Webzine 2000
By mediadb for Mediadb
July 22, 2000

Webzine 2000 is a small conference for the "blogger elite" of San Francisco.
According to the website, "Webzine 2000 will include topics like guerilla media
tactics that can be used to make a webzine successful, a forum for people to
talk about their own webzines, a support group for web zinesters, and the ever
popular topic of wild speculation about where the World Wide Web will evolve
towards in the future." Basically, it was a gathering of S.F. web hipsters in a
place called Cellspace, an old warehouse turned into multimedia gathering
place, where they could talk about their website and feel cool. I've been
following this group of folks for a few years new with Justin Hall at the
forefront of the group. Blogger.com is a site for people to write their online
diaries. For a while, I really got into reading other people's blogs and after
I while I realized that most of these people are S.F. urban hipsters who are
all friends with each other and therefore talk about / link to each other. When
I heard about this event from Greg, I knew I had to go and see just how
hipsterish these people really are.

Ryan and I found the place after driving around S.F. for 1/2 an hour. When we
got there, we quickly realized that we weren't like these other people. Despite
the fact that they're also computer dorks and geeky, they all know each other
and have the twentysomething-I-have-a-purpose-hip vibe to them. Still, it was
fun for us to go and watch the presentations of activist websites.

Earlier that summer, Greg and I watched a documentary by Doug Block called Home
Page, which covers the topic of the home page phenomena in the early 90s. Most
of the movie focuses on Justin Hall, who both Greg and I had been following /
reading his site for a while. Links.net is known for revealing EVERYTHING about
Justin Hall's life. The site is massive and covers so much of just one person.
His home page is a model for so many others. Justin was the MC of Webzine 2000.

Another noteworthy figure that talked at Webzine 2000 was Derek Powazek of The
Fray fame. The Fray is a great site with short stories. At the end of each
story, there are tons of comments with related stories. I learned about this
site from the Ramworks crew in '95 and had read the site every now and then
since then. It was neat to see Derek Powazek get up and talk about The Fray. He
told stories as he likes to do.

All in all, I enjoyed the Webzine 2000 experience. All of us there are
certainly web addicts.