Local Software: The New Craft Beer?

The Internet lets us transcend geography—so why are we all attending this conference in person? Because we still long for a sense of place. We crave community, context, and connection tied to the real world. While digital tools have opened up new possibilities, they’ve also shifted attention away from our neighborhoods, our cities, our grounded lives. So what does it look like to design digital software with a greater sense of place? We have local beer and local produce - could we have local software? In this 90-minute session, we’ll explore what a localized Internet might look like. After some context setting and brief introductions, we’ll identify what we value about the Internet’s global reach—and what we’ve lost in the process. Then we’ll break into groups to imagine digital tools that anchor us locally. Think neighborhood recipe index, local asks and offers, even custom LLMs for your block. With AI making it easier than ever to build custom tools, a more geographically-attuned Internet is more possible than ever.