welcome to /outandabout's unofficial official newsletter! this will be the kind of “newsletter” that rarely provides news, and is instead more of a reflection on the goings on in the world, occasional information about things i find interesting, and basically the modern equivalent of a myspace blog. there will, for the most part, be a correlation between my /outandabout posts and what’s written here, but how they will be connected i don’t yet know. stick around and find out, i guess!

disclaimer: this is associated with absolutely nobody except myself and my brain, and i am therefore very likely to be wrong on more than one occasion. c'est la vie.

another note before i start: i have some very big ideas about what can be done in the future of outandabout, but unfortunately i have had the misfortune (good fortune? who knows) of having a normal-idea-capabilities brain genetically bestowed upon me. and so, my big ideas will live here for now, until such time when i can master the art of frames, digital illustration, coding, and generally remaking the internet. anyways...

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welcome to the inaugural outandabout article! today’s article is brought to you in part by yours truly, as well as (nonexistent) sponsorships by Venice Beach and the New York Knicks, both of whom are taking up various degrees of my attention at the moment. now, onto the article! today i’ll introduce the longgg and winding history of outandabout (kidding, it started about a week ago), and maybe more importantly, address the what’s the point question that is so integral to anything anyone makes. it starts, as i suspect many things will, with Farcon.

for those of you who are similarly unacquainted with the ins and outs of web3 social media, here is a very very basic idea. Farcaster is a "social media protocol" built on Optimism, providing the open ecosystem from which a variety of apps that in some way build upon the concept of decentralized social media can be created. decidedly the most popular is Warpcast, the newest and coolest social media, which (from what i can understand), started as crypto twitter for people who hate twitter, and has grown exponentially, hitting the edges of the general web2 collective consciousness. this is of course a very basic, bastardized description of the technical genius that is Farcaster and all it has to offer, but i digress, as this is not the point of today's article. if you want more actual Farcaster and web3 related content, go check out @ kylepatrick 's articles, which offer the proper information from someone who knows something about most things.

Farcon then emerged from the creation of Farcaster as many IRL things do that started URL - with a desire to connect in the way that no protocol can do: in person. held in Venice Beach, LA over the span of 4ish days (some early side events for the eager beavers not included) and was, basically, a crypto builder's dream event. comprising of official talks, workshops, and more, as well as so many side events my calendar turned into a solid wall of colour, Farcon had it all - food, drinks, contests, merch, music, tattoos, and a whole lot of crypto talk.

my point being, this is the place for ideas to come to life. so going into it with not a single “realistic” idea was, to say the least, underwhelming on my part. and therefore, to cut a long story short, i started throwing ideas out there while on our first walk in LA. “i wish there was somewhere i could share my cool walk findings, and so could other people, and eventually we’d have a big shared compilation of all the cool things everywhere that anyone might want to see.” this of course, was a single realistic idea, so it turns out i wasn’t far behind after all. thus, /outandabout was born. i dumped my first LA pictures on there, and it began to skyrocket. (well okay, it was more of an egg-to-tadpole situation than a rocket-to-space one, but you get the idea.)

right, now that we’ve got the how out of the way, let’s get on to the what and why of outandabout, which i will (of course) address in a very long-winded, roundabout way.

in my dream web3 world, it all makes sense. i don’t just mean the general “everything” of life, but web3 itself. if i had it my way, i would be able to explain this channel to my parents without having to explain what Warpcast is, and why it’s made on Farcaster, and what a protocol is, and how it relates to blockchain, and what a blockchain even is in the first place. alas, they did not birth a tech genius, and my comparisons are therefore extremely simple, and probably frighteningly inaccurate to anyone who understands more than me. i therefore hope for the day in which i can make an understandable comparison like “web3 is to the internet as netflix is to blockbuster” - which is to say arguably bigger and better and easier, but without the overlording and monopolizing and yada yada yada. ANYWAY, my point is that i am preparing for the day in which Farcaster is a part of the collective internet-user consciousness, and we need to once again be reminded that outside exists. by then, this will be one of many non-crypto channels, lost in the sea of things people are just interested in. but for now, i hope to use /outandabout to remind people that getting outside really is good for you, and really can make your day better, and that no web3 social media will ever make it big in the outside world if it only focuses on web3 (but that’s a conversation for another day).

so if in your daily life, you ever feel inclined to share whatever you see while out in the world, please do! this is absolutely not limited to cool pictures, but can come in the form of videos documenting an adventure out and about, directions to a hidden spot that you think should be not-so-hidden, a link to the new restaurant around the corner that deserves rave reviews, or an ode to your favourite tree, if you so choose. or almost anything else! not only will i appreciate it all, but someone else may discover your hidden gem, or get inspired to try something new, or just be reminded that there is cool stuff to see quite literally everywhere, if you know where to look.

my goal for this channel isn’t necessarily to tokenize it or make it mintable or any of the many things one can do within Farcaster. it’s simply to remind people that getting outside can have an exponential effect on one’s quality of life, work, and overall well-being. taking a minute to notice what’s around you is just as important IRL as it is in a community ecosystem, and finding the little things that can change your perspective isn’t just a dev’s worst nightmare. all to say, if this channel reminds even one person to get out and about in the world, i’ll consider my contribution to Farcaster to be a success.

thanks for reading, and until next time!

-sarah 🪽

p.s. as mentioned, i do in fact have several ideas now for the future of /outandabout once it grows a bit, but until then you’ll just have to humor me as i muse on what’s possible here, while many more educated people than myself are probably rolling their eyes at the simplicity of what i’m imagining. oh well!

p.p.s. this article is dedicated to my mom, and anyone else who managed to make it to the end of this! i cannot promise these will ever be more concise, but thank you anyway!