Notes from DWeb Cascadia 2026 ------------------------------ Why did I attend this? When I signed up, I knew it was not entirely what anyone who knows me would call "my thing". For starters, it involved camping ... or well, sleeping in a tent. (With catered meals, hot showers, and the town of Ganges 5 minutes away, it could be described as "backyard camping for adults." But still). And even more daunting, it would involve talking with strangers, attempting to involve myself in a community about which I knew only that we shared some concerns about various mis-uses of contemporary tech. Previous conference experience has shown me how well I tend to do in such circumstances, which is not very well at all. But perhaps it would be good to stretch myself, to venture outside my comfort zone. Try something new. I became aware of the DWeb scene earlier this year, when a delegation of DWebbers made the trip from Vancouver to Victoria to take in the 100 Rabbits presentation I had instigated, and to tour our Historic Computing lab. So once again, a bit late to the party, as DWeb has been a thing for over 10 years, ever since Brewster Kahle (of Internet Archive fame) gave a talk on "locking the web open" at a Ford Foundation gathering back in 2015. The first Decentralized Web Summit was held a year later. leading eventually to the first DWeb Camp in 2019.[1] The Internet Archive remains its primary sponsor. As befits an organization concerned with decentralizing things, there have since arisen a number of regional DWeb nodes, including one in Vancouver. I'm not sure how long the YVR node has been in existence. Their blog appears to go back to 2024.[2] They organized a Cascadia camp over the August long weekend in 2025, and this years' camp was expected to draw a somewhat bigger crowd, as the main DWeb camp was for the first time being held away from the US West Coast, in Germany. And indeed, a few regulars who couldn't make the trip to Europe did in fact turn up at the Cascadia event. Camping ... I still had a tent, as it turned out, buried under a heap of detritus in the darkest corner of basement storage. My self-inflating sleeping mat was a little the worse for wear, but nothing some judiciously applied duct tape couldn't fix. (or so I thought ...) It was kind of fun, equipping my bike for the ride up the peninsula, to catch a ferry to nearby Salt Spring island. I was surprised by how much gear I could cram into a couple of panniers. The last (and only) time I had ever done something like it was almost 30 years ago, when I took a brief cycle camping tour of the Gulf Islands. It seemed appropriate to cycle, rather than drive, to an event focussed on community-led alternative tech. And I knew the ride to the ferries, at least, would be enjoyable, following as it does the Lochside trail.[3] It's a short ferry trip from the Swartz Bay ferry terminal to Fulford Harbour on Salt Spring, and a it was a rather nice one, that warm summer day, passing by smaller islands and outcroppings under a bright blue sky. The ride from Fulford to the Farmers Institute, the camp site, was somewhat more demanding than when I traversed the island 30 years previously, the hills having grown noticeably steeper in the interval. There were a couple of spots where I literally had to walk my heavily laden bike uphill. No shame or anything. I'm not going to give a detailed review of the camp, the sessions I attended, or anything like that. I will say the folks I spoke with, dined with, and attended sessions with were some of the most intelligent, friendly and welcoming people I've met in a while. There was a great, cooperative spirit that informed everything from the group discussions to washing up after meals. The camp had enough structure, but not too much. And the food was awesome. Some of the things I remember, now a couple of months have gone by: - a great conversation with a whole bunch of folks I'd only just met, the opening night of the camp - several people coming up to me, saying "you look familiar, where do I know you from?" In every case, it was from the 100 Rabbits event - noting to myself well before the event that "DWeb" is one letter removed from "dweeb" and resolving not to mention it to anyone. Only to find that some of the other attendees had already enthusiastically adopted the label. And here's the deeply buried lede: Hanging out with these folks, reading up on the history of DWeb, combined with some other reading I've been doing, has led to the realization that the concept of "decentralization" in tech has a couple of different polarities. The one that attracts me I alluded to earlier: building small-scale community led alternatives to big tech. That polarity was very much in evidence at the camp. But the concept of decentralization has been used in the service of another agenda entirely: using purportedly decentralizing technologies like cryptocurrencies to undermine the power of elected governments, with the end goal of establishing big tech as the anti-democratic alternative (the "network state"). I get the sense folks drawn to that polarity may have historically also formed part of the DWeb community, although fortunately the only evidence I saw at the camp were a couple of folks lamenting that the blockchain hadn't quite panned out the way they hoped. By the second day of DWeb I was returning to my old ways, rebuilding my comfort zone in new surroundings. Go for walks by myself, retire early, get up early, isolate myself behind my laptop. Although this paragraph has been somewhat revised since, I did in fact write part of this very sentence as a clever way to avoid engaging in conversation. You don't change the habits of a lifetime in a weekend; nor was I really expecting to. But nice to know I can still take baby steps, even at my age. Notes and References -------------------- 1. DWeb site https://getdweb.net/ 2. DWeb Vancouver Blog https://dwebyvr.org/blog/ 3. Lochside trail gopher://sdf.org:70/0/users/jdd/phlog/20250503-artifacts Wed 30 Sep 2026 12:08:25 PM PDT