Words are very necessary – Notes on building a dictionary

A presentation at JAMStack_berlin in in Berlin, Germany by Oscar

We all use words. This announcement is made up of words. And some words are well-defined by a society that means to oppress with these words. Words that sometime need to be reclaimed, sometime used with caution or not at all. This is why Tatiana Mac started [self-defined] (https://www.selfdefined.app). A resource where the people impacted by these words can add their own definitions. As the claim goes: «we define our words, but they don’t define us».

Recently, it was rebuilt with Eleventy and a huge bunch of Markdown files. This change presented the team with some unique challenges, as Markdown wasn’t invented to build a dictionary.

This talk will provide with you with a look into the technical present and future of self-defined. How can you handle complex data structures with Markdown? To what extent does a static site make sense? And how can you add your definition of you?

Resources

The following resources were mentioned during the presentation or are useful additional information.