This summer, I'll be spending five days in the woods near Berlin at DWebCamp — a gathering for builders and dreamers of a better web. July 8–12, Alte Hölle.
DWebCamp brings together people who are done waiting for the big platforms to fix things and have started building alternatives instead: decentralized protocols, federated networks, tools that put users back in control of their own data. It's part unconference, part hackathon, part summer camp for people who still believe the web can be better than it currently is.
That's what I believe too. And it's what I try to instill in our students at the bachelor Elektronica-ICT at Odisee: not passive consumers of the web, but active participants in shaping it. Builders and dreamers, in other words.
Rave Against the Algorithm
I'm giving a talk about RSS.
I know, I know. But bear with me.
Before the algorithmic feed, before the infinite scroll optimized for engagement rather than knowledge, we had RSS: a simple, resilient way to follow the web on your own terms. Chronological. Human-centered. Yours.
Then came the platforms, and RSS quietly disappeared from the mainstream. Not because it was bad. Because it was too good — it gave users too much control, and control doesn't monetize.
My talk is a small act of rage against that. A reminder that we had something worth keeping, and that we can still choose it. The forests around Berlin seemed like the right place to make that case.
The Accessibility Clinic
The thing I'm most excited about, though, is hosting an accessibility clinic.
We talk a lot about building "a web for everyone." The decentralized web community especially loves that framing. But the reality is that many DWeb projects — and modern web apps in general — are inadvertently locking people out. Poor keyboard navigation, missing ARIA labels, interfaces that fall apart under a screen reader. Accessibility is treated as a post-launch extra, something to get to eventually.
It isn't. It's a fundamental requirement. If your web is only accessible to people who can use a mouse and have perfect vision, you haven't built a web for everyone. You've built a web for some people, with good intentions.
The clinic is practical: attendees bring their own projects, and we audit them in real time. No slides, no theory. Just: here's what a screen reader does with your UI, here's why that's a problem, here's how to fix it. You leave with a prioritized list of concrete improvements.
I'm writing this before it happens, which feels a little strange. I don't know yet what DWebCamp will be like, who I'll meet, or whether the talk lands the way I hope it does.
But I know why I'm going.
The web I believe in — open, accessible, not owned by anyone — still exists,
in
corners and protocols and communities like this one.