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#100DaysToOffload

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Andy Piper

Last year, I gave a number of talks on the subject of pen plotters / drawing machines, and how they have been used in different ways to realise different forms of art.

I wasn’t immediately able to share the main talk (the closing keynote from QCon London 2024), but I posted about the shorter edition that I delivered at Electromagnetic Field, and I’ve also written about the distinction between computer art generated using algorithms, and generative AI creations.

It took some time for the video to become available to share, but you can now take a look at the closing keynote that began it all, on the InfoQ website: Where is the Art? a History in Technology. I really enjoyed researching the subject.

This year, I plan to tinker with building more of my own plotters, in different formats.

Plotting with paint

Next up, we have our sixth (!) Wimbledon Art Fair – next month, May 8-11. We’re still working with the plotter and pouring paints, and have upgraded from the AxiDraw A4 SE to a larger NextDraw 1117 for some of our more recent work. If you’re in the neighbourhood, do come and take a look!

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https://andypiper.co.uk/2025/04/17/pen-plotters-and-the-history-of-computer-art/

#100DaysToOffload#art#creativity
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Andy Piper

A couple of weeks ago I was delighted to join Ozoned on his Fireside Fedi show to talk about… all kinds of things! Ozoned started the show to talk to the people who make up the Fediverse, and so far there have been a range of guests from different projects and also, from across the community. I love it!

You can watch the show recordings live on Owncast, or watch later on PeerTube, or listen to the episodes as audio podcasts on Castopod (in any of your preferred podcast apps)

Thanks again Ozoned for inviting me to hang out, it was great chatting! Also, thank you for creating Fireside Fedi – this is exactly the kind of thing I hadn’t realised I wanted, to learn about the rich and diverse community we’re all taking part in. 💖

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https://andypiper.co.uk/2025/04/16/by-the-fireside/

#100DaysToOffload#fediverse#interview
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Andy Piper

Since “The Event” in late 2022, I have not been in a full-time role (which I’m privileged to say, has been my first time in that situation). Apart from developing my hobbies and interests into an art practice, I’ve been continuing to do some public speaking, and also freelancing as fractional lead for Developer Relations on the Mastodon project since ~May 2023.

I’m very happy and excited to share that as of early March, I’m working with Mastodon full-time, as Head of Communications.

Pivot…

A full-time role in communications is a slight pivot for me, but I can draw a through-line across all of my experience with community, public speaking, and in developer relations – Dev Rel often contains an element of acting as a translator between parties; demystifying new technologies and APIs and explaining them in layman’s terms; connecting customer feedback to the right places inside an organisation. In the case of Mastodon, I get to draw on multiple threads of experience: working adjacent to the news and Curation product teams, and also the Policy and the Trust & Safety teams, in my previous full-time role; 20+ years of Open Source (and Open Source foundation) community experience; public speaking, and writing about tech. The best part of it all is that Mastodon, the Fediverse, and Open Source, are all things that I am deeply personally invested in, and passionate about.

I’m extremely grateful to the rest of the team at Mastodon (particularly Eugen and the leadership for trusting me with the role, and also the board of our US 501(c)(3) entity who were instrumental in the decision making processes that enabled me to become involved on a full-time basis).

Looking ahead

In terms of communications strategy, I’m working on making things less reactive, more proactive. As a small, technically-focused team we have not always been able to quickly respond to media and other inquiries. My goal is that with more bandwidth to dedicate on talking to press, organisations, etc (and by decoupling these replies from being distractions or burdens on the engineering folks) we can do more to tell the story of the Fediverse, and Mastodon, more broadly. We’ll continue to work with the community as we do so – in fact, I’m hoping to hear how we can better support community efforts to share the message about ethical, more privacy-focused social web platforms, and also looking to learn about local and cultural nuances that can help us to share our story in a strong way.

You’ll see us getting more involved at conferences, community events, and in some more formal environments as well. Feel free to get in touch, if I can help – contact information is listed on the website.

image credit: Unsplash / CC BY-ND Elena Rossini

https://andypiper.co.uk/2025/04/15/communicating-changes/

a photo of a hand holding a smartphone - on screen you see the folder "Fediverse" which includes icons for apps like Lemmy, Loops, Mastodon, PeerTube and Pixelfed – aka open source, ethical social media apps that are alternatives to for-profit commercial social platforms by Meta, X, Reddit and Google
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