Mia Quagliarello<p>Little known fact: <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://cosocial.ca/@evan" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>evan</span></a></span> and I worked at a startup in 2020 that never launched. It wasn't a great experience for me, but I loved the team we had hired, including Evan. I didn't know much then about <a href="https://flipboard.social/tags/activitypub" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>activitypub</span></a> or the social web.</p><p>I went back to <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://flipboard.social/@Flipboard" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>Flipboard</span></a></span> in 2021 and in 2023 I started to learn about <a href="https://flipboard.social/tags/federation" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>federation</span></a> because of <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://flipboard.social/@mike" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>mike</span></a></span>'s vision. Fast forward to 2025, Flipboard + <span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://flipboard.social/@surf" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>surf</span></a></span> are organizing <a href="https://flipboard.social/tags/SXSW" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>SXSW</span></a>'s first <a href="https://flipboard.social/tags/FediverseHouse" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>FediverseHouse</span></a>. Evan was one of the first people to sign on, which created a snowball from there, which helped the event be a success.</p><p>This week, we got to meet IRL for the first time! So when I think about "the purpose" of that hard 10 months at that startup, I now know what it was.</p>