XOXO Explore is fitting showcase for a brilliant experiment

Link: Launching XOXO Explore, by the AndysI freaking loved XOXO, the experimental festival for independent artists and creators from the internet. I attended the first one during a fraught, stressful, often sad period of my life; I’d ripped my life up to move to the US to be nearer to my terminally ill mother. I thought I knew where my life was going, and then everything was uncertain.And here was this joyful festival of people doing things on their own terms, in their own way. I attended with my partner at the time, who was visiting back from the UK, and we discovered Portland itself in the process. We played Johann Sebastian Joust with Dan Harmon. Ben Brown, who I had followed for years, silently sidled up at an arcade and played the 1990s X-Men cabinet game with me. We had a beer with MC Frontalot. And felt home in a way I desperately needed to.Clearly, a ton of work went into this archive site, which contains almost every talk. (One in particular was too sensitive to record.) I’m…