Launching a permanent archive for XOXO

Last week, we launched XOXO Explore, a permanent archive for XOXO, the Portland-based festival and conference I co-organized with Andy McMillan for eight years between 2012 and 2024. This was a huge undertaking, bringing together every lineup, schedule, recap video, conference talk, and standalone website that we ever made into a single permanent archive, filled with little photos and ephemera from the festival. It includes the final versions of our policies, which we refined over several years and released under open licenses, along with an archive of our guide. We even finally made a proper About page. This is something we first started talking about back in 2015, and attempted three times, but it was never finished until now. We’re really proud of it, and to mark the occasion, we made a line of limited-run merch, which you can preorder until the end of the day tomorrow, Friday, May 1. This includes all-new shirts, hats, stickers, felt and enamel pins, but also ridiculously niche…