2026/Nuremberg/prof

From IndieWeb

Personally Professional was a session at IndieWebCamp Nuremberg 2026.

Watch: ▢️ 34:50s

Session: Personally Professional

When: 2026-06-27

Hashtag: #prof

Participants

Notes

  • Welcome to the session everyone!
    • We have 30 mins for the session!
  • Zegnat: when shares website, has lots of contact information, but not a lot of information about what he is doing for work or how to reach out professionally.
  • There are people here who only have portfolios rather than personal websites.
  • What would you like to add / change to your website in terms of personal / professional representation?
  • Also free to share things you have done, found successful in the past!
  • Joschi: tollwerk.de website is indie-webby; Joschi has put a lot of effort into that.
    • Put more effort into org website rather than personal.
    • Doesn't know of many/any company websites that are IndieWebified
  • Tantek: site is more personal, neglected resume on website for ~10 years or more
    • But he has a resume static page
  • There are lots of examples of people who have separate resumes on their website
    • Peter Molnar has a CV page on his website; marked up with h-resume
    • Max has had a professional and personal website which were on different domains.
      • In the end, merged them together; it was too much of a hassle to have two different websites with their own styles. It turned out that the professional website wasn't as needed at the time so it was never updated.
  • Grey area: things that aren't as relevant professionally
  • Maybe you want to discuss sensitive topics like politics, etc. on your personal website
  • AI could synthesize information
    • How do we put hidden text on website to tell the AI to go away?
    • Research published [citation needed] that said AI will prefer text written by AI
  • Website is my self
    • What if we could disable part of our website for a period of time, or let another part show more?
      • Maybe like adding links on website home page?
    • You might not want to show something on a given day, but show it later -- a creative interpretation instead of binary
    • What is the definition of professional?
      • Professional from an employee point of view, and in the case of a self-employed person trying to find clients
      • Employees care about employers, self-employed care about clients
      • What you communicate may be different depending on the audience
      • Showing capabilities of what you can do / have done
      • How does your voice change depending on the audience?
  • People's preferences on what they share on their website is different
    • You can use your site to communicate what you do want in a job / vs. signal what you don't want
  • Someone has a disclaimer on their website for what they don't want to do
  • James: if you make your website your primary identity on the web, and you only share your blog, as I change there is a voice in the back of my mind, that company I worked for 6 years ago, are they reading my blog now? Maybe they'll find an idea and join the indieweb(!)
    • there's something about a degree of separation of another website, perhaps people who want to hire you freelance.
    • some people like the example of gardening content appealing to colleagues
    • Combining identities in a single place problem: what if you decide years later you only want a certain group to access your website?
      • Related: RSS-only posts
  • Tantek: separate domains?
  • Sebastian (https://make.sfeld.eu/): yes I do, recruiters say they search for certain things, lists of things in your portfolio, lots of keywords, you get calls from recruiters for stuff you will never do at work
    • for me it is better to have separate professional and personal website, this is what I want to be paid for, and this is what I do for fun
    • I find it hard to combine both.
  • Startups / small companies look for generalists, larger enterprises look for specialists (?); debate going on in the room :)
  • How people find your website, and where they land
    • Could you have a button that says "For professional me, go here"...
    • Where is the starting point where people land on?
    • How will this change with AI?
  • Joschi's website has a single view that's easy to comprehend
  • One strategy for separation: using your "government name" for professional uses, and for personal website they have a pseudomous alias.
    • Not easy in Germany because you need to put your address on your website to identify yourself
  • You can design for the kind of person who you want to come to your website
    • Make it more creative / text-heavy, etc. depending on the audience
    • It can take a bit of time before someone explores a website more; you need to have a special intent to click further into the architecture of a website.
    • Nora's website is a professional portfolio and also whimsical
      • Nora wouldn't want anyone to hire them who doesn't appreciate the whimsy on her website
  • Professional and personal could be the same because they both represent you
    • James too wouldn't want to be hired by someone who didn't acknowledge the significance of his website to him
  • Personal skills like drawing fan art can show your creativity which may be appealing to employers
  • Other person in the room: anyone who wants to hire someone will probably be happy looking through a personal site to find the professional one if you make it easy.
  • Making web pages specifically for a client
    • Could you have a custom resume with different links?
    • It would be hard to make a page that lists everything you have done if you have been working for many years; filtering for a client would be ideal so they can see the most relevant links.
      • Related again: "what is a professional website?" -- everyone will have different meanings.
    • medium-sized companies may look for different things to small companies, etc.
  • In-URL filter, or let people filter themselves
  • You could have short URLs with different pages
  • You could make a subdomain like tollwerk.example.com that is tailored for reaching out to them
    • Could be a good sign for agencies: you have a portfolio specifically for us
    • Important: avoid enumeration
    • Jakob when he applied here, made a site specifically for Tollwerk, but Tollwerk didn't check (but that's because Tollwerk knew him already)
  • You could track page visits
  • You could put random company names as Easter Eggs, like starfleet.example.com
    • "Oh, they also applied to Google, maybe I should hire them..." :D
  • What is the use for the professional website? -- applying to a specific company, applying to many companies, might be to have a professional site on the web for if someone searches for your website on Google, etc.
  • How do you beat LinkedIn on search results
  • There may be many people who have your name with whom you are competing
  • If you have multiple websites there is a mental overhead
  • Ranking for keywords could be a fun way to communicate your expertise on a topic (not authoritative, but fun)
    • James' "taylor swift song acronyms" or "software maintenance blog"
  • We'll have domain addicts anonymous later today -- it will not be recorded.
  • Three domains: professional, private, cool. When last time they were updated: professional is up to date, cool website in Latin but it's not online.
  • You might want to get your name [dot] com and keep it
    • If you have a domain, keep it if it is your name in case it gets taken over by spammers, etc.
    • At minimum, redirect to your LinkedIn if you don't have the time to maintain content on your website.
  • Does anyone feel any pressure to post on their website for professional audience?
    • This is a thing on LinkedIn
      • Lots of satire around this
    • "That's not who I am or want to be"

See Also

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