(Previously: Prologue, Part 1 - Monday, Part 2 - Tuesday, Part 3 - Wednesday, Part 4 - Thursday)

Friday was Social, which is probably my favorite day and the highlight of XOXO, with all the community-organized events.

I got to Rev Hall early so I got my daily writing done, then went to a cafe nearby for the off-the-books #ptsd channel meetup. I was on the fence about going but I’m really glad I did; it was one of the best ones I’ve attended. It was great to connect with other people there, learn about several interesting resources and share experiences. The place also had really good vegan chocolate chip cookies.

After the meetup, I went back to Rev Hall for the second half of my breakfast; I got a Yolko Ono from Fried Egg I’m in Love. They were one of the highlights of XOXO 2016 and their breakfast sandwiches were almost as good as I remembered, which is to say, still pretty damn good.

By then it was time for the opening remarks, so I got a front-row seat in the Auditorium. The Andys were funny as usual, insert joke here about Andy Baio’s bathroom.

The Tim Tam Slam Jam kicked off the Social meetups for me, for which a sizable crowd had formed, one that was much bigger than 2018. I sort of assumed that quite a few people would bring Tim Tams and felt like the 12 boxes I got a few weeks before were overkill. That wasn’t the case; we only had a few more boxes on top of it. Someone said they were hard to come by in Portland.

And so we slammed and it was heaps of fun as usual; people keep saying that the caramel one is not that good for slamming but I disagree, they are my favorites.

Having gotten my sugar fix, I hung out with Skyler, Jonathan, Inness and Megan. We had a good conversation, Megan gave us her zine about not freaking out, and Jonathan showed off his interactive two-person story thing that uses Airpods. I got to try it last year at XOXO 2018 and was excited about the progress he made; the demo he showed was pretty fun.

Jonathan

Inness

Skyler

I walked to the #visual-art meetup with Jonathan and Inness. On the way there, Jonathan talked about living in Venice Beach and all the scooters there.

The meetup was nice, in a small art gallery, with a lot of people drawing. There was also a lot of cool art on exhibition. I took a few portraits there, including one of Eler that turned out particularly well. I ran into Kevin there and bought an XOXO mug from Julia.

Eler

Kevin

julia’s mug Julia’s mug

Next, I went to Glitch’s Appy Hour. I ran into Lyndsey there again as well as a few other friends. I watched Nicole He’s cool demo for her upcoming interactive project and a Powerpoint Karaoke that was fun. I got to talk with one of my Internet Heroes, Jason Kottke; we had a good chat. He told me to email him the link to my portraits after the festival, if I somehow end up on kottke.org I can die happy (so far it hasn’t happened.)

I took a scooter back to Rev Hall to check out Playdate, Panic’s upcoming quirky game console. They only had one game you could play it, and it’s a cool device but a lot will depend on the games people will develop for it. I finally got to meet Mike and got to know Vlad; I obviously took their portraits as well.

Mike

Vlad

I ran into Skyler again and she told me about Earl’s concert at 4 at #music-making so after hanging out a bit in the park, that was my next stop. We watched him do some chill electro music (he has a soundcloud), it was pretty great and a good way to take a break from this marathon of a day. By then it was around 4:30 pm, so I decided to get a late lunch and got a grilled cheese (again.)

Afterwards I took a scooter to the #adhd meetup, where I got a 3D printed empathy emoji that I jury-rigged to my badge; earlier that day Lyndsey showed me the trick to sticking the pronoun pin to my badge so now my badge looked a lot better. I also took the chance to print out and stick my avatar there and wrote all the projects I did under my name as well.

My XOXO badge, now complete

Several people told me over the past few days that they liked my pictures and thanked me for the calendar I made, which felt great.

I didn’t stay too long at the #adhd meetup as I was getting a bit tired and peopled out. I stopped by the ADX open house for a bit before going back to Rev Hall for all the evening activities.

I talked on twitter with Jillian who had Snax, her zine with her. I bought one and it’s great; you should read it if you have the chance. It has an essay from Summer Farah that’s literally one of the best things I’ve read this month.

The food trucks were opening a bit late, so I hung out more with people and finally ran into Josh, who I’ve been meaning to meet for quite a while. We had a good conversation and he told me that “you have a whole vibe” which I took as a high compliment.

After getting dinner once again from the Filippino cart, I walked around Arcade and checked out the games. I caught Nerdwriter at Video, then went to check out Tabletop. There were some cool games, however the place was very noisy and cramped and it was around that time my brain started shutting down.

I went back to Video to see Earworm (and ran into Sarah again); they showed a video that I’ve seen before but it was still fun to watch it with others on the big screen. I went back to Arcade again and took pictures of the games I wanted to check out later, then back to Video for the final act, Unraveled. He showed a video about calculating your pet’s HP and it was hilarious, well worth staying up late.

Then I took a Lyft home, showered and went to sleep.