(Pre)-History of Atmospheric Publishing

~15 min, ~4:30–4:45

• What is atmospheric publishing?

  • Of and on the internet + open + meaningfully social

  • (We can workshop more nuanced definition together!)

• Pre-history

  • RSS, Google Reader, etc.

  • WordPress, Ghost, etc.

  • Substack; the rise of newsletters

• WhiteWind

  • Pioneers; one of the first non-Bluesky lexicons

  • Limited: MD only, no drafts, no publications, no styling

  • No longer active, but tons of credit to them!

• Leaflet

  • Started as a docs app, super minimal + shareable

  • Last year added social publishing with atproto

  • Evolved to add things like Reader + looseleaf publishing

• …and many more!

  • Late 2025–now, amazing proliferation of publishing tools

  • Pckt (cute blogging), Offprint (newsletters; in alpha), Greengale, Weaver, Blento and more…

• Standard Site (standard.site)

  • Launched Jan 2026, initial collab btw Leaflet, Pckt, Offprint

  • Shared meta-standard with lexicons for publications, documents, and subscriptions

  • Leading to a rapid adoption in a broader ecosystem, becoming a schelling point for atmospheric publishing!

The Promise of Atmospheric Publishing

~15 min, ~4:45–5:00

• If this is indeed the year of atmospheric publishing…

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  • What does that mean? How does it inform what we do next?

• Lenses for atmospheric publishing

  • Publishing is ubiquitous

    • Everyone is a publisher!

    • How can we make publishing more powerful + personal?

  • Publishing is expressive

    • Show who you are and what you do

    • Find like-minded people (twitter as tuning fork; blog post as search query)

    • How can we make it easier to do more together?

  • Publishing is political

    • It's subversive, it's about infrastructure for change…

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    • How can we keep the social web free and open and antifragile?

  • Publishing is coordination

    • A way to harness group energy…

    • How can we not just reach people but help them do meaningful things together?

• The power of shared standards

  • Standards create simple ways for ecosystems to align

    • Like cross-platform listings and discovery (initial focus)

    • Cross-compatibility in Leaflet and Pckt readers for example

    • Or different takes on search tools

    • Or ways to publish existing sites e.g. via Sequoia / WP

  • Standards create edges from which to expand + experiment

    • standard.site is intentionally simple; lots of things we're already seeing interest in adding!

    • Author / attribution, languages, social things like comments and recommendations, content

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    • Content too; see proposed atproto markdown lexicon

    • We'll get into this more shortly!

  • Beyond RSS…

    • From one-way to two-way relationships; social not tacked on but baked into the core

  • Atmosphere to blogosphere…

    • Bridging from atproto to the entire internet; integrations with existing platforms

• Shifting the prevailing winds for internet publishing

  • How does publishing work on the internet now? Dominant models: content and social context separate / fragmented

  • We start by tinkering on the margins; we aim to shift the entire ecosystem, build the new model

  • Key thing: make the business case for creators / publishers

    • What do publishers need to make atmospheric publishing a no brainer?

    • Clear path to reaching and growing audience, engaging them in meaningful ways, making more money…

    • This means better experience for publishers as well as for readers, helping both sides connect and do more together, build positive feedback loops, etc.

  • We can support publishers at all scales

    • From dead simple ways to start a personal blog, to atmospheric publishing at scale

    • Build on shared standards and support bespoke personal things, in the same ecosystem, that's the magic!

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Lightning Demos (~15 min)

~15 mins, ~5:00–5:15 (a handful of 2-min demos)

What are you making / exploring? What do you need feedback on?

I'll add to this list as folks indicate interest :)

• Leaflet (Brendan/Jared/Celine)

• Pckt (Brooke)

• Offprint (Miguel) — maybe? (remote)

• Weaver (Orual) — maybe?

New Directions / Things to Build

~75 min, ~5:15–6:30pm

• Okay, we've set the stage, now: what's next?

  • Goal: generate some concrete ideas we can work on

  • From action items for improving standard.site, to potential prototypes, to ecosystem calls to action…

  • We can (you guessed it!) publish the results :)

• Standard Site missing pieces

  • Data like author / attribution

  • Social primitives like comments and recommendations

• Structures for social activity

  • Personal sites and web rings? (see: Octothorpe protocol)

  • Group publishing / collaboration

  • Niche community infra / tools

• Reader tools

  • Feeds and discovery

  • Recommendations / social sharing

  • Other unique atmospheric social experiences

• Business needs

  • Monetization

  • Analytics

  • Notification channels

• New interfaces

  • Browsers, embeds, etc.

• Workshop structure

  • Depending on who's in the room, we could jam together and pick a few things to discuss further…or maybe…

  • We could split up into a few smaller breakout groups then share back at the end!

  • Or something else TBD!