waow, tech!

over the last 6 months, i've been trying to figure out the best way to elevator pitch atproto to anyone—even people who've never heard of it. somehow, my family, friends, and girlfriend are still around! my @me demo is fun, but way too jargon-y for my grandma or non-tech friends. it lacks narrative structure and leaves all the punchy bits for people curious enough to click around, instead of smacking viewers in the face with a punchline. after many epochs pitching atproto apps to vaguely curious listeners, anecdotally and perhaps counterintuitively: the "single login" angle lands harder than data sovereignty. maybe because people don't use password managers? or they use their Notes app (which tbf, same sometimes). you can whip folks into a philosophical frenzy about Palantir and surveillance capitalism—"give data back to the people! yeah!"—but then they're right back on TikTok and FB marketplace, because it's all abstract when you have to extrapolate from skeets. user nonplussed-ness is signal. the coherence and immediacy of the pitch matters as much as the provable benefits of the protocol. so waow.tech is my try at a minimum viable manifesto for atproto—capturing the value prop without arcane language or potentially ostracizing premises. goals: - "why care about atproto" in 5 seconds, for anyone - get people asking "how could it all be stored in the same place, behind one login?" (primes them for demos) - showcase apps building good experiences on atproto - eventually: a simple and mobile friendly complement to help build intuition for how atproto offers user choice - eventually: "your medical records" and other private-data applications [1] not all of these are met to my liking today. i'll keep iterating. feedback welcome! --- [1]: two friends in medical professions have independently suggested using atproto for consolidated, private aggregation of medical records. the convenience angle is viscerally clear there—you immediately see why owning your medical data matters, unlike things you already consider public.