.

-Abner

P.S. This winter air is pregnant with the flu. Wear masks whenever possible: Spring 2026 can’t come fast enough.

Seattle Co-Work, Friday 3/13 Meetup

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 03:48:24 +0000

Peter Slattery is our Seattle co-working host. You may reach the author at peter@handmadecities.com

Hey folks!

We had a great turn out at the Seattle coworking session two weeks ago - we were almost too big for Armistice Coffee to fit, and now it’s time for our next session! Come, hang out and work with other Handmade community folks, wrap up work, or work on side projects. As always, anyone is welcome to drop in for some or all of the time.

One note: I will not be able to attend this time, but Abner is stepping in as host, so keep an eye out for him when you get to the cafe.

Event Deets

https://maps.app.goo.gl/tFn5GscaVmYBd9um9

When: Friday, March 13th, 2:30pm - 5pm

Come and work around other Handmade folks, or just come to hang!
Grab food or drinks - it’s good to support our hosts.
There are outlets around, still good to come charged.
At 5, we’ll discuss where to go for dinner or a drink.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, and otherwise, see you on Friday!

All good things,

Peter

Handmade Meetups Denmark - This Saturday

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 18:17:30 +0000

Patrick Jakobsen is our Denmark meetup host. You may reach the author at patrick@handmadecities.com

Hello everybody!

Yes, we are meeting this Saturday.

The email I sent out has not been met with a response, and I have not had time to go scout cafes.
The plan is to meet in front of Odense Banegård Center on Østre Stationsvej, next to Borgernes Hus, at 13:00. If it is raining then you will find me inside.
I know many of you have no idea what I look like, but I have a pair of red pants I plan on wearing. I have long hair and I usually braid a portion of it in one side.

The plan is that at 13:00 we will go find a place we like. I know this is not ideal, but I simply wasn’t able to get things sorted. If I postponed it then I would likely never have gotten this going at all, so I ask for your forgiveness.
When we are settled in somewhere I would like those who participate to voice their opinions on how we best move forward. Ideally we agree on a date for the April meetup, and have suggestions on the table regarding where we want to meet. While this is ultimately my job I don’t actually know the inner parts of Odense very well, and as such help is very appreciated.

The meetup is planned for 13:00 to 15:00. I’m not able to participate beyond 15:00, so that is when the meetup officially ends, but you can of course stay for at long as you want.

If you have any questions or comments please reach out to me.
You can reply to this email, or you can contact me on discord @Zelaven or the HMC revolt @Zelaven#1349.
I am present both on the Handmade Cities Revolt server and the Handmade Network Discord server.

Best regards,

Patrick “Zelaven” Jakobsen

Handmade Revolt reactions and public roadmap!

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 03:19:51 +0000

Mariano Uvalle is our server admin. You may reach the author at mariano@handmadecities.com

I have a couple of announcements for you today, let’s get right to it:

Reaction list

You can now see who reacted to your messages by hovering over the reaction count on desktop:

Or by long tapping on mobile:

You’ll have to refresh the web page or kill and reopen the mobile app to see this. We’re planning an in-client mechanism to let you know when there’s new features, which takes me to the next topic.

Public roadmap

The reaction list feature was born out of a suggestion from a community member; we’d love for more of you to be involved! And we’d also like for you to be up to date with the progress we’re making. This is our new public roadmap. It’s (unfortunately) hosted on Notion right now, but I’m actively looking for a self-hostable alternative; I’ll migrate ASAP, and will let you know once I do.

As always, thanks for reading!
Best,
Mariano.

Handmade Meetups Denmark - Clarification

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 18:26:26 +0000

Patrick Jakobsen is our Denmark meetup host. You may reach the author at patrick@handmadecities.com

Hello everybody!

Apologies for two mails in quick succession.

It turns out that reading the mail through multiple times was not enough to prevent a basic mistake.
While it is true that I do not have a specific venue sorted, I can in fact tell you city I will be hosting in.

We will meet in Odense, either at a venue or at a landmark.
I will provide further details a few days in advance.

Best regards,

Patrick “Zelaven” Jakobsen

Handmade Meetups Denmark - Getting Started!

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 18:08:59 +0000

Patrick Jakobsen is our Denmark meetup host. You may reach the author at patrick@handmadecities.com

Hello everybody!

It is finally happening - meetups in Denmark!

Our first meetup will be carried out on the Saturday 14th of March.
I have some difficulties figuring out where to go.
I have a mail waiting for someone to come off of vacation, but I may not have a venue lined up.
I will send out an update when we get closer.
If I don’t have a venue sorted then we will meet up outside and roam until we find a place we like.

A primary subject of this first meetup is to get to know each other, as well as discussing how we want to do things.

Best regards,

Patrick “Zelaven” Jakobsen

Handmade London Meetup, Sunday March 15th

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 21:33:01 +0000

Jacques Heunis is our London meetup host. You may reach the author at jacques@handmadecities.com

Hey everyone

This is your regularly scheduled announcement that the next London meetup is happening soon! The next meetup will take place at:

14:00 on Sunday the 15th of March (RSVP here)

As usual we’ll book a table at The Fellow (a pub near Kings Cross Station, N1 9AA). There’s no agenda so anybody is free to bring any topics or demos that they’d like to discuss. If anybody wants to bring a laptop or gadget or what-have-you to demo something that’s awesome but most often its just a casual chat about recent projects or topics that interest people. People tend to hand around for anywhere between 2 and 5 hours, so feel free to stay for as much or as little time as you fancy. The only ask is that attendees grab a drink or some food to compensate the pub for so kindly allowing us to use their space

Since that space is limited, if you plan on attending please do respond on the event page here by the end of Sunday the 8th of March, just so that I can make an appropriate reservation.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Jacques

Handmade Boston Meetup 03/14

Mon, 02 Mar 2026 13:19:04 +0000

Margret Riegert is our Boston meetup host. You may reach the author at margret@handmadecities.com

Meetup Details

Date: March 14th, 2026
Time: 2pm-4pm
Address: 700 Boylston St, Boston, MA 02116
RSVP: https://partiful.com/e/ZljWZqswDCNa8sM3wIRG
Boston Meetup Revolt: https://revolt.handmadecities.com

The Agenda

Software Project Demos: Bring a project you’ve been working on, ask questions, get constructive feedback, etc.
Presentation: Give a mini talk about something you’ve been working on and that you think others in the handmade community would find interesting
Special Topics: Talk as a group about anything relevant in the handmade community
Social After: Afterwards, we can head out and grab something to eat

You’re not required to bring a project or anything; showing up is good enough!

Getting there

We’ll be in the mezzanine conference room #3.

If you enter through the Boylston Street entrance, you want to head to the left and look for where it says Community Learning Center.

Handmade Meetups Tokyo 10

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 05:34:21 +0000

Miguel is our Tokyo meetup host. You may reach the author at miguel@handmadecities.com

When:

Saturday 14th of March, 12:30pm to 14:30pm

Where

Japan, 〒169-0075 Tokyo, Shinjuku City, Takadanobaba, 4 Chome−9−11 藤和高田馬場コープⅡ 603号

Price:

1000¥ To cover the cost of the rental space.

Hey there!

I am pleased to invite you to the 9th edition of our meetup. Spots are limited, so please register early here https://rsvp.handmadecities.com/event/XCI3v8VI

We’ll meet for two hours and a half to discuss the projects we’re working on, explore topics related to system programming, software quality and coding from first principles.

If you want to propose a talk before coming you can announce it in the discord channel. You can showcase anything in the spot, but if you tell in advance we can organize the event to make time for you.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at miguel@handmadecities.com

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

https://handmadecities.com/meetups/tokyo/

Handmade Cities

Co-Work Today, Meetup Tomorrow!

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 18:00:11 +0000

Abner Coimbre is our Handmade Cities founder. You may reach the author at abner@handmadecities.com

Dear Handmade folks,

Come chill at Armistice Coffee & Cocktail Bar this afternoon for Peter’s co-working session (I’ll be hanging around too.)

Then tomorrow, just a block from Armistice, I will be hosting our monthly meetup at One Bite Cafe!

Follow the links above for precise meeting instructions. If you’re lost or have questions you can email Peter at peter@handmadecities.com or yours truly at abner@handmadecities.com

Man, I love back-to-back events: twice as many opportunities to sync up with systems programmers :)

See ya in a bit,
Abner

P.S. Please RSVP right away for our One Bite event.

Seattle Co-Work, Friday 2/27 Meetup

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 01:37:05 +0000

Peter Slattery is our Seattle co-working host. You may reach the author at peter@handmadecities.com

Hey folks!

It’s time for another co-working session in Seattle! Come, hang out and work with other Handmade community folks. There’s no better place to finish up work on demos for Saturday’s meetup. As always, anyone is welcome to drop in for some or all of the time.

Event Deets

When: Friday, February 27th, 2:30pm - 5pm

Details

Come and work around other Handmade folks, or just come to hang!
I’m going to call ahead and see if we can reserve a table. I’ll post where I’m sitting in Revolt when I get there.
Grab food or drinks - it’s good to support our hosts.
There are outlets around, still good to come charged.
At 5, we’ll discuss where to go for a drink.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, and otherwise, I’ll hopefully see you on Friday!

All good things,

Peter

Bonjour Hello: Handmade Cities Montreal 001

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 19:48:58 +0000

Mitchell Amihod is our Montreal meetup host. You may reach the author at mitchell@handmadecities.com

Hi all. (français ci-dessous)

I’m Mitch, and I’ll be organizing our first Handmade Cities meetup in Montreal.

You are all getting this message because you signed up to tell us you are interested in the Montreal meetup.

I am thinking a very casual co-work style meetup would be a good first meet. Bring something you are in the middle of working on - digital or otherwise - and make some progress, tell others about it (if you up to it).

When: Sunday, March the 8th. 14:00 - 17:00 Where: Club Espagnol de Québec (The Spanish Social Club) 4388 Boul. Saint-Laurent, Montréal, QC H2W 1Z5

A Montreal institution. The club shouldn’t be busy at this time. I checked in with staff they cool with us meeting there. It’s a bar/resto - so they have coffee, regular drinks, and pretty awesome food available.

Please RSVP so we have a sense of how many people to expect.

If you have any questions, please reach out via email or you can find me on mastodon at @meeech@social.lol.

Mitch

(traduit par machine - mon française écrit c’est pas le meilleur)

Salut tout le monde !

Je suis Mitch, et j’organise notre première rencontre Handmade Cities à Montréal.

Vous recevez ce message parce que vous vous êtes inscrits pour nous faire part de votre intérêt pour cette rencontre montréalaise.

Je crois qu’une rencontre informelle, comme le cotravail, serait idéale pour une première approche. Apportez un projet sur lequel vous travaillez en ce moment (numérique ou autre) et avancez un peu. Si le cœur vous en dit, parlez-en aux autres.

Quand : Le dimanche 8 mars, de 14 h à 17 h

Où : Club Espagnol de Québec, 4388, boulevard Saint-Laurent, Montréal (Québec) H2W 1Z5

Une véritable institution montréalaise. Le club ne devrait pas être bondé à cette heure-ci. J’ai vérifié auprès du personnel, qui est d’accord pour que nous nous y réunissions. C’est un bar-restaurant, donc ils offrent du café, des boissons classiques et une cuisine vraiment excellente.

Veuillez confirmer votre présence afin que nous puissions avoir une idée du nombre de participants.

Pour toute question, vous pouvez me contacter par email ou me trouver sur Mastodon à @meeech@social.lol.

— Mitch

Handmade Meetups DC, 7 March: API Design & Single-Header Libraries

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 15:04:30 +0000

Felix Ulmanu is our D.C. meetup host. You may reach the author at felix@handmadecities.com

Join us this Saturday, 7 March 2026, from 2pm to 4pm, to discuss API design and single-header libraries. How should we structure and program libraries to impose as few usage constraints as possible? We’ll look at the STB libraries and other examples as case studies. Macoy Madson and I will record our presentation. Here’s to no more winter storms!

We’re still at the West End Library, 2301 L St NW, Washington, DC 20037, in Meeting Room 2. See you soon!

Contact

_felixu_ on Discord, or reply to this email

Note that it appears Gmail may send this announcement to “Promotions”. To prevent this, you can set emails from this address to always go to your primary inbox. (We will never send spam!)

Handmade Meetup on Saturday - RSVP Required!

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:30:30 +0000

Abner Coimbre is our Handmade Cities founder. You may reach the author at abner@handmadecities.com

Seattle folks,

The last Saturday is upon us, which means our monthly meetup takes center stage. RSVP your seat at the earliest opportunity!

Note: Avoid the “Add to Calendar” button at this time, as there’s an off-by-one bug.

The details:

We’re right next to Roosevelt’s Light Rail. We can’t miss it if we have Apple/Google maps:

Where: One Bite Cafe (in Seattle)
When: Saturday, February 28th, 2-4PM
Parking: There is street parking around the block. However, the most reliable place to park is “Green Lake Park & Ride”

The entire shop is reserved for Handmade, so let’s order snacks and drinks to support this family business!

Saturday’s Presentations (2-4PM)

We start with community news from yours truly, followed by featured presentations. Time permitting, we wrap it all up with roundtable discussions.

Community News

My last opening notes were great fun but I babbled on too much, so I’ll make sure we stick only to important Handmade-related news and updates. We’ll even have someone running a stopwatch for me :)

Featured Presentation #1

Reuben Dunnington is a senior engineer for Rockstar Games. Opinions here do not represent his employer.

In his free time Reuben contributes to Orca: WebAssembly Apps Without the Web. For this presentation you’ll learn how Reuben used Zig to overhaul their crufty Python-based build system. My own life improved A LOT thanks to zig build, so I’m keen to hear how it worked out for another Handmade project.

Outside of Handmade Cities you might find Reuben attending Zig Days. The host for Zig Day usually attends our Handmade meetups too, so you’re welcome to ask Reuben or ScottRedig about it! (The Zig folks did not sponsor nor ask me to promote their event.)

Featured Presentation #2

Charles M. is a staff engineer at Google. Opinions here do not represent his employer.

Our friend Charles recently submitted his proposal to the C standard committee (yes! the real deal!) His presentation, however, is perhaps even cooler than that. To quote the man himself:

My talk is a step-by-step explainer of how I optimized a single function to inline asm, and why the compiler can’t do the same thing.

I can’t wait for it.

Roundtable Discussion

To wrap up the meetup, the roundtable discussion will be on collaboration. Handmade folks are notoriously lone-wolf developers,a nd for good reason: wanting to make a living as indie devs. But doing everything alone carries many risks: what can we do to mitigate them?

I will moderate the roundtable to ensure it’s insightful and everyone has an opportunity to speak. Please submit future roundtables by emailing me at abner@handmadecities.com or our support staff at support@handmadecities.com.

Seattle After Dark (4-7PM) 🍕

See you Saturday at 2PM,
Abner Coimbre

New Handmade Revolt server admin (and other exciting news)

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 06:12:44 +0000

Mariano Uvalle is our server admin. You may reach the author at mariano@handmadecities.com

Hey once again!

Earlier today, Abner and I finished all the logistics related to the server handoff. I can now proudly say that I’m your new server admin!

You can expect (at most) weekly updates from me regarding Handmade Revolt development as well as interesting pieces of content posted in the server by all of you.

In addition to organizing development, I also have access to the infrastructure running our server and will be playing the sysadmin role. You can reach out to me with any suggestions/requests/complaints.

Now onto the news!

Web client fork

We forked the upstream web client code to https://git.handmadecities.com/HMC/handmade-revolt/src/branch/handmade. The initial plan is to address bugs and implement new features that only involve client-side code. We might also fork the server code in the future.

The next step is to set up Gitea action runners in the new HMC org, and wire it up to our new handmadecities shared Docker Hub account. Once that’s out of the way I’ll move on to new feature work.

Native client

Margret (aka nobodywasishere, and our Boston meetup host) started exploring the idea of developing a native client from scratch. You can read more about it in her blog

Year of Linux

Could this be the year of the Linux desktop? Hard to say… But interest in Linux has definitely grown within the community, so much so that we now have a dedicated #Year of Linux channel. Whatever your level of Linux interest and experience is, feel free to drop by and chat with us.

If you’re running Linux and have an extra second, give us the deets by filling out the shared spreadsheet at https://handmadecities.com/linux (thanks Abner!)

Call for contributors

If you have TypeScript knowledge (or you’d like to learn) and want to contribute to make our experience better, please reach out!

If you observe a bug or there’s a feature you’d like to see, also drop me a note. Let’s make something great together!

All the best,
Mariano.

Handmade Boston Meetup 02/21 Reminder

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 21:18:02 +0000

Margret Riegert is our Boston meetup host. You may reach the author at margret@handmadecities.com

Hello! This is just a friendly reminder about the Handmade meetup tomorrow at the library.

Meetup Details

Date: February 21st, 2026
Time: 12-2pm
Address: 700 Boylston St, Boston, MA 02116
RSVP: https://partiful.com/e/w1FHHX6KBYE8RdfKoIiI
Boston Meetup Revolt: https://revolt.handmadecities.com

The Agenda

Software Project Demos: Bring a project you’ve been working on, ask questions, get constructive feedback, etc.
Presentation: Give a mini talk about something you’ve been working on and that you think others in the handmade community would find interesting
Special Topics: Talk as a group about anything relevant in the handmade community
Social After: Afterwards, we can head out and grab something to eat

You’re not required to bring a project or anything; showing up is good enough!

Getting there

We’ll be in the mezzanine conference room #3.

If you enter through the Boylston Street entrance, you want to head to the left and look for where it says Community Learning Center.

Kirkland Cowork Tomorrow - New Host!

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 19:00:26 +0000

Abner Coimbre is our Handmade Cities founder. You may reach the author at abner@handmadecities.com

Dear Handmade folks,

I’ll be very delighted to see you tomorrow for our usual Kirkland co-working session:

Details

When: Friday, February 20th, 2:00 - 5:00 p.m.
Where: Thruline Coffee - 136 Park Ln, Kirkland, WA 98033

If you’re a new member just ask at the counter for the Handmade group and they’ll point you in the right direction. We’re not hard to find though: find the table full of laptops and nerds!

At every session we briefly mention what we’re each working on and then we get down to business! Come chill with like-minded friends and stay productive. I don’t know about you but if I’m alone on a Friday afternoon I rarely get anything done.

New Host: River!

Our good friend River is well-known among the regulars. River is on the retro gaming scene and they do excellent work supporting the homebrew community: keeping this mysterious so you ask about it in person :)

The next Kirkland invite will come from our new host, but I wanted to personally thank River (and previously Taylor) for their volunteer efforts. Taylor will of course attend most co-working sessions as a regular attendee. I’m super grateful we have a rotating pool of trusted members to keep the community sustainable, since I can’t possibly run everything myself.

Until tomorrow,
Abner Coimbre
Founder, Handmade Cities

Seattle Co-Work, Friday 2/13 Meetup

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 17:33:06 +0000

Peter Slattery is our Seattle co-working host. You may reach the author at peter@handmadecities.com

Hey folks!

Apologies for the late notice - there was a mixup with the email tool we use for these blasts. That being said, it’s time for another co-working session in Seattle! We enjoyed Armistice Coffee last week, so we’ll be giving it another shot this week. As always, anyone is welcome to drop in for some or all of the time - and we’ll find somewhere to go for drinks within walking distance around 5.

Event Deets

When: Friday, February 13th, 2:30pm - 5pm

Details

Come and work around other Handmade folks, or just come to hang!
I’m going to call ahead and see if we can reserve a table. I’ll post where I’m sitting in Revolt when I get there.
Grab food or drinks - it’s good to support our hosts.
There are outlets around, still good to come charged.
At 5, we’ll discuss where to go for a drink.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions, and otherwise, I’ll hopefully see you on Friday!

All good things,

Peter

Updates to our Revolt instance

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 01:11:03 +0000

Mariano Uvalle is our Revolt maintainer. You may reach the author at mariano@handmadecities.com

Hey everyone!

We’ve recently made some contributions to the web Revolt client:

Mobile reactions: You can now react to messages on mobile clients (website or PWA) by long pressing messages and clicking the “React” menu item.
“Reconnecting” bug on redeployments: The websocket reconnection logic is implemented as an FSM, and it had a bug that caused it to get stuck on a second attemtp, which is very likely to happen on redeployments.

Unfortunately, you’ll have to hard refresh or kill your app one last time, feel free to reply to this email and suggest features you’d like to see in the future.

Happy Friday,
Mariano.

Handmade Boston Meetup 02/21

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 03:11:30 +0000

Margret Riegert is our Boston meetup host. You may reach the author at margret@handmadecities.com

Meetup Details

Date: February 21st, 2026
Time: 12-2pm
Address: 700 Boylston St, Boston, MA 02116
RSVP: https://partiful.com/e/w1FHHX6KBYE8RdfKoIiI
Boston Meetup Revolt: https://revolt.handmadecities.com

The Agenda

Software Project Demos: Bring a project you’ve been working on, ask questions, get constructive feedback, etc.
Presentation: Give a mini talk about something you’ve been working on and that you think others in the handmade community would find interesting
Special Topics: Talk as a group about anything relevant in the handmade community
Social After: Afterwards, we can head out and grab something to eat

You’re not required to bring a project or anything; showing up is good enough!

Getting there

We’ll be in the mezzanine conference room #3.

If you enter through the Boylston Street entrance, you want to head to the left and look for where it says Community Learning Center.

Handmade London Meetup, Sunday February 15th

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 22:43:29 +0000

Jacques Heunis is our London meetup host. You may reach the author at jacques@handmadecities.com

Hey everyone

This is your regularly scheduled announcement that the next London meetup is happening soon! The next meetup will take place at:

14:00 on Sunday the 15th of February (RSVP here)

I’m aware that there was some confusion around the January meetup, my apologies for that. The Handmade Cities Discord server is now closed and our online home is moving but these emails and our meetups aren’t going anywhere! Handmade Cities has its own Revolt/Stoat server (for which I believe I can generate invites for interested meetup attendees) and for those on Discord, the Handmade Network server has a thread for the London meetup.

I’ve also discovered that replies to these announcement mails are not being routed correctly. That should be fixed in the next few days so anybody with a question about the meetup closer to the time will be able to reach me by email at jacques@handmadecities.com.

With that out of the way, back to the meetup itself:

As usual we’ll book a table at The Fellow (a pub near Kings Cross Station, N1 9AA). There’s no agenda so anybody is free to bring any topics or demos that they’d like to discuss. If anybody wants to bring a laptop or gadget or what-have-you to demo something that’s awesome but most often its just a casual chat about recent projects or topics that interest people. People tend to hand around for anywhere between 2 and 5 hours, so feel free to stay for as much or as little time as you fancy. The only ask is that attendees grab a drink or some food to compensate the pub for so kindly allowing us to use their space

Since that space is limited, if you plan on attending please do respond on the event page here by the end of Sunday the 8th of February, just so that I can make an appropriate reservation.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Jacques

Handmade Meetups Tokyo 09

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 08:12:05 +0000

Migue-san is our Tokyo meetup host. You may reach the author at miguel@handmadecities.com

When:

Sunday 15th of February, 3:00pm to 5:30pm

Where

Japan, 〒169-0075 Tokyo, Shinjuku City, Takadanobaba, 4 Chome−9−11 藤和高田馬場コープⅡ 603号

https://maps.app.goo.gl/tFn5GscaVmYBd9um9

Price:

1000¥ To cover the cost of the rental space.

Hey there!

I am pleased to invite you to the 9th edition of our meetup. Spots are limited, so please register early here https://rsvp.handmadecities.com/event/YeUri7y1

We’ll meet for two hours and a half to discuss the projects we’re working on, explore topics related to system programming, software quality and coding from first principles.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me at miguel@handmadecities.com

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

https://handmadecities.com/meetups/tokyo/

Handmade Cities

Seattle Meetup Tomorrow (RSVP Today)

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 01:15:11 +0000

Abner Coimbre is our Seattle meetup host. You may reach the author at abner@handmadecities.com

Dear Handmade folks,

I’m writing this from Peter’s co-working session. It’s so awesome to hang out in Seattle again! Very cozy here with you folks.

Don’t forget to RSVP for our monthly meetup tomorrow. All the details are available on my previous invite. We have important community news, fun presentations and roundtable discussions in store for you.

The entire shop’s reserved for Handmade: let’s order drink and snacks to support them :)

Until tomorrow,
Abner Coimbre

Handmade Meetups DC: POSTPONED, date TBD

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 02:59:02 +0000

Felix Ulmanu is our Washington D.C. meetup host. You may reach the author at felix@handmadecities.com

The meetup previously set for this Sunday is postponed. I will announce the date in the next several days, once I know more about what’s feasible. I’m sorry to reschedule again - this is partly because there may be more snow this weekend, and partly because of some calendar changes on my end after last weekend’s storm.

Let’s make it a great meetup when it happens!

Contact

_felixu_ on Discord, or reply to this email

Note that it appears Gmail may send this announcement to “Promotions”. To prevent this, you can set emails from this address to always go to your primary inbox. (We will never send spam!)

First Vancouver Meetup of the Year is Tomorrow!

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 12:05:00 +0000

Gabriel Dechichi is our Vancouver meetup host. You may reach the author at gabriel@handmadecities.com

Hi there! Happy new year!

Our first Vancouver Handmade Meetup of the year will be this Saturday (tomorrow), January 24th at 2pm PST.

Same location as usual, right next to the Brentwood Town Centre Station.

Location: 1955 Alpha Way, Burnaby BC V5C 0K6
Date: Saturday, January 24th
Time: 2pm - 4pm

On this meetup we will have a very special talk from Sab on handling segfaults when working close to hardware, which many of us were looking forward to, so hope you can all make it!

If you’re considering attending you can RSVP by clicking this link.

Looking forward to meeting y’all soon!

Boston Meetup Reminder

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Margret Riegert is our Boston meetup host. You may reach the author at margret@handmadecities.com

Hello! This is just a friendly reminder about the Handmade meetup tomorrow at the library.

Meetup Details

Date: January 24th, 2026
Time: 12-2pm
Address: 700 Boylston St, Boston, MA 02116
RSVP: https://partiful.com/e/vUcDz66dzwi4k9L6iJiy
Boston Meetup Revolt: https://revolt.handmadecities.com

The Agenda

Software Project Demos: Bring a project you’ve been working on, ask questions, get constructive feedback, etc.
Presentation: Give a mini talk about something you’ve been working on and that you think others in the handmade community would find interesting
Special Topics: Talk as a group about anything relevant in the handmade community
Social After: Afterwards, we can head out and grab something to eat

You’re not required to bring a project or anything; showing up is good enough!

Getting there

We’ll be in the mezzanine conference room #3.

If you enter through the Boylston Street entrance, you want to head to the left and look for where it says Community Learning Center.

D.C. Meetup: POSTPONED to Sunday, 1 February

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Felix Ulmanu is our Washington D.C. meetup host. You may reach the author at felix@handmadecities.com

Due to Winter Storm Fern, the next DC meetup, previously scheduled for this Saturday, is postponed to Sunday, 1 February, from 2pm to 4pm. See the last email for our topic and location, which both remain unchanged. Sorry for the trouble, and we hope to see you soon!

Contact

_felixu_ on Discord, or reply to this email

Note that it appears Gmail may send this announcement to “Promotions”. To prevent this, you can set emails from this address to always go to your primary inbox. (We will never send spam!)

Friday Co-Working in Kirkland

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Taylor Robbins is our Kirkland co-working host. You may reach the author at taylor@handmadecities.com

Dear Handmade folks,

Tomorrow is another co-working session in Kirkland! I’ll be starting a new job in February so the meetup hosting may change hands or change times, but for now it’s business as usual (and likely Feb 6th will be normal as well). Come hang out, anyone is welcome, even if you need to work on your day-job tasks while you’re there, but we always love hearing what people are working on if you have something to share.

When: 2:00pm-5:00pm (Friday January 23rd)

Where: Thruline Coffee - 136 Park Ln, Kirkland, WA 98033

I still recommend charging your laptop beforehand, but if you need we often get the table in the back with an outlet and I’ll bring a extension cord + splitter. If you don’t see us when you first walk in make sure you check behind the counter on the right, the table we sit at is not visible from the door.

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to reach out! (reply to this email, or DM/ping on Discord @ProfessorSil)

Revolt for Fast Updates

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 22:32:38 +0000

Abner Coimbre is our Seattle meetup host. You may reach the author at abner@handmadecities.com

TL;DR: Request invite codes for Revolt today! Check out our brand new wiki. Finally, the Seattle co-working session is cancelled as we potentially switch venues.

Seattle area folks,

Happy 2026!

Our Discord server is no more: as I promised last summer (see Discord Off-Ramp section) and then very explicitly in the fall. Indeed I’m going underground to promote offline meetups - may the power of word-of-mouth bless the community.

My own account is scheduled for deletion.

Discord said it will take up to 14 days, so I don’t know if that means my account appears active? Anyway, if you’re sending me DMs there I’m not seeing them.

Keeping up with Handmade Cities

There’s three official ways to keep tabs on things. As we go down this list the frequency of updates goes way up:

Public Newsletter: this is the slowest one. You get a Press Release newsletter once in a blue moon, because it’s intended for a mass audience. I take into account the events occuring at other Handmade meetups around the world.
Seattle Mailing List: you’re already part of this! You get notifications about monthly meetups, co-working sessions or just critical announcements like our Discord shutting down.
Chat Server: Revolt is the new real-time chat. I send messages there every other day: some of them bubble up to the mailing list and, eventually, a public newsletter.

For Revolt we have an application process for you to get an invite code.

Quick Guide

We’re excited to announce the HMC Guide: a proper wiki to document how our community is structured:

In the new spirit of handing off ownership to trusted community members, our friend Zac Nowicki is editor of Handmade Cities. If you spot inaccuracies or valuable missing info shoot him a message at zac@handmadecities.com.

Seattle Co-Work on Pause

I am scoping out new venues for co-working in Seattle today. There’s a strong chance we’re going to use the ol’ Third Place Books for the monthly meetup after-party (instead of co-working.)

Our best candidate for a new co-working venue is Armistice Coffee, which is in the Roosevelt neighborhood as always. Anyway, until the dust settles I am canceling the co-working session today. Forgive me and stay tuned on this front.

Your independent organizer,
Abner Coimbre

Boston Meetup 01/24

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Margret Riegert is our Boston meetup host. You may reach the author at margret@handmadecities.com

Meetup Details

Date: January 24th, 2026
Time: 12-2pm
Address: 700 Boylston St, Boston, MA 02116
RSVP: https://partiful.com/e/vUcDz66dzwi4k9L6iJiy
Boston Meetup Revolt: https://revolt.handmadecities.com

The Agenda

Software Project Demos: Bring a project you’ve been working on, ask questions, get constructive feedback, etc.
Presentation: Give a mini talk about something you’ve been working on and that you think others in the handmade community would find interesting
Special Topics: Talk as a group about anything relevant in the handmade community
Social After: Afterwards, we can head out and grab something to eat

You’re not required to bring a project or anything; showing up is good enough!

Getting there

We’ll be in the mezzanine conference room #3.

If you enter through the Boylston Street entrance, you want to head to the left and look for where it says Community Learning Center.

D.C. Meetup: API Design & Single-Header Libraries

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Felix Ulmanu is our Washington D.C. meetup host. You may reach the author at felix@handmadecities.com

Join us this Saturday, 24 January 2026, from 1:45pm to 2:45pm, to discuss API design and single-header libraries. How should we structure and program libraries to impose as few usage constraints as possible? We’ll look at the STB libraries and other examples as case studies.

Please note the slightly different time than usual (though after 2:45pm, we may continue chatting over lunch nearby). We’re still at the West End Library, 2301 L St NW, Washington, DC 20037, in Meeting Room 2. See you soon!

Contact

_felixu_ on Discord, or reply to this email

Note that it appears Gmail may send this announcement to “Promotions”. To prevent this, you can set emails from this address to always go to your primary inbox. (We will never send spam!)

Computer Club - Atelier Hivernal - Lyon

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Martin Fouilleul is our French meetup host. You may reach the author at martin@handmadecities.com

Bonjour, et bonne année,

Pierre-Louis, que vous avez déjà pu croiser aux meetups Grenoblois, vous propose une nouvelle après-midi d’échanges et de bricolage autour de vos projets software/hardware. Ça se passe le 17 janvier à partir de 14h, à Grrrnd Zero, 60 avenue de Bohlen, Vaulx-en-Velin.

La capacité maximale étant de 10 personnes, pensez à réserver à l’avance en écrivant à meetup@pld.tf. Un repas est proposé pour les personnes en avance entre 12h30 et 13h30, merci de prévenir lors de votre réservation.

En espérant vous y retrouver nombreux·ses !

Martin

Friday Co-Working in Kirkland

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Taylor Robbins is our Kirkland co-working host. You may reach the author at taylor@handmadecities.com

Dear Handmade folks,

Happy New Year! Tomorrow is our first Kirkland Co-Working session of 2026. Now that the holidays are done it’s back to work, and what better way to work than in the company of others. Come hang out, anyone is welcome, even if you need to work on your day-job tasks while you’re there, but we always love hearing what people are working on if you have something to share.

When: 2:00pm-5:00pm (Friday January 9th)

Where: Thruline Coffee - 136 Park Ln, Kirkland, WA 98033

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to reach out! (reply to this email, or DM/ping on Discord @ProfessorSil)

Correction: Handmade London Meetup, January 18th

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Jacques Heunis is our London meetup host. You may reach the author at jacques@handmadecities.com

Hey everyone

Just a correction from my previous email since the subject disagreed with the body on the date of the next meetup. As shown on the event page the event will be on the 18th of January, not the 11th.

Sorry for the confusion, please do not show up at The Fellow on the 11th!

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Jacques

London Meetup, January 11th

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Jacques Heunis is our London meetup host. You may reach the author at jacques@handmadecities.com

Hey everyone

It’s now 2026, time for everybody to mis-type the year for the next two months! \\o/ More importantly, its a new month and that means a new meetup. I’m sending this out a bit late so we’ll schedule for the 18th of January.

As usual we’ll book a table at The Fellow (a pub near Kings Cross Station, N1 9AA). There’s no agenda so anybody is free to bring any topics or demos that they’d like to discuss. If anybody wants to bring a laptop or gadget or what-have-you to demo something that’s awesome but most often its just a casual chat about recent projects or topics that interest people. The only ask is that attendees grab a drink or some food to compensate the pub for so kindly allowing us to use their space.

We’ll schedule for 14:00 on the 18th of January (2 weeks from now) and people are welcome to stay for as long as they fancy. Since space is limited, please do respond on the event page here by the end of Sunday the 11th if you’d like to attend, just so that I can make a reservation for the table.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Jacques

Seattle Conference Instructions

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 12:00:00 +0000

All the details for Handmade Seattle Lite happening this Saturday.

Dear Handmade folks,

I’m motivated to see you this weekend. This is a reminder there was a whole shakeup and downsizing. With that said, everyone attending is in great spirits and we’re looking to get inspired.

Where do we meet?

The full schedule is on the Seattle page: we discuss the presentations, venue details and any instructions or contingency plans.

I’ll be at the entrance to One Bite Cafe (Seattle) at 1:45PM. At 2:05 I’ll start turning on the A/V equipment. If you’re arriving late, please enter the coffee shop quietly and order some snacks to support this family business. Then find any available seat and enjoy the show!

If you’re lost, email me at abner@handmadecities.com as I’ll be paying attention to it every few minutes until we begin at 2:30PM.

Can I demo something?

If we have extra time after the proper presentations, attendees can demo their own Handmade projects: it can be a side-project, but it can also be commercial software you work on, as long as you get into interesting technical details (we don’t want this to be an ad.)

What do we do after the meetup?

The plan is to go until 5PM or so. For those with time and motivation left, we’ll walk to a nearby pizza place followed by drinks at the pub. All of these small shops know about Handmade Cities and appreciate our business. It’s fun to play it by ear, so we’ll decide where to eat and drink in person based on attendance size.

Can I still RSVP?

If you’re subscribed to the Seattle mailing list you should receive an RSVP link on Wednesday December 3rd, 2025. Ticket holders don’t need to RSVP.

Please reach out to me if you never received that invite and I’ll send you a copy.

Your indie organizer,
Abner Coimbre

Additional FAQ

I’m a 2024 fundraiser supporter. Can I join?

If you got lifetime perks from the 2024 fundraiser, you can join all future Handmade events including this one. Just state your name when I see you! It also helps to let me know ahead of time you wish to RSVP, since I can’t always guarantee a seat.

I’m a monthly donor. Can I join?

If you’re a monthly donor to Handmade Cities, you can join all future Handmade events including this one. Just state your name when I see you! It also helps to let me know ahead of time you wish to RSVP, since I can’t always guarantee a seat.

I’m a regular Seattle meetup member

If you’ve attended our monthly meetups or weekly co-working sessions somewhat regularly, you should be fine for this event! First come, first served in terms of available seats, with priority given to ticket holders.

Can I bring my laptop for my demo?

Of course; the coffee shop will have a projector screen with HDMI cable. I should also have an adapter for Macbooks.

Please bring your laptop fully charged. If your laptop isn’t HDMI-compatible and it isn’t a Macbook, you should carry any special cables or adapters that you need.

Revolt Against Discord

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 12:00:00 +0000

Handmade Cities is leaving Discord by end of the year.

Time to Revolt against Discord. Savor the refrain while it lasts, because Revolt will become Stoat eventually. Their rebrand doesn’t change anything about joining now. Your Revolt account will stay the same. Indeed, I’ll call it “Revolt” for the rest of this post.

You might wonder why this move needs to happen in the first place. First, it’s a principles thing. We want to own chat data to align closer with the values on our About page. On Discord, meanwhile, communities can be (and have been) shut down with no recourse. Second, there’s real cybersecurity concerns. Discord has asked for government ID verification and passed that data to third parties — nearly 100k IDs were exposed in a vendor breach. That’s not acceptable. Ironically, it appears to be their customer support and “Trust & Safety” teams that were collecting this data. Now it’s in the hands of hackers:

“The hackers who compromised Discord are now sharing examples of what they say is stolen data, including selfies of Americans and Canadians holding up IDs.” -PCMag

So much for trust. Or safety.

Finally, note that I’m encouraging people to touch grass. I’ve sketched a path for top engineers to live without addictive social media. Revolt as an invite‑only, verified‑human space is a core piece of that plan.

Did you just say invite-only? How do I join Revolt?

Invitations will come only from official meetup hosts or directly from me. If we’ve met at a conference, meetup, or co‑working session, message us and we’ll likely invite you. I’m the one who grants the Verified Human badge and I’ll do so if a host can vouch for you. This is an imperfect system and it still requires moderation, of course, but it places a premium on trust over open discoverability. Which is exactly the point.

UPDATE 1/12/2026: Users can now request invite codes directly.

Addressing common objections

There are three typical arguments against using Revolt that I should tackle here.

“Revolt will be a walled garden like Discord and therefore not crawlable.” I believe that private, ephemeral conversations should remain private. We can curate and surface the best technical discussions into a public wiki so important knowledge isn’t lost.
“Abner is a dictator." Guilty as charged. I’m running this as a BDFL, with a decade of organizing Handmade since my early college days. There’s an escape hatch though, because every meetup host can dump their mailing list locally. I don’t lock people in. This cuts both ways too: hosts who violate community values – e.g. running meetups sponsored by Microsoft – are cut off from the water tap. They won’t be able to send newsletters nor access new subscribers to the mailing list.
“There’s some friction and missing features.” Revolt is lighter than Discord. I call it Discord Lite™ and it carries a few annoyances:

You can’t point the Revolt app to a custom domain. There is a workaround for this: visit revolt.handmadecities.com in your phone’s native browser (Safari on iOS). Now hit Add to Home Screen and the PWA you just installed behaves like any other electron app.
Missing bells & whistles. There’s no message pinning, no threads, and limitations on emoji reactions. These are irritations to me, not deal breakers. Many people find Revolt snappier with zero loading times.
Lack of E2EE. Discord has this problem too. Handmade Cities policy is to safeguard private DMs and never inspect their contents, but you’re choosing to trust us instead of Discord. Never disclose sensitive material on our servers; instead you should ask the person you’re talking to for their Signal username and hop over there.

Final Notes

To summarize: Our new Revolt is invite‑only. You must be a verified human; either I know you, or a meetup host does. The easiest way to get invited is to attend an in‑person event. If this feels like too much, consider this your warning: the Discord goes kaput after New Year’s Eve. Exchange contact info, save any important links, and follow our public newsletter to stay updated, with or without Revolt/Stoat.

Your indie organizer,
Abner Coimbre

Farewell to Distant Worlds

Fri, 29 Aug 2025 12:00:00 +0000

A special Handmade meetup: one of Seattle’s most popular coffee shops is winding down.

Allen Webster is a meetup host for Seattle. You may reach the author at allen@handmadecities.com

Seattle area folks,

As the last Saturday of the month approaches, we’re looking forward to our usual Handmade meetup, but a few things will be very different this month. Please read to the end to catch all the details.

The big news:

First and foremost, the venue we have been with since the beginning, Distant Worlds Coffeehouse, is closing on August 31st, making our meetup one of the last events to occur in the space. This news came rather suddenly and saddens us deeply, not to mention the owner and staff at Distant Worlds. Abner has made an effort to reach out to as many people as possible to give Distant Worlds the send off they deserve, and all sales will go towards an employee severance fund, so please buy your drinks and snacks as usual (or splurge!)

Distant Worlds - Seattle Roosevelt

Second, while Abner will still be in attendance, he wants to focus at least some of his attention on talking with the staff with whom he has a long standing relationship. So he’s asked me, his backup host, to step in for the month. Many of you may know me, but in case you don’t I look forward to meeting you. I am Allen Webster, creator of 4coder and Mr. 4th Lab, and I’ve been the host of a few meetups before, so you’re still in good hands.

The details:

Where: Distant Worlds Coffeehouse (in Seattle)
When: Saturday, August 30th, 2PM-4PM
Parking: While there is street parking around the neighborhood, the most reliable place to park is “Green Lake Park & Ride”.
Afterwards those who are up for more time together migrate down the road for pizza and time at the pub.

Submitting Topics:

Many of us in the community work on software projects on our own. The goal of the meetup is to get a chance to get help where we’re stuck, to get feedback on what we’ve built, and to practice explaining our ideas to other programmers.

Usually we gather up topics on the fly at the start of the meetup, but to make the most of our time I am going to try an experiment!

I’m asking you to take a few minutes to write a short pitch of what you’d like to bring and send it to me ahead of time at allenw@mr4th.com. Tell me about your topic, and what questions you might like to get answers to, what new features of your project you might like to demo, or what you’d like a chance to discuss.

I will sort through pre-submitted topics ahead of time to pick an order and see how much time we can give each topic, that way we can dive right in. I want to be sure we pack our last meetup at Distant Worlds with as many opportunities for people to participate as possible, while we celebrate our meetup community. I’ll still take topics on the fly if there’s time, but I’m going to give first priority to pre-submitted topics.

See you on Saturday!

-Allen

Employee Severance Fund

Staff Note: Can’t make it in person? Use the Employee Severance Fund button above!

Boston Conference Instructions

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 12:00:00 +0000

All the details for our special event in Boston this weekend.

UPDATED 8/15: Additional FAQ at the end

Dear Handmade folks,

I’m motivated to see you this weekend. This is a reminder there was a shakeup and downsizing that you can read about here. With that said, everyone attending is in great spirits and we’re looking to get inspired.

Where do we meet?

I’ll be at the entrance to the Boston Public Library at 1:45PM. At 2:05 I’ll start heading to the conference room. If you’re arriving late, our friend Caden (who kindly reserved the space for us) has this for instructions:

It’s Mezzanine Conference Room 2. From the entrance on Boylston street, you veer slightly to the left to the DVD section, and go up the stairs. From there you’ll be able to see all the mezzanine conference rooms.

If you’re still lost, you should ask library staff how to get to Mezzanine Conference Room 2.

Can I demo something?

What do we do after the meetup?

The plan is to go until 5PM or so. For those with time and motivation left, we’ll walk to a nearby park for casual chatter until we do a 6PM dinner together. It’s fun to play it by ear, so we’ll decide where to eat and drink in person!

I’m here in Boston already

Make sure you’re in the HMC Discord so you can sync up with other attendees in the area. There’s a public #handmade-boston channel and a private meetups-boston channel and you may use either of them.

NOTE: If you don’t see the private #meetups-boston channel, select Channels & Roles in your Discord app and choose “Boston” as a city of interest.

Your indie organizer,
Abner Coimbre

Additional FAQ

I’m a 2024 fundraiser supporter. Can I join?

I’m a monthly donor. Can I join?

I’m a regular Boston meetup member

If you’ve attended Caden’s Handmade Meetups somewhat regularly, you should be fine for this event! First come, first served in terms of available seats.

Can I bring my laptop for my demo?

Of course; the conference room has a giant TV with HDMI cable. I should also have an adapter for Macbooks.

Please bring your laptop fully charged in case we run out of outlets. If your laptop isn’t HDMI-compatible and it isn’t a Macbook, you should carry any special cables or adapters that you need.

Winding Down

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 12:00:00 +0000

Our conferences are coming to an end. I am re-evaluating how we socialize.

Dear Handmade folks,

This shutdown isn’t the end of Handmade Cities, but it does mean we’re ending our conferences in favor of local meetups. I’m officially collaborating with The Offline Club in the future, since we both agreed we admire each other’s efforts.

Personally I’m optimistic for what’s on the horizon. However, in this post I need to be blunt about reality. Stand strong.

REMINDER: Handmade Cities is NOT affiliated with Handmade Hero nor the Handmade Network. We share the brand and that’s it.

What does it mean for the conferences in 2025?

The Boston and Seattle dates stay on the calendar, but they’re meetups now; likely bigger than usual, just not a traditional tech conference. I expect the lectures and demos to remain exciting but in smaller packaging.

This change is reflected in Boston already, which is coming up this weekend. We changed the venue from the increasingly expensive JFK Presidential Library to the Boston Public Library instead:

Entrance to BPL

I’ve disabled the tickets portal and, if there’s room, new folks can join free. E-mail me to RSVP: abner@handmadecities.com. We’ll meet in front of the library Saturday at 2PM: plus ones welcome.

Ticket holders disappointed with this change can email me directly at abner@handmadecities.com to negotiate refunds. I’ve got sunk costs, so refunds might take up to a small number of weeks. However, I’m already processing them as fast as I can, and I’m deeply grateful to the folks allowing me to keep their contribution.

These upcoming events will be delightful all the same.

Why I’m doing this

This story has two parts: financial and personal.

Financial

I hinted at economic trouble at the beginning of this summer update and in the bottom section of my Terminal Click announcement. It’s common knowledge profitable conferences are a dying breed and I’m surprised I’ve lasted this long: Deconstruct, Strangeloop, Bang Bang Con, XOXO and other small-to-medium sized events vanished. Even corporate-backed conferences are no longer around: O’Reilly, Xfest, E3 and so on went away.

Personal

In the last Handmade Seattle I made a mistake with the balance of content. It was definitely jarring to have little in the way of old-school technical presentations. This caused a 50-50 split of positive versus negative feedback: the positive commentary came largely from newcomers, while the negative came largely from veterans. The reader can visit older blog posts where I apologized and asked for feedback.

However, I stand by all my speakers and refuse to add disclaimers/warnings inside published recordings. It is obvious giving speakers air time doesn’t mean I endorse all their views. In any case, the most controversial talk by far was Andrew Kelley’s keynote on Day One. I received a barrage of vile essays in my Inbox, Discord DMs, and unlisted YouTube videos calling me a communist (what?) for platforming Andrew’s message. I lost genuine friendships from people who were caught up in the heat of it all.

This was personally traumatic, and I can’t use this trauma to justify running half-hearted conferences, which is an important reason for stopping them.

UPDATE 8/18/25: In my original post I aired dirty laundry, which feeds into online drama I’m supposed to denounce. It is now removed.

Nature is healing

The Handmade meetups are awesome and they keep growing. We nerd out with demos and side projects. We help local programmers find work or make new friends every month. I train and mentor hosts, then they take the reins, so the scene is decentralized and self-sustaining. Meetups are cheap or free to run so I don’t have to chase big revenue. Meanwhile, building Terminal Click as an indie dev is therapy compared to wrangling humans for a living!

An impressive number of people who ended their relationship with me have apologized as of late. I’ve forgiven them.

UPDATE 8/18/25: In my original post I posted examples of private apologies, which is unfair to those friends. These are now removed.

Could things have been different?

Without social media we could’ve had more perspective: in the end this was just one event. In fact a Seattle meetup member called me a “young grasshopper.” That caught me off guard until I looked around. Important things take time indeed: TED Talks have existed for four decades; DEFCON is thirty years old; many open-source conferences spent twenty years figuring things out. Herding cats is slow and messy.

I’m done running conferences though. Besides the reasons above, they feed the egos of a few “anointed” speakers and require a social media hustle I just won’t play. I’m opting out. I’m excited about building stuff that gets people offline: better meetups, our own server racks, and self-hosted tools for indie devs with serious Handmade projects.

I’ll keep publishing newsletters here and on Terminal Click, and occasionally on my personal website. I’d still love to see you at our upcoming events, even if they’re not fancy conferences.

See you offline,
Abner Coimbre

Our Summer Update

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 12:00:00 +0000

Catch up on our progress this year. Ticket discounts are ending soon!

Things to Discuss

Conference Theme: Handmade at Home
Discord Off-Ramp
My Thoughts on AI
Bonus Video: Is Handmade like Suckless?

Dear community member,

Summer is here! I’ve extended the Spring Sale a few more days, but the discounts vanish after Wednesday:

Check out our new downloadable calendar to keep track of event dates.

“Handmade at Home”

This year’s conference theme is Handmade at Home, and it has two meanings.

Meaning #1: Cleaning House

With our industry in upheaval, it’s tricky to settle down and reflect, let alone evangelize our values. Here’s what we’re facing:

Handmade Cities is full of gamedevs and they’re in very hot water
International attendance is dropping to near zero. I’m not the only organizer suffering consequences
Morale is at an all-time low due to AI (more on this later)

Therefore I’m keen for talks or demos that offer hope, strategies, and inspiration against these grim realities. The theme is open-ended.

Reminder: Our new content will be 80% technical and 20% about programmer well-being.

Meaning #2: Elevate Our Own Talent

Historically, I’ve chosen high-profile speakers outside our community to come talk to us. This is valuable. However, I haven’t spent nearly enough time platforming community voices.

We have astounding system programmers at our meetups and I wish to hear from them.

Seattle Coworking Session (2025)

Someone reading this may be a worthy candidate and not even know it. Send an informal proposal to submissions@handmadecities.com

Submit a Talk

Discord Off-Ramp

It’s not controversial to say I want to shut down Discord: everyone can sympathize for one reason or another! I’ve left all servers except for my own HMC and TC for now.

I’m moving us to Revolt through an invite-only system. Here’s how it’ll work:

I invite people I know personally
Meetup hosts can invite their meetup groups
Conference ticket holders are auto-invited (2025 onwards)

Indeed, meetup hosts will send chat invites with my command-line tool, which they already use to send newsletters. (I’m in the middle of completing this feature.)

Revolt is an open-source Discord copycat (and that’s a good thing)

I am, in essence, heeding the advice of this HN comment:

I honestly couldn’t tell you right now what the long game looks like. Only to find your humans, build your digital fortresses, and help each other as best you can.

Revolt won’t be foolproof of course. The host could go rogue and invite randos, or the ticket holder might take on a fake identity. I’m fine with some cracks on the floor though. This transition is happening over the summer and I’ll keep folks posted if they’re subscribed.

My Thoughts on AI

All right, it’s a stretch to call my take on artificial intelligence a “real” philosophy, but it is informed from careful study.

I’m no longer a stranger to AI; I can effectively use the cline bot and deploy MCP servers. I review, quantize, and self-host open models. I stay on top of the “latest and greatest” and have vibe coders on speed dial (I keep dissenting opinions closer than friends.)

So what’s the conclusion? I offer two.

Cline Bot - Landing Page

Conclusion #1: Handmade Ethos is Competitive

Serious Handmade projects, like my own Terminal Click, don’t gain from AI. It does help at the margins: I’ve delegated website work since last year, and I enjoy seamless CI/CD for my builds. This is meaningful.

However, it fails at novel problems and isn’t practical for my systems programming work. (Skeptics should check out the bonus video at the end.)

Conclusion #2: A Market for the Artisanal

Let’s imagine LLM agents become essential for true innovation: the top 5% of ‘manual’ coders are officially threatened! From what I observe at our in-person events, there remains the eternal craving for what’s purely human.

Even True Believers conceded to me users will crave Handmade projects the same way people crave artisanal crafts, furniture or goods. They called this futuristic market fringe - I call it sustainable.

TL;DR: I don’t lose sleep over my craft disappearing. I lose sleep over the automation of mediocrity.

Is Handmade like Suckless? (Video)

Anyone who made it this far deserves a cool video! I’ve set up a permalink at terminal.click/suckless

Over the years some new community members often think suckless and Handmade are similar if not the same. Out of respect for both, I feel it’s time to respond.

The payoff is worthwhile if viewers watch patiently.

P.S. Don’t expect a deep philosophical breakdown. Instead, I casually compare their signature terminal software against my own: two real-world products from competing ideologies.

Your indie organizer,
Abner Coimbre

Handmade Cities 2025

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 12:00:00 +0000

Conference tickets, community submissions, our new advisory board, and more.

Things to Discuss:

Spring Ticket Sale
Call for Submissions
Our New Advisory Board
New Meetup Hosts
Terminal Click - Beta Access

Dear Conference Goer,

Since my last newsletter about parting ways with Handmade Network, things have been moving fast. I’ve got plenty of exciting news to share today!

Spring Ticket Sale

I’m excited to announce the Spring Sale for Handmade Cities 2025! This year, we’re hosting Boston in the Summer and Seattle in the Fall.

Discounted Tickets

These are now weekend conferences. Furthermore, Boston and Seattle are spaced further apart, giving our events a lot more breathing room.

The agenda isn’t finalized yet (hence the discounts), but we’ve already listed some promising presenters. If you’ve attended since 2019, you know we’re keen to deliver better conferences every year. (And trust me, last year was full of valuable lessons.)

Call for Submissions

We’re officially accepting talk and demo submissions for both conferences! Whether you have a technical lecture, a short talk, or a software demo, we’d love to hear from you.

Submit your proposals to: submissions@handmadecities.com

You’ll find a submission button on the Boston and Seattle pages too. Further news or deadlines will be posted there.

Our New Advisory Board

We’ve ratified a new Advisory Board to help guide Handmade Cities.
The board meets monthly to discuss progress with the conferences and meetups, offer feedback to presenters, or vote on community submissions. While I could in theory override their votes, any such action shall be made public in our meeting notes—serving as checks and guardrails.

New Meetup Hosts

Despite the interesting economy, our local meetups are thriving! This year, we’ve officially launched meetups in Tokyo and Berlin with Vancouver, Canada making a strong comeback.

A huge thanks to our hosts for fostering monthly gatherings of programmers who embody the Handmade ethos. If you’d like to join or wishlist a meetup in your city, visit handmadecities.com/meetups.

Interested in hosting a meetup? Email us at support@handmadecities.com!

Terminal Click - Beta Access

The closed beta for Terminal Click is in full swing. If you’ve attended (or plan to attend) Handmade Boston, you automatically qualify for access. Just email me at abner@terminal.click to get your download link.

Note: Please use the same email address that you used to book a conference ticket.

My latest April devlog, The Wizard and His Shell, hit the top spot on Lobsters for multiple days. It’s been fascinating to see the growing commentary with each devlog we release.

I believe it’s crucial for leadership to independently ship Handmade software. That’s why I’m sharing this project here—it’s a direct reflection of the ethos we’re building together.

In closing, I hope you’ll register for the conferences. If you like what I’m doing, registering early is the best way to show your support, and it means the world to me.

Your independent organizer,
Abner Coimbre

Splitting from Handmade Network

Sat, 01 Feb 2025 12:00:00 +0000

Handmade Cities (HMC) and Handmade Network (HMN) are going their own ways.

Dear Handmade folks,

The title of this newsletter is eye-catching but the breakup between Handmade Cities (HMC) and Handmade Network (HMN) leadership was amicable in the end. However, I’m sure you have questions. I’ll do my best to address the ones I’ve received in-person already!

Disagreements on Governance

There’s fundamental disagreements between the two organizations on directing the brand. Note that, legally speaking, we’re separate entities. For better or worse the Handmade movement was already split into three hubs:

Handmade Hero, by Molly Rocket Inc.
Handmade Network, managed by their own non-profit
Handmade Cities, which is my own small business

Therefore the divorce is pretty clean as it is. Any mention of collaborations between the two parties is no longer valid. For my part I wish them all the best with their newfound freedom. As original founder, I hope they prosper.

That should cover the important details. You can talk to me if you require more context.

Implications for Community Members

No implications for you. It is absurd to demand loyalties from anyone. You’re welcome to flit between any community as you see fit; you should derive value from us without politics getting in the way.

The majority HMC community comes from this newsletter and meetups mailing list. We also have an HMC Discord for additional coordination of in-person events.

Handmade Cities Roadmap & Recordings

What I said two newsletters ago about the roadmap continues to apply. Nothing has changed except that, as you can well imagine, we’re getting a late start. What I wanted for January should now be happening during February.

I’m excited for you to access new conference recordings and I’m terribly sorry for the wait.

Terminal Click Ships This Weekend

One funny outcome of the 2024 conference is that detractors argue Handmade Cities doesn’t care about shipping software (even though we’ve had plenty of speakers who’ve shipped.) That we’re focused exclusively on activism.

First off, I stand by all my speakers and guests. They are excellent programmers in their own right and the majority of our audience agrees. Second, we can prove them wrong starting from the top; this weekend I’m shipping Terminal Click: a native desktop terminal that’s killing the shell.

We’re in a closed beta first: Windows, Mac, and Linux users all welcome. Handmade Boston attendees (all tracks) have priority because I promised them access as a thank you for attending a lesser-known conference. Two ways to get in:

Email my other address (abner@terminal.click) with a request. Let me know which HMB you attended to verify (2023 or 2024)
Visit the TC server at terminal.click/discord and ping me there

Software You Can Love (Vancouver) should also receive access, after I coordinate with the organizer. Anyone else that’s interested can still message me and let me know why they’re a good fit.

My Own Views

In my haste to find some peace in the last newsletter, my personal values were obscured. Let’s not forget them:

If we could wave a magic wand, I’d have the Handmade way be the ethos of every programmer
If we could wave a magic wand, I’d have indie devs and small software shops multiply like rabbits
If we could wave a magic wand, I’d have all of us (myself included) gain superb social and marketing skills
If we could wave a magic wand, I’d have tech workers join guilds or unions
If we could wave a magic wand, I’d erode corporate power

Handmade Cities is about becoming a better programmer. For the next conferences I want 80% of content to be classic engineering presentations. However, the remaining 20% must incorporate discussions beyond programming, including the rights and well-being of tech workers (e.g. those who were laid off in droves.) As an attendee that doesn’t mean you’ll agree with everything we say, of course.

With this official 80/20 split if Handmade Seattle has ten talks that means two of them won’t be about pure software. You’ve been warned. In upcoming news I’ll discuss the revamped submission process to ensure we represent as much of the audience as possible.

Personal Website

It’s abner.page from now on. It’s not currently pointing anywhere; I’ll resurrect everything soon enough.

If you’re wondering what happened to abnercoimbre.com I forgot to set auto-renew and now someone’s squatting it. Crazier things occurred during the online drama. It’s part of the job I guess, though I can’t wait for local meetups to keep growing.

The more of us communicate in meatspace, the better.

Your independent organizer,
Abner Coimbre

Let's Clear The Air

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 05:00:00 +0000

A follow-up to the previous newsletter titled “My Honest Take”

This update primarily addresses community veterans, so it may feel a bit like inside baseball! The focus is mainly on how the content of Handmade Seattle has evolved and diverged from its original direction.

Dear Handmade Community,

Wow, a lot of people read my last newsletter. Two sections—“2024: A Gap Year” and “When the Industry Suffers, We Listen”—sparked strong reactions. They struck like a lightning bolt. Some loved it, some loathed it, and others fell in between. I want to address the concerns and clarify where I think I misstepped.

On “2024: A Gap Year”

This year is not a pivot. Handmade Seattle remains interested in technical depth. If you’ve noticed a broader trend of moving away from old-school talks, I think that’s fair to discuss, though I’d ask we don’t lump 2024 into that particular story. I explained some of my challenges in the previous newsletter, but ultimately I failed to ensure we included that type of content.

Also, I didn’t emphasize strongly enough just how much I personally want to return to a full slate of technical talks. I crave them too. For anyone who didn’t get their fill, I understand. We’ll need time to see me build that track record once again.

Keynote Talk

Regarding Andrew Kelley’s keynote, I should mention I personally want small businesses to flourish in the software space. I want more programmers selling closed-source binaries at a profit, not less. Seeing Handmade devs thriving in this way is my own dream: Andrew knows this! At the same time, I found his formulation of the problems in our industry compelling, even if I disagree with some of his solutions.

On My Rant

I said something unfair in the last newsletter:

“I’m struck by the ignorance from some audience members.”

This was directed at a small subset of interactions I had in person. That doesn’t excuse the comment, and I regret expressing my frustration this way.

To explain, though not excuse: the financial and logistical challenges for Handmade Cities this year were immense. Some costs tripled, venues demanded massive upfront payments, and negotiations were draining. On top of this, I saw firsthand the toll the economy has taken on friends, colleagues, and community members. I let my frustration spill over in the wrong direction.

My Two Requests

To move forward, I ask two things of you:

See 2024 as unique, not the new normal.
I’m returning to old-school content, with a sprinkle of the non-technical, though sparingly.
Talk to me.
Indie conferences allow direct feedback. If you loved a talk or demo, tell me. If you were disappointed, tell me that too. I’ll listen.

I hope this assuages the camp that feels alienated, even if just a little bit.

On Communication

Handmade Cities and Handmade Network are separate entities with a shared vision. If you’re upset about something Handmade Cities did, reach out to me directly. If it’s Handmade Network, Ben Visness is your point of contact. If it’s about both of us, email both of us!

Although we’re often happy to be surrogates for each other, it helps a lot when important feedback reaches the right human.

The community spans many spaces—some important folks aren’t on Discord, while others engage primarily online. I think we’ll need better ways to connect these groups. We’re keen on solving the challenge of clearer feedback across the various subsections of Handmade.

A Closing Note

I’m still me—still in love with Handmade software (and a couple other things), still re-watching Eskil Steenberg for the umpteenth time. I’m still excited to return to programming during Christmas break and avoiding humans :)

If I’ve let you down, please don’t let it fester. Email me, message me, or find me at an in-person event. We might end up not seeing eye to eye anyway, but at least we talked about it. Some of you have already started doing this and that means a lot to me.

Let’s also all try to rest this holiday season.

All the best,
Abner

My Honest Take

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 05:00:00 +0000

A personal reflection on the latest conference while looking ahead to 2025.

My Dear Audience,

Another conference is in the books!

I’ll be sending ticket holders a private newsletter soon, featuring HMS discounts and promotions to support the conference and the projects we showcased—stay tuned for that!

In the meantime, I’d like to share my own thoughts on how Handmade Cities went this year.

No More Fundraisers

Thanks to your support, Handmade Cities has a solid future again. This year’s fundraiser and the generosity of independent donors saved us, but I’m thrilled to return as a profitable small business again for 2025.

To everyone who bought tickets, both in-person and online, thank you for keeping this dream alive and well. A special shoutout to those who bought tickets even though they were unable to participate: your belief in this conference made all the difference.

While I hope we never need another fundraiser, knowing the community has my back is a privilege I deeply appreciate.

Counting the Wins

This year threw us a lot of unforeseen scenarios. A literal storm caused flight delays and untold power outages, and many had to bow out due to personal or professional obstacles.

Despite all that, we pulled it off.

Big thanks to the Seattle Center for keeping us running during the storm. I relied on our fully-hybrid model, which let presenters showcase demos remotely while attendees stuck at home could still join via livestream or chat. Revolt, our private chat server, was a HUGE improvement over Matrix—so much smoother!

Turnout was strong and the effort everyone put into making their presentations happen, despite the odds, left me feeling proud and grateful. You and my staff members made this year work, and it felt more like a community achievement than ever.

2024: A Gap Year

This year’s talks covered a mix of topics. Some, like the File Pilot podcast, Allen Webster’s Creative Exercises, and Mason’s Vulkan talk embodied the technical, systems-oriented spirit of Handmade. The demos, too, were incredible showcases of our ethos.

At the same time other presentations ventured beyond technical subjects (sometimes far beyond.) While I personally enjoyed them and know the majority of the audience loved it, I want to acknowledge that this year leaned more heavily on non-technical content than intended.

The challenge in 2024 was bandwidth. Handmade-style talks demand a unique headspace and, for speakers outside our community, close collaboration. In previous years I had the capacity to guide this process through in-depth discussions. This year, however, my energy was focused on keeping the business afloat. A great number of speaker candidates also expressed they weren’t in the right mindset for preparing technical topics.

To put it plainly: without relaxing some of our usual expectations, there wouldn’t have been a conference at all.

When the Industry Hurts, We Listen

I’m struck by the ignorance from some audience members. A few seem unaware of the hardships others face, likely because they’ve never personally known anyone who’s been hit hard. Last week alone, at least half a dozen attendees publicly shared how the industry cast them aside, leaving some nearly destitute. Did you reach out to hear their stories? To ask if they had family support to fall back on? And what about those who stayed silent? I know for a fact there are dozens. They might’ve been sitting next to you in the auditorium.

Multiple presenters told me they’ve provided room and board for competent programmers with nowhere else to go. These aren’t isolated cases—they reflect the cascading effects of a struggling economy. If this isn’t on your radar, I urge you to think about it.

Andrew Kelley’s keynote talk addressed these realities. I never asked him to speak about it; he came to me after hearing the same first-hand accounts I did and asked me for a platform. As leaders of software communities, we couldn’t ignore the suffering we were seeing. You may disagree with his solutions, or wish Handmade Cities focused solely on programming. Trust me, I wish we could too. But when the situation is this insane I’m not going to sweep these issues under the rug. Acknowledging legit struggles and brainstorming solutions is part of who we are. Our indie brand gives us the freedom (and I would argue duty) to question the system and the big players without restraint.

I know most of you understood the situation, and I’m grateful.

Roadmap for 2025

Here’s the vision my staff members and I currently have for next year. In no particular order:

1. Handmade Seattle

Our primary goal for Handmade Seattle is to sell out the venue like we did in 2023, this time with full in-person attendance. A packed venue generates good FOMO and amplifies word-of-mouth, triggering exponential growth for the following year (provided the event is a hit). While we achieved the right ticket sales, those attendance numbers fell short, so I’m eager to try again in earnest.

We’re already lining up great speakers, including Billy Basso and Freya Holmér, who will deliver technical deep dives. I’d also love to invite Vjekoslav, creator of File Pilot, to visit us in person too. Stay tuned for more teasers and fresh faces as 2025 unfolds!

2. Handmade Boston

For HMB the focus is in fine-tuning the masterclass formula. It took two years to perfect Handmade Seattle, and Boston seems to be on the same timeline. Thanks to all your feedback, I feel confident about how to structure the content and logistics for 2025 to deliver excellent masterclasses while keeping the online track timely. Fingers crossed as I implement these ideas!

3. Revenue Diversification

I aim to strengthen or add revenue streams. For example a merch shop has been in the works for a good while now. Additionally, as the economy improves, I’ll be more proactive about renting job booths early. The big challenge here is finding companies like Kagi and K&C—who can take criticism—rather than those looking to influence my conference.

I’m also planning to expand benefits for conference members, giving you more reasons to support Handmade Cities with monthly donations.

4. Brand Recognition

We’re boosting our presence across platforms. Alongside Twitch and Vimeo, Handmade Cities now has a YouTube channel!

Beyond conference recordings we plan to stream regularly, featuring interviews, commentary on programming news, and more. The goal is to convert online followers into active participants: whether it’s subscribing to the newsletter, attending local meetups, or buying conference tickets.

Note: While we’re on YouTube, all videos shall remain demonetized. True independence means running the f*ck away from closed-source, corporate algorithms to make a living.

5. Local Meetups

Handmade meetups are vital to our vision. I’m building a platform to replace meetup.com, helping meetup hosts promote and grow their gatherings to uphold the Handmade ethos. If you’re interested, subscribe to your favorite city or add it to the wishlist if it’s not yet an official meetup location.

Want to host one? Let us know and we’ll set up an interview.

Abner’s Christmas Reset

I’m hitting pause to become a systems programmer again in peace and quiet.

After an exhilarating but exhausting year (the most demanding I’ve ever had) I’m ready to recover. I plan to spend this time with my partner and closest friends, keeping my circle tiny to conserve what’s left of my social battery.

While I’ll still be involved in wrapping up Handmade Cities tasks—like finishing this year’s recordings and completing the new website pages—please expect me to be far less reachable. I may pop into email or Discord occasionally but don’t be surprised if my responses are slower than a sloth.

I’ll officially be back early January. That’s when I’ll convene my staff and meetup hosts to launch our strategy for 2025. To stay in touch, all you need is to be subscribed to the newsletter and optionally join the Discord.

See you in the new year. I’ll be rested, recharged, and ready to roll!

Handmade Seattle 2024 Kicks Off Tomorrow!

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Check out the schedule on the conference website to see what sparks your interest.

Hey Handmade folks,

We have incredible presentations waiting for you: talks, demos, fireside chats, and even an exclusive podcast premiere. Tickets are still available if you’d like to support indie conferences like ours.

Hybrid, Always

Whether you’re in person or online, we’re all sharing the same track. The entire conference is livestreamed for free.

In-person tickets get you access to the building, private chat server, and official Friday hangouts.
Online tickets include the private chat server, where you can ask live questions to speakers.

Check-in Details

Registration opens at 9:00 a.m. (Seattle Time) at the Nesholm Family Lecture Hall—not a minute sooner! This location can be found on your favorite Maps app. Please pull up your “General Admission” email with the QR code to check in.

I’ll personally welcome and scan you in until I’m on stage—then my staff will take over. You’ll get a VIP bracelet and, if it’s your first time, a Handmade Seattle wristband (bring yours if you’re a veteran!). The bracelet means no repeated scans, which keeps things smooth.

Job Booths

Virtually every company I reached out to asked me to try again in 2025, but we secured two job booths with many open roles worth checking out (see the companies on the private chat server)!

Even if you don’t match a position perfectly, please apply anyway.

If you’re a thoughtful programmer who values quality, you’re ahead of the game. If you don’t get hired, you’ll make important connections or get serious advice for your next steps.

No Trade Show, But…

To keep our event financially viable in 2024, there’s no in-person trade show this year. Instead, we’ll have dedicated channels in the private chat server for job booths and demos.

Every company or demoer that’s attending in-person will make appearances on stage so you’ll know who they are during lunch breaks and hangouts!

Handmade Seattle isn’t just surviving; it’ll thrive again—storms and all. Some doubted we’d make it this far, but here we are.

We’ve weathered COVID, and we’ll weather this economy too. (Also seriously buy an umbrella.)

Your organizer,
– Abner

Handmade Seattle Almost Here

Thu, 07 Nov 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Hello Handmade Community,

Two weeks left! Here’s what’s ahead at Handmade Seattle.

First I’m excited to announce that we’ve finally shipped a lightning-fast replacement for our old, clunky WordPress site. With support from my staff and the Handmade Network team, we’ve built a site that’s smoother, faster, and way easier to navigate. Though we’re still adding some of the older content, I think you’ll appreciate how much cleaner everything feels: Above is the light theme in honor of Ben Visness, who loves it for unknown reasons.

Special Thanks to Jes and Freya

I want to give a big thanks to Jes Chuhta, a talented designer who shaped the Handmade Cities brand into something that really stands out now. Also, a shoutout to Freya, who is a recurring speaker and friend of Handmade. Jes made it to Handmade Cities because of Freya. She loved the ethos and has since helped us move beyond “programmer art.”

Their influence on Handmade Cities is unmistakable.

Handmade Seattle in Two Weeks

The conference is nearly here: Wednesday - Friday, November 20 - 22nd 2024.

The lineup is finally coming together. Admittedly, it’s not finalized yet, but it’s really shaping up well. I acknowledge that having to wait is not ideal, because an official lineup is the lifeblood of a conference. That said if you trust us, please register early so we can push through this year and make a strong comeback in 2025.

P.S. Friday will be all about in-person hangouts. No livestream, just real connection.

Why Boston Recordings Are Delayed

This year came down to either closing up shop or finding a way to press on through the bad economy. I chose the latter, which has meant smaller attendance, slow-ass responses from yours truly, and difficulties with advance planning. Even worse it’s also meant some delays, especially the Boston in-person recordings for online ticket holders. If you’re tired of waiting, send me an email, and I’ll make sure to process a refund.

I’m committed to editing and publishing the recordings shortly after Handmade Seattle.

When I asked in Discord if I should have perhaps shut down, you all told me to keep going, and I’m grateful. Most in-person conferences that pause don’t return. Your encouragement has kept me motivated.

That said, I apologize for this year’s circumstances. I really should have done a better job communicating the state of affairs on the regular.

We’re Still Alive, and 100% Independent

In my opinion, surviving a bad year brings immediate change for the better. Take 2020. We pivoted fully online, self-hosted a chat server, hit #1 on Hacker News, and sold enough tickets to stay profitable. The year after we became fully-hybrid: a model that allowed me to become a full-time business owner, pay staff members, and make it possible for Handmade Seattle to reach people globally.

Now it’s 2024. Amidst the layoffs a startling evolution is taking shape: Handmade Meetups are growing like crazy. They’ve become a communal meatspace when there’s no conference. Next year, I’m planning to build upon Handmade Meetups as a serious platform: our very own meetup.com, but without the spying, ads and vendor lock-in.

Name your favorite city. Imagine traveling to Tokyo and finding a Handmade meetup happening nearby. New friends, cool projects, surprise job offers, conversations on software quality—anywhere in the world.

See You Soon

I’m looking forward to Handmade Seattle, rain or shine. I’ll keep you posted with more newsletters as we approach, including daily schedules, speaker slots, and invites to our private chat server.

Your indie organizer,
Abner

P.S. I’ve kept references to Majora’s Mask and ChocoVine to a minimum. Please expect a lot to slip through once Handmade Seattle kicks off. That’s how I decompress.

Under Construction

Sat, 02 Nov 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Dear Handmade community,

We need to backfill more content and finish up some pages under construction.

However, this new website is lightning-fast compared to the WordPress fiasco (detailed here), so making the switch was already worthwhile even if some pages remain a work in progress.

With Handmade Seattle 2024 coming up this month, our priority will be almost exclusively towards this conference. After that you’ll definitely see the rest of the website fleshed out and vigorously updated. I hope you’re as excited as we are!

Yours truly,
Abner and staff

Anniversary Rebrand

Sun, 20 Oct 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Dear Handmade Friends,

Notice the new logo? There’s more to share about our rebrand below.

However, let’s discuss the conference next month first.

Handmade Seattle 2024: Anniversary Edition 🌟

We’re a little over a month away from Handmade Seattle, celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the Handmade movement. Thanks to everyone who’s shown interest to participate!

If you haven’t heard from me or my staff yet, you should get a response by ~~Monday~~ Tuesday. Worst case, send me a ping on Discord (@abnercoimbre) in case ~~Monday~~ Tuesday passed by and you still didn’t hear from us.

It’s never ideal for us to take a long time responding to all emails and submissions. Please forgive us.

Twitch marathon for ticket sales

This ~~Monday, October 21st~~ Tuesday, October 22nd. I’ll kick off a multi-week Twitch stream running through November 1st. It’ll be my side-project Terminal Click while keeping an eye on how conference registrations are going.

Loris Cro offered to help me port my terminal site from Hugo to Zine. If he’s around I’ll collab with him during one of the streams!

Full website rewrite ⚡

handmadecities.com is getting a much-needed upgrade too. This self-hosted WordPress site is slow and clunky—not great for a community that’s all about software quality!

Thanks to staff member Devon along with the Handmade Network team, I’m switching to a static site that’s lightning-fast by comparison. I won’t promise an exact release date, though it’ll ship well ahead of the conference.

As part of this overhaul Jes Chuhta also designed amazing new logos. You saw the Cities one at the top. We also have a version for Handmade Meetups:

The conferences gets fresh logos too: one for Handmade Boston and Handmade Seattle. Dude there’s even a cute favicon! She did incredible work, so keep an eye out for all of them soon.

Note: With everything going on with WordPress lately, it was a good time to ditch it and build our own site anyway. Ben Visness will cover the drama in a Handmade Network newsletter soon—be sure to subscribe there!

From Vimeo to YouTube

By popular demand, from both my staff and the audience, I’m mirroring our Vimeo catalog to YouTube. As a matter of principle I’m keeping monetization off and will always point people to handmadecities.com to support us directly.

You’ll get updates through the newsletter when the uploads begin.

Revolt replaces Matrix 🥳

I’ve switched our chat server from Matrix to Revolt. Complaints against Matrix kept mounting every year, and after a lot of feedback (and some near ticket-holder boycotts), Revolt is now self-hosted live at chat.handmadecities.com. It’s not as feature-rich as Discord yet, but it works really well for short-term events like Handmade Seattle:

Revolt is our private chat server for conferences: where ticket holders join live Q&As and official discussions. During the off-season we use our public Discord instead.

Note: Read more about my decision to drop Matrix (and their CEO’s reaction) in this blog post.

Note note: Jamie Brandon of HYTRADBOI fame dropped Matrix too. He’s trying Zulip instead, so we both challenged each other to write post-mortems after each conference!

Speaker lineup coming soon ⏳

We’re aiming to have most of the Handmade Seattle speaker lineup ready by November 1st (the last day of my Twitch marathon.) It’s been tough locking in speakers due to the current economic climate, but like Boston, we’ll deliver great talks and demos even if the final list comes in late.

Slimming down the conference

Conferences, big and small, have been shutting down since COVID and this year saw even more go under. Deconstruct, O’Reilly, E3, Strangeloop, XOXO and bang bang con, to name but a few.

Like so many, I’m really feeling the squeeze this year. 2024 is a survival year, and we’re making some cuts:

No hotel assistance: We tried, but the terms I’d have to sign to secure mass discounts are too financially risky. Our Discord server is your best bet for advice on where to stay in Seattle for cheap.
No free merch this time: We’ll be selling shirts if we can. However, if you registered for both Boston and Seattle, send proof and the merch is yours. (Physical tickets only.)
No in-person trade show: Seattle Center’s new booth fees make it prohibitive, so we’re going virtual for the trade show and job fair (using Revolt.)

We still convene at the Seattle Center as always, at the Nesholm Family Lecture Hall:

The talks and demos on stage are happening here. And we’ll still have group lunches, dinners, and official hangouts.

Register ASAP 🎫

It’s frankly such a delightful miracle that we’re alive and kicking. The community likes to joke that we’re playing Last Con Standing.

Tickets and donations need to pick up a bit to keep Handmade Cities going, hence the Twitch marathon next week. If you’re thinking about attending, please consider registering early—even if the lineup isn’t finalized just yet.

Handmade Cities and what the future holds

Once we make it through this year, I see a new business model for conferences emerging: community-driven, 100% indie, and making juuust enough profit to cover the basics—rent, groceries, healthcare, and the occasional night out. That’s it. I’ll never get rich doing this, and that’s fine. In fact, I think the big, sponsor-heavy conferences are fading out, while indie events like HYTRADBOI are making a comeback (they were inspired by Handmade Seattle.)

So how am I still here? The people supporting Handmade Cities point to one thing: community.

When we’re not running tech conferences, Handmade Cities is quietly growing monthly meetups around the world. Handmade Australians met for the first time this month. We’ve just added Vienna and Tokyo, and in Seattle my technical producer Phil pioneered co-working sessions, which are now a community staple: they happen every other week. I also started weekly hangouts on Sundays—a third place where people gather and do whatever they want; new friendships and a couple of job offers have already come out of them! (Although job networking isn’t the goal.)

At these meetups I’ve met founding engineers from multiple high-profile startups who are burned out by the impact their companies have on society—whether it’s software quality degrading, endless mass layoffs or immoral business practices. They’re starting to come to us. These reliable, growing interactions among very competent programmers who care are sparking… something.

Handmade Cities, not accountable to any company or investor, will galvanize this energy after I’ve muscled my way through 2024.

See you on Twitch,
Abner

Your indie organizer

Call for Submissions

Fri, 13 Sep 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Dear Handmade Friends,

Thanks for your patience on the Handmade Boston recordings—we’re just about done. Sorry for the delay! Meanwhile, you can still catch the online track on Twitch VOD and it’ll be up on the Media page and YouTube afterwards.

On the hunt for speakers (and more!)

It’s time to ramp up Handmade Seattle 2024, and I’m looking for presenters and job fair participants. We’ve got spots for:

Talks
Demos
Fireside chats (informal interviews)
Job Booths

Whether you’re in person or online, there’s room for both. Check out the Media and Job Fair pages for examples.

How to apply

The beauty of indie conferences is there’s no convoluted process: just send me an email! Let me know what you want to present and why you’re the one to do it.

Slots are limited. Either I or staff on my behalf should get back to you within 1-3 business days.

Wheel Reinvention Jam

Are you joining the Handmade Network jam? We usually pick a couple of entries for a demo slot at the conference, so it’s a good way to get noticed.

This year’s themes: “awakening” and “post-awakening”

2024 marks the 10th anniversary of the Handmade movement. Many in our community talk about the “aha” moments that transformed how they think about programming, kickstarted by the Manifesto. So this year, we want talks that dive into the:

Awakening: Did you learn something that felt like a superpower once you grasped it? Share it with us and open our eyes too. A community favorite is Andreas Fredriksson’s Context is Everything.
Post-Awakening: What have you done since your own awakening? A great example is Billy Basso’s presentation last month at Handmade Boston, about his journey shipping Animal Well after his own Handmade realizations.

Not every talk needs to fit perfectly into these categories—the lines can get blurred and that’s fine.

Honest opinions encouraged

You can have raw, controversial takes: bring on the heat. You can criticize any tech company if you believe it’s well-deserved. That’s the whole point of Handmade events (we have no sponsors.) You can be shocking, comedic or use curse words if it serves your point.

Just don’t overindulge please. My motto is spicy but classy.

Note: You’re allowed to go all in with references to Majora or ChocoVine, my two great loves. (Hope this doesn’t discourage ticket sales..)

Thanks for reading—I’m excited to see your proposals! Next time, I’ll update you on the Third Place initiative and other exciting meetup announcements.

Your indie organizer,
Abner

FAQ

Q: I can’t afford a ticket

A: Shoot me an email and explain your situation. We offer discounts, and some of my donors offer free seats for those in need.

Q: How does the online track work?

A: Unlike Boston, Handmade Seattle is fully hybrid. The entire event is live-streamed for free, and your online ticket gets you into the private chat for live Q&A.

Q: Are you using Matrix?

A: Nope! We’re switching to Revolt, which I hope works better. Read more about the Matrix drama here.

Q: I have travel/lodging questions.

A: Join the Handmade Cities Discord to receive guidance from other ticket holders. If you don’t have Discord you can email me: just be aware that it might take me a few business days to respond.

Q: Bang Bang Con wrapped up for good. Is Handmade Seattle headed the same way? Going out with a bang or fading away?

A: Conferences are shutting down everywhere—E3, Deconstruct, Strangeloop, XOXO, and yep, even Bang Bang Con just held their final one last month.

But if there’s one thing I’m proud of, it’s pulling off indie conferences since 2019, even when I come through last-minute in tough years like this.

I’m here to stay.

Important Meetup Tomorrow

Fri, 30 Aug 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Dear Handmade Friends,

If you’re in Seattle, I invite you to an emergency session tomorrow at 2:00 PM. We’re setting aside the usual agenda to discuss an urgent matter: reviving the idea of a “third place.”

Saturday, August 31st
Distant Worlds Coffeehouse (Seattle)
2:00 – 4:00 PM

Plus ones are welcome. Upon arrival, kindly order a drink / snack at the counter and inform them you are attending Abner’s Party.

If we finish early, we’ll do software demos too.

As always, we’ll have dinner and drinks after the meetup—check out the details in Seattle After Dark below.

“But Abner, I’m Not From Seattle!”

Not in Seattle? No problem. I’m hosting an online follow-up next Tuesday at 2:00 PM (Seattle Time) on the Handmade Cities Discord. I want to hear from everyone, especially those who host or wish to host meetups in their own cities—or help and volunteer in any way.

While you wait, you might like my recent interview with Billy Basso, creator of Animal Well, now on YouTube!

What’s the Third Place?

Most people only have home and work, with no “third place” to reliably hang out, at low-cost or free of charge, and see familiar faces.

I don’t have all the answers, but Handmade Cities can help by sponsoring weekly hangouts—a laid-back space where we meet up without any pressure to work, present, or impress anyone.

This will be our final type of Handmade in-person event. In decreasing order of formality:

Conferences (Twice a Year)
Meetups (Monthly)
Coworking (Bi-Weekly)
Hangouts (Weekly)

To the non-Seattle meetup hosts: don’t worry. Organizing is my full-time job, so I have more time for coworking and hangouts. You’re not necessarily expected to take on extra sessions—focusing on your monthly meetups is what matters most. Next week’s Discord meeting will cover monthly meetups just as much as anything else.

Why I Need Your Input

We’d like Handmade Cities to reserve the venue and cover any material costs, but I need your help deciding when, where and how these hangouts should happen. Should it be a place to play video games, read, or just grab a drink? A free-for-all? Should we leave our phones at the door? Invite non-programmer friends? And where should it be—a house, library, café, or somewhere else?

Maybe some weeks you just want to find a quiet corner, soak in the background noise of your friends, but not really talk to anyone: this should be allowed.

We shall brainstorm and vote on the important bits at tomorrow’s meetup. What you suggest will guide the direction of Handmade Cities.

Seattle After Dark 👀

4:00 – 8:00 PM (optional)

After the meetup, we’ll head out for pizza and drinks:

Olympic Pizza and Pasta 🍕: Affordable and tasty, just down the block. $8-9 for a full meal.
Teddy’s Tavern 🍻: A cozy bar just another block away. They know us and always welcome Handmade folks. If someone’s underage, let me know – we’ve got other options! If our group’s too big, we might move to Westy’s nearby.

Coworking Has Found Its Groove

Big thanks to my staff Morgan, Devon, and Phil for making Handmade Cities what it is. They take tasks off my plate which is the only reason we can keep expanding (and I can catch my breath.)

For coworking, it’s pretty awesome that Phil picked a library cafe called Third Place Books…!

I’m excited to announce that we’ve nailed down just the right formula for coworking sessions. We’ll discuss it some more on Tuesday’s virtual meet.

FAQ

Q: I live in Seattle but can’t attend this meetup!

A: Send me an email with your thoughts. I’ll share your feedback at the meetup.

Q: I can’t join Tuesday’s Discord chat either.

A: We’ll send out a summary shortly afterward.

Q: How can I keep up with everything?

A: Just subscribe to the main newsletter, and if you’re interested, sign up for meetup notifications for your city (scroll down to find it.)

Q: Where have you been?

A: Ernesto struck my home back in Puerto Rico earlier this month. Long story. But I’m here in Seattle and my family is safe.

See You Tomorrow ♥

Your indie organizer,
Abner

Handmade-Inspired Companies

Tue, 27 Aug 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Hey Handmade folks,

Thanks for joining us at Handmade Boston this month! We finally hit the right formula for the masterclasses this year, and it really resonated with everyone. The speakers brought their A-game, and I’m incredibly grateful to them for making it all come together.

Handmade Boston Recordings

If you missed the online track, you can still catch it on Twitch:

VOD

The Twitch VOD will be up for another month or so. We’ll also upload each presentation to the Media page eventually.

In-Person Recordings

For those who couldn’t attend in person, we’re working on the recordings. I’m hoping they’re ready by the end of the month. If you want to support this indie conference and unlock the in-person recordings once they’re up, you can still grab an online ticket (discount applied):

Ticket

Emerging ‘Handmade’ Businesses

In the last newsletter, I introduced our speakers, but I didn’t explain how several of them run their own businesses or lead at their companies. I’m excited that these speakers truly embody the Handmade ethos and are discovering ways to make a living.

The grimacing Lego businessman is a bit of dark humor. It’s my face upon learning their cursed fate: they are either small business owners (like me), bootstrapped companies, or puzzling over how to remain in charge if they accept investor funding. I salute them because, currently, there are far easier choices in this economy!

Mr. 4th Lab: Allen Webster founded Mr. 4th Lab to help programmers refine their craft. During the event, he sat down with me and dissected my programming choices for Terminal Click. Audience feedback was overwhelmingly positive—his insights were top-notch.

If you want to see more of Allen’s work, check out what he already offers for free, and consider becoming a paid member for exclusive material. It’s a great way to sharpen your skills.

Kagi Search: Zac Nowicki, tech lead at Kagi, shared how their search engine is embracing Handmade. While we wait for that masterclass recording, I recommend signing up for Kagi and taking it for a test drive: especially if you’re fed up with Google’s deteriorating search results.

I also learned they’re officially a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC) now—a fascinating legal structure for a business I had no idea existed.

Legally speaking it means “[…] company directors and officers are given explicit permission to consider a purpose beyond simply maximizing shareholder value.”

Imagine that 🤯

Shared Memory LLC (Creators of Animal Well): Billy Basso is living the Handmade dream—creating and shipping a video game from scratch and attaining mainstream success. I wanted to investigate more, so near the end of our interview we discussed his foray into running a business. Note that he was the sole developer of Animal Well.

If you’re an aspiring indie dev, Billy’s business story is one to watch (see Twitch VOD above.)

Nilo Technologies: Nuno Leiria, former optimization lead for Unreal Engine 5, has launched his own startup: Nilo. He has a brilliant vision for making future video games. However, the reader knows I have a negative outlook on both startups and Generative AI, so I do put his feet to the fire (see Twitch VOD above.)

I will admit the moral clarity Nuno showed during our combative interview left me feeling impressed and optimistic. Perhaps not every single startup is the spawn of the devil, as tempting as it is for me to say that? I’d love to hear your own feedback about this.

Check out Nilo’s website and reach out to Nuno personally, so he can walk you through their prototype: hit that Early Access button!

Showing Some Love ♥

They are not sponsoring Handmade Cities (nor should they), but I want to see them succeed: consider supporting the companies above—whether it’s financially or just with encouraging feedback!

Every bit helps. Always.

Next up is Handmade Seattle 2024. Stay tuned for more updates soon: if you’re reading this as an email, you can reply to reach me directly. Otherwise please subscribe to receive newsletters in your Inbox!

Your indie organizer,
Abner

P.S. There are more brave souls embodying our ethos and starting a business, but today I wanted to focus on the stars of the Boston event.

Boston 2024

Tue, 06 Aug 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Handmade folks,

Handmade Boston kicks off this Friday, August 9th! Here’s the rundown:

Tickets

It’s been a tough year for too many people, so we’re offering a last-minute 20% discount on both physical and online tickets:

In-Person

Online

Note that if you bought a combined ticket for both Boston and Seattle, a 20% discount was already baked-in.

If you bought a single Boston ticket at the standard price and feel annoyed, check the FAQ at the end of the newsletter.

Our Speakers

Despite some challenges, we’re thrilled to have six incredible speakers joining us, three for each track:

Physical Track

Allen Webster: Founder of Mr. 4th Lab and creator of 4coder, the editor used in the Handmade Hero series. Allen has worked for Casey Muratori (Molly Rocket) and RAD Game Tools (now Epic) and has done significant research on how to reinvent day-to-day programming.

At this conference, he’ll openly critique my uh, contentious terminal emulator, Terminal Click 🙂

You get to be a fly on the wall as Allen questions my codebase, gaining insights to improve your own software. You can also scrutinize my choices during the Q&A session… I think it’s important to embrace collaboration and criticism to advance our Handmade projects and ship faster.

Join us for this scary masterclass (threatening for me haha): “Terminal Click Under Scrutiny.”
Zac Nowicki: Tech lead for the increasingly popular Kagi Search.

Web development gets a bad rap in the Handmade community for embracing too much complexity or ignoring the lower layers of abstraction. Is every single criticism justified? Is there any hope for the web anymore? I want Zac to help us sort this out once and for all.

Together, we’ll diagram how I wrote my own Ticketmaster replacement for the conferences and compare it to how Kagi itself is architected (to my own surprise, there are similarities!) Since Kagi handles traffic several orders of magnitude larger than Handmade Cities, we get to consider how a web application can remain small and performant as it scales larger and larger.

Welcome to Kagi’s spicy masterclass: “Can the Web become Handmade?”
Graham Pentheny: Senior Engineer at Spry Fox games who led the Cozy Grove engineering team.

Graham is also one of the most prominent organizers of indie meetups in Boston: he famously disbanded the largest Unity Gamedev Group in the world.

After two heavy technical masterclasses, it’s time for a more relaxed session. Graham and I will discuss how to build successful communities and how to thrive in them, touching on opportunities for new careers, mentorship, friendships, and collaboration. We’ll also take audience questions and workshop solutions to your social challenges in the programming world.

Let’s break down this phenomenon: “The Social Fabric of Technical Communities.”

Online Track

Billy Basso: Creator of Animal Well. When I reached out to Billy he reminded me that he attended the first Handmade Seattle during Animal Well’s early development and we chatted for a while. I let out a gasp when I searched the ticket sales records from that year. Core memory unlocked!

In this exclusive interview, Billy reveals many of the programming strategies he used to create his game from scratch. He’ll also give us a sneak peek at his next project and explain why he isn’t reusing his game engine. Finally, Billy will offer advice on the skills needed to ship a game, beyond just programming.

We’re also planning to fly Billy to Handmade Seattle this fall, as a guest of honor, to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Handmade movement.

Interview Title: “Shipping personal software – How you enter the mainstream while staying true to your values.”
Nuno Leiria: Former Optimization Lead of Unreal Engine 5. Nuno joined us when Handmade Seattle was forced to go online in 2020: his succinct presentation on modern CPU optimizations remains as relevant as ever.

Nuno has since founded a brand new company with employees, and we’re excited to reveal juicy details at Handmade Boston. (Given his background with Epic Games and video games, you might guess what’s coming… !) I’ll investigate the technical choices behind his new vision, the ethics of his business model, and the bold moves I think he’s making for the future of game development.

Keep an eye on Nuno’s work even after Handmade Boston… he might be joining us for a certain job fair 😉

Interview Title: “Nuno Leiria: A New Vision for Making Games”
Kaze Emanuar: The legendary N64 game modder, also known as Nintendo’s worst nightmare, returns for an in-depth discussion about his most popular demo on drastically improving Super Mario 64’s performance. In this interview, we’ll expand and seek clarification on topics he couldn’t cover in his video.

Finally, we’ll hear Kaze’s takes on the future of N64 modding and what his next moves are now that static recompilation has come into play 👀

Interview Title: “Kaze: Breaking Traditional Modding Boundaries”

Conference Schedule

The conference starts at 9:00 a.m. Boston Time for both tracks.

If you need any assistance you should email me at abner@handmadecities.com or join the Handmade Cities Discord.

Physical Track

We’re all meeting at the JFK Presidential Library. Huge building, can’t miss it:

Ticket scanning begins at 8:30 AM: search your Inbox for a General Admission ticket and find the QR code!

Friday will feature all the masterclasses, and Saturday will be for official hangouts, including a special reservation at Kings Dining and Entertainment with the speakers (conference ticket required.)

We will have a 90-minute lunch break each day.

P.S. Within the next day or two I’ll publish an interactive timeline on the Boston page: detailing the speaker time slots, lunch hours, and all the official meetup spots outside the venue. It’s all taking place around the seaport.

Online Track

The online track will be streamed on my Twitch channel with the help of Loris Cro, VP of Community for Zig. Follow below for notifications!

Our exclusive interviews will be streamed in their entirety for free. These are very recent, pre-recorded conversations that have never been seen before. The speakers will be on Twitch chat and the entire event will last around 4 hours. The VOD will remain up for multiple weeks.

When you buy a ticket for the online track, you’re doing it to support my indie conferences and to unlock the in-person recordings once they’re available! (These will remain private to ticket holders until 2025.)

New Formula 🧪

Last year, we tried a college-style approach with masterclasses, complete with homework. It didn’t quite work out as planned—most of you weren’t keen on the assignments. The feedback was clear: you come to these conferences to gain insights, get inspired, and network, not to do work.

So we’re changing things up.

This year, our masterclasses will be conversations with me. Think of it like a pianist’s masterclass—a teaching moment with an audience of peers in order to level-up. Instead of correcting my piano playing, the speakers will scrutinize my engineering or broaden my expertise while I act as a vessel for ticket holders. After “talking shop,” you can ask questions to scratch your own itch during Q&A.

And yes, no more homework.

Expected Attendance

In-person attendance for HMB is shaping up to be similar to last time. Unlike Seattle, you should think of dozens instead of hundreds. Here’s a snapshot from August 2023:

This makes sense—our popularity is on the rise with our second East Coast event, yet the tech industry’s horrible year has affected how many can join us, canceling out the gains. I like to call HMB the sister conference, with HMS in the fall being our flagship. The upside is that we get to recapture the intimate atmosphere the original Handmade conferences were known for.

Will Boston grow in the future? Absolutely. But for now, let’s enjoy the relaxed vibes and good times.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why offer discounts so late? I bought at standard price. A: Reply to this email to discuss partial refund. 2024 is wacky; I’m trying to help ticket holders while also boost sales.
The conference is smaller than I expected. A: We slimmed things down in order to stay solvent. Trust me, the official hangouts and after parties are still worth it. Otherwise, reply to discuss remedies: I want all ticket holders to be happy.
I’m financially disadvantaged. Can you help? A: Yes! I can offer greater discounts or even some free seats if you explain your circumstances to me.

Your indie organizer,
Abner

Meetups, Kagi Search, and More!

Tue, 02 Jul 2024 05:00:00 +0000

My dear (sweaty?) Handmade folks,

Hope your summer’s been great! There’s much excitement to unpack. Let’s just dive into it:

Explosive Meetup Growth

Last month, we hit a record number of in-person Handmade events: eight of them around the globe. Check them out on our meetups page.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been talking with Khrob, a rare CTO in Australia who truly gets our values. He’ll be hosting meetups there. We’re still deciding on the exact city, so sign up if you’re interested! If you’re in Australia or planning to visit, subscribe to those notifications to show your interest.

We’re also gauging interest for Tokyo. If you’re there or plan to visit, please wishlist Tokyo.

First Co-working Session

We’re launching public co-working sessions this month in Seattle, led by my technical producer Phil Homan. Subscribe to the Seattle meetup list for updates. We’ll create a dedicated co-working area on the website soon.

Handmade Cities is living up to its name: major conferences, monthly meetups, and now bi-weekly co-working sessions, starting in Seattle (expanding globally once we’ve nailed down a template.)

Note: If you’re an indie dev, small business owner, or earning without a traditional employer, I’ve been hosting indie co-working sessions for a while already. Reply to this email if you want to join the private channel.

Kagi Tech Lead at Handmade Boston

Meet Zac Nowicki, the tech lead behind Kagi Search, a paid alternative to Google that’s gaining a lot of notoriety. Unlike most, Kagi builds its own index; I’m also rapidly falling in love with their business ethics.

It seems their tech is becoming aligned with Handmade values, sparking many questions: how much of the web fits our ethos? In our community, web development gets relentlessly criticized for its overreliance on dependencies, microservices, containers, serverless computing, and the list is long. Is ALL the mockery justified? Is the web ecosystem beyond saving?

Let’s finally sort out what’s valuable from what’s not: can the web be Handmade?

P.S. This isn’t a paid promotion or sponsorship. I reached out to Kagi personally.

Terminal Click Under Scrutiny

If you missed the last newsletter, here’s some exciting news: Allen Webster (AKA Mr. 4th) is speaking at Handmade Boston! Allen runs Mr. 4th Lab full-time, a software research lab focused on the problems facing general practitioners.

He’ll be dissecting Terminal Click, my project that I hope to ship by the end of the year. Allen will dive into the codebase, explore how its features work together, and critique its architecture. He’ll look at things like my platform layer, arena usage, C strings, UI, and rendering strategy, and help solve long-standing issues.

This is a rare chance to see a handmade project’s guts under a magnifying glass.

Complete Boston Lineup by End of July

This year’s HMB lineup is taking a bit longer, partly due to the tough economic climate. Talented folks I’ve reached out to are either job hunting, overwhelmed with work, or feeling unmotivated. Things are looking up for the second half of the year, but it’s been rough for many.

However, expect the lineup to be complete by the end of July. I’m having good conversations with promising new candidates. Keep the HMB website bookmarked and check back for updates!

Tickets

On a positive note, tickets for Boston are selling better than last year. Secure your seat now for peace of mind and support these masterclasses. Most of the ticket money goes towards venue rental, insurance, and helping cover travel costs for staff and speakers.

The Death of “Don’t Reinvent the Wheel”

Congrats to Ladybird!

I woke up to exciting news about the Ladybird browser, announced in this YouTube video.

Ladybird, which to me embodies the Handmade ethos, just launched a nonprofit with serious funding from a GitHub founder. Ladybird is an independent browser created from scratch as part of SerenityOS by Andreas Kling. He demoed it at Handmade Seattle ~2-3 years ago, and it went viral (example). Many see that conference demo as a crucial stepping stone for the project’s (continued) success.

This is the end of the “don’t reinvent the wheel” mindset and the community should celebrate.

Time for my Jimmy Wales Speech 👀

I like to give my Jimmy Wales speech now and then, hoping someone will support my efforts beyond just buying a ticket. Organizing two tech conferences in two major cities, with zero sponsors, is an insane thing to do. Profits are minimal and go back into the business, leaving nothing for myself.

That’s where conference members come in. It’s my “Patreon”:

Members

A member is someone who not only enjoys the conference but also likes me personally. You want me to stay independent, so you throw five bucks a month my way.

It’s easy to pause or cancel, no account required. I understand the fatigue of monthly commitments though: for those who prefer a one-time donation, Donorbox allows for that too—every bit helps.

Your indie organizer,
Abner

Shape the Future of Handmade Cities – and More

Mon, 20 May 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Heyo Handmade Folks,

Happy start of the week (I hope.) Today I offer you some cool updates on the conferences, meetups, new coworking sessions, ticket prices, Twitch collabs, and a new indie game I believe you’ll enjoy.

Conference Themes and Topics

I’m live-streaming my decision-making process for the themes and topics of Handmade Boston and Handmade Seattle on ~~May 30th at 2PM Seattle Time~~. Tune in to suggest speakers if you haven’t already! UPDATE: Moved to Monday, June 3rd at 2PM Seattle Time

Top fundraiser contributors will get an email beforehand with instructions on joining a private channel: they will get priority as I listen to public feedback.

Initial Speaker Announcements 🎉

We’re only just ramping up our selection of speakers and demoers, but we already have a cast of returning characters that I’d love to (re-)introduce.

Kaze Emanuar: For Handmade Boston, I’m excited to announce the return of Kaze Emanuar: last year, Kaze shared his approach to modding Mario Party 1 from scratch. This time, he’s diving straight into optimizations and cost analysis. This masterclass could empower you to achieve impressive results. For this conference, he’s aiming to apply these techniques to a non-Mario game—perhaps Zelda?

Note that Kaze prefers staying behind the screen, so this session is for the online track. In-person attendees will have access to the recording too, of course.

Mr. 4th: I’m also thrilled to announce Allen Webster as in-person speaker for Boston. Creator of 4coder, with a respectable tenure at RAD Game Tools and Epic, Allen recently went independent and runs Mr. 4th Lab now. His masterclass details will be up on our website soon.

Devine Lu Linvega: For Handmade Seattle we welcome Devine Lu Linvega: Devine is a founder of the Hundred Rabbits collective and they’ve been living on a sailboat since 2016 making experimental software. In 2022, Devine taught us how to weather the software winter (arguably more relevant today.) This time, Devine will teach us how to find a different life as programmers. Given the obscene mass layoffs and realization of our disposability, this will be a very thought-provoking talk. Let’s join Devine in Seattle and consider alternative viewpoints.

Boston is coming up first, which takes place in under three months, and our speaker lineup will continue to grow, especially after our live-stream on May 30th.

📝Note: Boston masterclasses won’t be live-streamed in full this year. You need a ticket to unlock them, and they’ll remain exclusive until next year. I humbly ask that we support our favorite indie conferences 🙂

Meetup Growth: NYC Demo Night 🌆

Handmade Meetups are back in full swing and popping up worldwide. Vancouver and Cambridge have been added, and I even partnered with an interesting CTO from Australia recently, so expect to see that country listed on the site very soon. Note that if your city isn’t listed, you can wishlist it on our page. You should also talk to me if you have the social chops to spin up a meetup.

One of our growth strategies is to record demos from meetups and share them with the world whenever possible. Nick Aversano, host of NYC meetups, recorded a rather mesmerizing presentation (complete with closed captioning) by a core contributor of the Live Bootstrap project— which involves writing a 4KB kernel in hex.

The New York scene for Handmade is really growing at a steady pace, and I’m grateful to Nick for his consistency as a meetup host. I’ll highlight interesting presentations as they happen throughout the year.

Coworking Sessions

If you’re on the new Discord you’ll see I’ve created a public cowork channel: I’m interested to see if there’s demand for this. In the Seattle area I’ve already spun up biweekly sessions for indies: rotating them between Seattle, Redmond, and Kirkland. Message me if you’re independent and live in the Seattle area.

The keen reader should realize the big picture that Handmade Cities is going for:

Conferences: Our biggest events. Twice a year.
Meetups: Informal gatherings to showcase projects or discuss important topics. Usually monthly.
Co-Working: Work alongside like-minded programmers. Usually bi-weekly.

In the future we’ll create a co-working section on the website with the ability to subscribe to notifications, as we do for meetups. For now, it’s just an informal setup on our chat.

Clarifying the Ticket Prices 🎫

We’ve set new ticket prices this year, and I plan to keep them long-term. The physical track is $249—please compare that to any other tech conference, which are almost always financially backed by tech sponsors. Meanwhile our online track is just 30% of the in-person cost.

I aim not to raise prices as a conference approaches, avoiding the pressure tactics to get early registrations. What I’m counting on is the goodwill of the Handmade community to register early so we can always keep prices stable while remaining fully independent:

Tickets

(It’s not sustainable if everyone holds out until the day before the conference.)

Twitch Collabs 🤝

I’m collaborating with Allen Webster and Ben Visness on my streams! Allen is helping me tighten the screws on Terminal Click, while Ben is leveling up the Handmade Cities website. You can already check out some VODs on my Twitch channel.

The community’s had a lone wolf and secretive culture for too long, which I have contributed to myself. I encourage programmers to trust their fellow community members, especially when they have more expertise than you in some area. There’s more than one way to collaborate or create partnerships: figure out what makes you the most comfortable.

Promotion: Way of Rhea 🎮

A game that embodies the Handmade ethos has now shipped! If you love engaging indie puzzlers you wouldn’t want to miss this one:

Mason Remaley’s a gamedev who gave a well-received talk at Handmade Seattle, titled It’s not Survivorship Bias: On Successful Software Endeavors. I recommend it for any programmer interested in running their own shop. His Q&A session has golden nuggets of wisdom too.

If you want to support Mason and snag the game, it’s currently at a discount. Consider leaving Way of Rhea a review as well, since it helps discoverability.

Your Patience is Appreciated

To those awaiting email responses: I’m working through the backlog (surprising absolutely no one) and will get back to you before the month expires. Thanks for your patience.

Until the next round of updates!

Your organizer,
Abner

New Discord Server

Thu, 02 May 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Dear Handmade Folks,

I’m announcing the launch of our new Discord server! Swing by handmadecities.com/discord and introduce yourself – I’d love to personally welcome you there.

My aim is to keep the Discord server running year-round. However, during live events, we’ll still maintain a private chat server for ticket holders. This helps those who prefer not to use Discord, but it’s also a business necessity: we sell online tickets to access official discussions.

Now, about Matrix. We’ve decided to part ways.

CEO/CTO’s Response

If you’ll remember, I expressed my frustration of chat servers at Software You Can Love, which generated a lot of interesting debate. After this I also vented on Hacker News how Matrix’s priorities are not going towards UX:

abnercoimbre: “Yeah I’ve been using them for my indie conferences since 2020. I recently argued that it’s not the Year for Matrix, even if Discord now has ads and is doing sketchy stuff typical of enshitification. Unfortunately I just don’t see Matrix’s priorities going towards UX. I’m dropping them. Revolt has promise, at the very least as a stopgap.”

Matrix leadership then weighed in:

Arathorn: “fwiw, https://element.io/labs/element-x is Element’s attempt to spell out that we our priorities are absolutely going towards UX. Meanwhile the old Element apps aren’t improving because all our (limited) bandwidth is going into Element X, which we hope to be ready this summer.”

My thoughts on his response:

“Labs” rarely gets promotion, and I like to think I’m pretty in the loop. (I had forgotten it exists.)
Element X hardly ever makes a cameo in your blog – it seems you’ve got your hands full!
From where I stand, it looks like enterprise deals and hosting expansion take the cake in your priority list.

That’s all fair – you gotta do what you think keeps the lights on. But from my perspective, there’s no consistent effort to prioritize user experience or performance. If there were, you’d have hit the ground running as the next Discord killer and smoothed out user onboarding from day one. You’d have swapped out Python for a more efficient language for your chat server in a heartbeat.

This isn’t easy for me: I’ve wanted to believe since 2020. I’ve been all-in on Matrix, even entangling it with my ticketing system. But now, my ticket holders are making it clear: if I stick with this ecosystem, they’ll take a pass.

So, time to bid farewell.

Handmade Network “versus” Handmade Cities

As a reminder, Handmade Network remains our go-to online hangout. In contrast, Handmade Cities is all about face-to-face connections: think conferences and meetups. What Ben and I shared a while back still rings true (except now, Matrix is out of the picture.)

Another newsletter is in the works, but I wanted to tackle this chat server disaster first.

We’re slowly piecing together our speaker lineup for Boston and Seattle. Of course I’d love to hear from our top supporters, so stay tuned for that. And whoever you might be, don’t hesitate to suggest presentations – just hit reply.

Your organizer,
Abner

Handmade Conference Tickets (2024)

Fri, 12 Apr 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Dear Handmade Folks,

Happy Friday! Today marks the opening of the Spring sale. This year is uniquely awesome because it’s gasp the 10-year anniversary of the Handmade movement. Boy do I have unexpected surprises for each conference.

Tickets for Boston and Seattle are now available:

Tickets

Many have been reserved already as fundraiser perks, so grab the remaining stash while you can.

Handmade Boston: Aug 9-10th, 2024

Boston is a two-day masterclass conference on Friday August 9th and Saturday August 10th. Three important changes have been made:

Our new venue is fancier: The JFK Presidential Library
No more forums or homework assignments
My event coordinator, Morgan Rammell, is taking over logistics

You should expect the same caliber of high-profile, competent speakers as last year. This conference is to dive into technical rabbit holes and come out a better programmer one way or another.

For the physical track, we’re also booking an exclusive after-party: remember Kings Dining and Entertainment?

Well we had only reserved the dining part but their building is much bigger with a retro vibe (perfect for Handmade) featuring bowling alleys, arcades, billiards, and two bar areas. The owner told me he wants to host us again, so we will be renting the whole establishment.

Handmade Seattle: Nov 20-22nd, 2024

Seattle is our flagship conference, and it’s rapidly becoming the biggest place where new folks get to learn about Handmade for the first time! As always, we will have new talks, demos, a trade show, and a job fair. And as always, it will be at the Seattle Center, live-streamed with the help of my amazing technical staff.

For the physical track we want to finally do a better job with hotel accommodations. With Morgan’s help, I’m partnering with the Mediterranean Inn. It’s the most popular choice among attendees:

The goal is to offer really good discounts and make your travel budget more affordable. We’ll keep ticket holders posted with developments.

Note that on Friday, November 22nd we will no longer be at the venue. Instead, the physical track will join a series of optional hangouts, ending with the final after-party of the year, full of ChocoVine.

Enough is Enough: No More Matrix 🚫

I swear I don’t even have the energy to discuss this here, but I’m frustrated with chat servers. We will still have a private chat for Handmade conferences, but it will no longer be with Element nor Matrix in general. I give up, I’m sorry.

There was a huge reaction over in Loris Cro’s Software You Can Love Discord. The thread in question is here, and if you need an invite link, here you go.

Conference Schedules 📅

I’m currently in the middle of deciding the themes, topics, schedules and talking to candidate speakers/demoers. This year I will also be live-streaming part of this decision-making process with the input from top fundraiser contributors (forgive the delay on that.) Note that final decisions still rest with me.

Stay tuned for updates soon.

Fundraiser Perks 🏆

If you participated in our 2024 fundraiser, you should’ve received a Donorbox receipt and a confirmation email from yours truly. Perks started to roll out in March and will continue over the next couple of months.

Signing off for now. Don’t miss the movement’s 10-year anniversary, there’s much in store for you at these events.

Your indie organizer,
Abner

Fundraiser Perks

Thu, 29 Feb 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Dear Handmade Folks,

It’s Dawn of the Final Day… for the Handmade Cities fundraiser! I’m blown away with the support so far. As many sponsored conferences fade away, the Handmade ones march on, fueled solely by us – no sponsors, no strings.

Haven’t grabbed a fundraiser perk yet? Today’s the last chance:

Fundraiser

Also catch me live on Twitch this afternoon Seattle Time, for some live reactions to last-minute contributions while I continue to work on Terminal Click.

Personal Thank You Videos 📹

To those snagging high-tier perks ($200+) or are donating monthly, hold tight for personalized thank-you videos. I’ll be rolling these out throughout March at a fast but reasonable pace.

Conference Details this Spring 🌼

Mark your calendar for March 20th! We’ll drop the dates and themes for Handmade Boston 2024 (summer) and Handmade Seattle 2024 (fall), along with the call for speakers and demos. Early bird tickets will be up for grabs too.

If you snagged the Hangry Conference Architect perk, you’ll be invited to a private chat room. We’ll be hosting special live-streams before the Spring: your input will influence which themes/topics are selected; you can even suggest speakers.

Note that final decisions still rest with me.

Content Creator: Abner’s Terrible Fate?

More online presence, not less, is on the horizon for me – from Twitch to YouTube, Mastodon, and beyond. It’s time for us to cast a wider net and draw more eyes to Handmade Cities. Mainstreaming ChocoVine should be an interesting side-effect…

Stepping further into the spotlight eats up time, so I’ll be leaning on my staff some more for important behind-the-scenes tasks. Massive thanks to them – their vibes and work ethic are always incredible.

Handmade Meetup Hosts

Quick shoutout to the hosts running Handmade Meetups – thanks for holding down the fort while I hustled through the fundraiser. You’ve done amazing, and I appreciate your consistency in organizing your monthly meetings while I have been anything but consistent in helping you.

I encourage folks to check out the list of cities and sign up for one nearby. I hope to reconvene with the hosts shortly after this fundraiser. Finally, if you think you got the social chops to run meetups, send me an email! And if you already did, hang tight.

Spring’s almost here,
Abner

Handmade Cities Fundraiser

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Dear Handmade Community,

I’m dropping you a quick note to share some exciting news about Handmade Cities and an opportunity for you to get involved. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been getting ready for a public fundraiser to steady my small business. No corporate jargon here – just a straightforward ask for your help:

Fundraiser

There are some seriously valuable perks up for grabs 🏆 The high-tier ones are in very limited supply!

When can you grab a perk?

Hit the fundraiser button above! Contributions are already open! If you want your support to make a live appearance on stream, however, follow me on Twitch for notifications:

I’ll be streaming daily for the next ten days (February 19-29th), starting tonight at Seattle Time. If you’re reading this hot off your Inbox, I am live on Twitch as we speak.

What are my Twitch streams about?

Expect some Terminal Click action: my side-project that’s been unfolding in recent VODs. I’ll also be diving into different topics throughout the year:

Hang around on the streams to get a feel for things.

Why the fundraiser?

Widespread tech layoffs (and the fear of more) have dangerously affected my monthly donations. Individual donations are how I make a living, because conference tickets only cover operating costs; the fundraiser page has a detailed FAQ.

Indeed, running indie tech conferences isn’t really profitable, but it allows me to stay true to my values:

100% independence
Affordable tickets
Zero sponsors
Discounted/free tickets for those who need it
Content curated by a fellow systems programmer (that’s moi)

I’m in this to provide a platform for engineers interested in software quality, and who wish to respect (not exploit) their users. We’re an independent voice trying to make a difference.

If you appreciate my work, I could really use your support right now.

All the best,
Abner Coimbre

Beyond Conferences: Handmade Cities All Year Round

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 05:00:00 +0000

Dear Handmade Community,

Warm holiday greetings! Abner Coimbre and Ben Visness here, teaming up to announce that the Handmade Cities Matrix server will remain online permanently. In past years, it has been shut down at the end of conferences, but now it will remain active year-round!

This might surprise you, since most of you are probably already members of the (now rather large) Handmade Network Discord server. So why keep the Matrix server as well?

The Handmade movement has grown an incredible amount in the past several years. Importantly, it has grown both online and in the real world. Both domains are vital to the health of the larger Handmade community – but there are some critical differences between the two. Let’s dive into it.

Two communities? Not quite.

The Handmade Network (HMN) is the online hub for the Handmade movement. Led by Ben and his team, they run programming jams, Twitch shows, and online social gatherings. They provide a place for community members to discuss programming, learn from each other, and share what they’re working on. The Handmade Network is also the home of Handmade projects, including the Orca initiative and Abner’s own Terminal Click.

In essence, HMN is the online community – and it’s accessible to everyone, including those who prefer to remain anonymous.

Handmade Cities (HMC) brings the Handmade movement into the physical realm. Headed by Abner and his own staff, HMC orchestrates tech conferences like Handmade Boston and Handmade Seattle, which are venues to present to the rest of the world our software and ideals. HMC also organizes monthly in-person meetups worldwide.

In essence, Handmade Cities is all about in-person events. HMC emphasizes real-world interactions; by its very nature, those who participate in these events can’t be anonymous!

For several years now, Handmade Cities has used a Matrix server for discussions related to conferences and conference meetups. This server has always complemented the Handmade Network Discord server, rather than competing with it. And that is not going to change!

The HMN Discord remains open to all, while users on the HMC Matrix are tied to real individuals participating in Handmade events: ticket holders, local meetup members, and so on. The Discord is the hub for jams and other online events; the Matrix is the hub for meetups and other in-person events.

What about Handmade Hero? How’s that going?

At the start of the Handmade movement was Handmade Hero, a Twitch series showing how to craft a video game from scratch. Casey Muratori, president of Molly Rocket, started it in November 2014 and quickly found great success, forming a huge community around its values that has lasted almost a decade.

So, what’s become of our bouncy little friend? Casey’s passions have expanded beyond this project, reflecting Molly Rocket‘s commitment to multiple initiatives. We’re not privy to the specifics of Casey’s plans with Handmade Hero, but this year, we collaborated directly with him to shape the opening blurbs for both Handmade Network and Handmade Cities:

handmade.network

Originally inspired by Casey Muratori’s Handmade Hero, we dig deep into our systems and learn how to do things from scratch. We’re not satisfied by the latest popular language or the framework of the month. Instead we care about how computers actually work.

handmadecities.com

Inspired by Handmade Hero

Like Handmade Hero by Molly Rocket we believe in breaking software down to the bare bones and building back an understanding of how it all really works.

While Molly Rocket, Handmade Network, and Handmade Cities share a spirit of mutual support, it’s crucial to emphasize that we exist as separate entities, and are not formally affiliated. You might instead see us as independent stewards of the Handmade movement.

And at the end of the day, that’s the way we like it. We each have our own expertise, our own experiences, our own goals, and ultimately our own businesses. We feel that we’re at our best, and the Handmade movement is at its best, when we are run independently but collaborate at every opportunity.

We look forward to bringing you improved conferences, jams, meetups, shows, and projects in 2024. With our 10-year anniversary fast approaching (!) the future of Handmade shines brighter than ever. 😊

All the best, Abner and Ben

Without members, I don’t survive.

Mon, 20 Nov 2023 05:00:00 +0000

Dear Handmade Folks!

Handmade Seattle 2023 was a triumph thanks to our badass presenters and your support! I want to express my gratitude to my staff and the Seattle Center again for making this event possible. I’m also delighted so many attendees finally tried the best drink of all time 🙂

The feedback so far, be it praise or constructive criticism, has been invaluable. Now, let’s talk about the reality of running indie conferences. While ticket sales cover the event’s costs and staffing, they don’t sustain my livelihood…

Members Make the Difference

Organizing a tech conference in a major city, with zero sponsors, is no small feat—I often navigate the complexities of negotiations and payment plans just to break even. Any profits are meager and go back into the business: with no leftovers for personal expenses like rent and groceries.

That’s where conference members come in.

A member is someone who not only enjoys the conference, but also likes me personally. You WANT me to stay independent, so you throw five bucks a month my way:

Donorbox

Notice how trivial it is to pause or cancel, which is why I use this system.

I very much understand the fatigue of monthly commitments, but your membership directly supports an individual striving to make ends meet in a small studio apartment on a ramen budget. I’m not even able to open a 401k yet, so your contribution, no matter the size, could mean way more than sending that money elsewhere.

For those who prefer a one-time donation, Donorbox allows for that too—every bit really helps.

What’s On the Horizon?

I still have financial commitments to meet, such as post-conference bills and so on. If you purchased a combined physical ticket for Boston and Seattle, I appreciate your patience as we fulfill the promise of free merchandise.

In the coming weeks, we’ll refine and upload the presentations to the Handmade Cities Media page. I’ll personally notify each presenter when their recording is available. Meanwhile, you can still access the stream VODs on Vimeo and Twitch! Personally, I recommend Twitch because it’s simpler to share clips or snippets there.

Lastly a friendly reminder: I’m leading the Handmade Meetups initiative with trusted hosts worldwide. Visit that page to sign up for your city as I gear us up for exciting new updates come January.

For now, I’m off to sleep some more 🙇

Your Essential Guide to Handmade Seattle (2023)

Sun, 12 Nov 2023 05:00:00 +0000

Dear Handmade Folks,

With Handmade Seattle 2023 just around the corner, this is your final pre-conference briefing. Whether you’re joining us in person or virtually this Wednesday, here’s everything you need before diving into a mind-expanding, independent conference!

Note: Seattle is cold, gray, and rainy this time of year. This suffering puertorican strongly recommends that you bundle up.

🎟 Tickets

Limited tickets are still up for grabs. Support initiatives like ours and experience a phenomenal lineup: we’re all putting our hearts and souls into making this a memorable event for programmers like you.

📅 Conference Schedule

Check out the hourly breakdown on our Seattle page or head directly to handmadecities.com/schedule. You may want to bookmark the schedule page for easy access. Extra updates will be finished this weekend, so stay tuned for anything new.

🎫 QR Code

For those on the physical track, please find your General Admission email in your Inbox, which contains a PDF with your QR code. You can speed up registration by having your ticket at the ready. Note that a quick scan will grant you a VIP bracelet, eliminating the need for further QR code scans.

📺 Live-Stream

We’re streaming the conference for free at Handmade Cities, featuring a Vimeo player on both the landing and Seattle pages! As a backup, we’re simulcasting to my Twitch channel: twitch.tv/abnercoimbre. Please note that the Twitch chat will be completely abandoned/unmoderated; all discussions are happening on the private chat server, accessible with your ticket.

💬 Private Chat Server

Ticket holders from both tracks should have received an invite to the conference server. If you haven’t, reach out ASAP to ensure you don’t miss out on the discussions already taking place.

👕 Merch Update

Unfortunately, there’s a slight delay in our Handmade merchandise, and may not be ready for the actual event. (Fear not: please explore various booths at the trade show for unique swag.)

Those who bought a combined Handmade Cities physical ticket—to attend both Boston and Seattle—remain eligible for free merch. Our new event coordinator, Morgan Rammell, will be in touch to gather shipping details. As soon as the merch arrives, we’ll be sending it your way.

🛒 Online Merch Shop

We’re launching an online merch shop in early 2024, which I teased throughout the year on the Handmade Network Discord. The hope is this new store helps me grow as a small business even during slow months, and in return you get to wear (hopefully super cool) Handmade gear at future conferences.

I can’t wait to shake your hand this Wednesday—or wave at the streaming camera, depending on where you’ll be 🙂

Your indie organizer,
Abner

Nearing Sellout (2023)

Fri, 27 Oct 2023 05:00:00 +0000

Dear Handmade Folks,

With great excitement I share our latest news: Handmade Seattle is now 90% sold out. This response is a testament to the growing enthusiasm for this event (thank you.) Whether you’ll be with us on-site or joining remotely, it’s your moment to secure your place and be a part of this indie celebration, dedicated to Handmade software and its core values:

Secure Ticket

Conference Schedule Develops Further

Our conference lineup and timeline are reaching their final form. I’m incredibly pumped (and grateful) for the phenomenal presentations these talented folks are cooking up for you. I hope you check out the newest additions.

We also have a fun, animated way for you to keep track of the schedule, right on the Handmade Seattle page. Here’s a partial screenshot:

The timeline becomes increasingly detailed over the next few days. Notice how the Nesholm Family Lecture Hall—our main entrance—is accessible on both Google and Apple maps. Our venue is a short walking distance from the Space Needle!

Finally, keep an eye out for the Friday hangout plans, which we hope to announce a week before the conference.

Hotels: An Update 🏨

The Mediterranean Inn near the Space Needle remains a favorite choice for many Handmade Seattle attendees. Rooms still seem available, and I personally recommend it!

However, our new event coordinator, advised me that securing hotel discounts and contracts with our crowd size ideally takes a year of planning. Unfortunately then it won’t be until 2024 that we could give support for attendees booking hotels. Forgive the tardiness on this front.

We can still offer discounts to anyone who’s struggling financially, with special consideration to students and anyone affected by the layoffs. Please reach out.

Your Chance for the Trade Show

For those interested in hosting a job booth or showcasing your personal project, a few slots are still up for grabs! Reach out via email to discuss the details. With the conference just around the corner, don’t delay—let’s make these opportunities happen.

To the attendees who’ve already made last-minute-ish requests to participate at Handmade Seattle, you’ll hear back from me soon.

And remember, the private chat server opens to the audience on Wednesday, November 8th, exactly one week before the conference. You’ll get an email to join in; I’m looking forward to chatting with you there.

At your service,
Abner

Tickets Almost Gone (2023)

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 05:00:00 +0000

Dear Handmade Folks,

I’m psyched to share Handmade Seattle 2023 is quickly gaining momentum, with 75% of tickets already claimed. Even the online track is filling up nicely—there’s a cap because we wish to maintain an intimate atmosphere for meaningful discussions.

I want enough ticket holders to run a sustainable indie conference, not maximize profits at all costs.

Did you know most companies have a “professional development” budget? Apparently it isn’t advertised much. Consider proposing Handmade Seattle to your boss as a worthy investment. (For struggling students or the financially disadvantaged: send an email for further assistance.)

If you’ve been holding out until the star lineup comes along, let us wait no longer!

The Conference Lineup So Far

With the new Seattle page live you can see who we have as speakers, demoers, and special guests:

Handmade Seattle

For the first time we have explicit themes tying together these presentations:

Dysfunction
Competence
Antidotes

We’re even using a Big Mac as one of our props, which will make sense in due course:

As you read up on the themes and presentations you’ll realize we’ve turned up the spice. It’s taken time to establish ourselves professionally, but Handmade is now large enough to challenge the shortcomings of the software industry, all while maintaining a touch of class.

My motto is spicy but classy. (Some tech companies are gonna need A LOT of milk though.)

Hotel Accomodations 🏨

By popular demand I’m exploring discounted rates with hotels and will have answers for you by October 15th. That’s exactly a month away from Handmade Seattle: if that feels too close for comfort, then go ahead and book anything near the Seattle Center; I know first-hand that they’re all good options.

Official Hangouts 🥂

If you’re in the physical track, we offer you a series of optional hangouts on the dawn of the final day: Friday, November 17th. They are organized by yours truly and take place outside of the Seattle Center. ChocoVine might be involved 🙂

I’ll have more exciting news on this front later—including how ticket holders can RSVP for these meetings.

Trade Show: Demo and Job Booths

Demos: We still have some slots for demos. A demo is streamed live and is also offered a physical booth at the venue. It can be about any software project (even commercial) as long as it strongly aligns with Handmade values.

Jobs: We are still on the lookout to rent more job booths. For the companies already wishing to hire Handmade people, you’ll hear from me again soon to register officially.

Contact me if you’re hoping to reserve a slot. They are limited.

Your indie organizer,
Abner Coimbre

Introducing Handmade Meetups!

Fri, 22 Sep 2023 05:00:00 +0000

Dear Handmade Folks,

It’s been a minute since my last update back on July 31st, just before Handmade Boston’s debut last month. Rest assured, I’m very much alive and pumped to bring you the latest.

Reflecting on Boston

Handmade Boston was an experiment in mentorship and masterclasses. As a hybrid conference, we sold over three hundred tickets—an impressive feat for a first-time niche event using an unproven format. My heartfelt thanks to all of you who joined us, and to our official instructors who offered new technical insights. Brace yourselves for a better sequel next year.

And fret not, those exclusive masterclass recordings will be unlocked for all to enjoy soon. But let’s save that story for another day.

Meetups.com, but Handmade

Like Majora’s looming moon, I’m motivated to unveil an initiative that, much like Link’s quest, I couldn’t have completed alone—Handmade Meetups! It’s your golden ticket to make friends with like-minded programmers all year round.

Join a Meetup Near You

Shoutout to the hosts partnering with Handmade Cities, who are working with me to run meetups under our brand. Head to our page to subscribe to meetups happening in your area:

Join Meetup

Currently, ten cities officially host meetups, spanning the United States and Europe.

United States

Seattle, Washington
Portland, Oregon
Boston, Massachusetts
Las Vegas, Nevada
San Francisco, California
New York City, New York
Detroit, Michigan

Europe

Stockholm, Sweden
Gothenburg, Sweden
Grenoble, France

If your city isn’t on the list, don’t worry; you can wishlist it, and we’ll notify you when meetups kick off there.

Shared Values

Our partnership thrives on a commitment to software quality. We’re not perfect, but in an industry obsessed with control and profit, we stand for user experience, agency over software, and privacy. We aim to build better software for humanity which is why we dig deeper into how computers actually work.

Wisdom is magnified by technical competence.

We need the wisdom to distinguish software engineered for exploitation rather than genuine assistance. Furthermore, even when not intentionally exploitative, it may have been constructed devoid of the love, care, or consideration for those who will ultimately rely on it.

To witness true change in our industry, we must continuously forge bonds among the programmers (and allies) who are deeply invested. Handmade Meetups are instrumental for this. While the high-profile conference carries weight, it can’t stand alone.

In the words of Gil Scott-Heron, “The revolution will not be televised.”

Handmade Seattle 2023: Meet Morgan!

Unlike Boston, Handmade Seattle is a well-established conference with a proven formula. Even before unveiling the conference schedule, we’ve already sold 70% of all tickets! Your trust means the world to me.

I’m thrilled to announce the newest addition to our team, event coordinator Morgan Rammell:

With her expertise onboard, I can focus on elevating the conference experience: defining explicit themes, angering entrenched corporate interests, spending more quality time with contributors and hanging out with the audience.

Read more about my wonderful staff members here. Stay tuned for updates on the conference lineup during my Twitch stream next week.

Handmade Cities Direct

Mark your calendars for this Monday, September 25th, at 2PM Seattle Time. I’ll be hosting a Handmade Cities Direct, discussing my current endeavors and the roadmap for Handmade Seattle 2023 and beyond: