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2020 has been a year many of us would like to forget. It’s rare for a community as globalized as ours to be affected by events as far-reaching as the COVID-19 pandemic and protests against racial injustice. These events almost discouraged us from restarting the project this year—with so many people physically and emotionally drained, how could we expect anyone to want to contribute, let alone have the time and energy for it? We proceeded with caution, hoping there was still community interest.

The purpose of this edition of the Web Almanac is not to forget about 2020, but to memorialize it. For better or worse, this is a chapter in our history. Despite all of the external pressures of this year, over a hundred contributors from the web community signed up and volunteered countless hours of their time for a project dedicated to remembering 2020 and the state of the web. Amazingly, we actually managed to expand the scope of this year’s edition by adding three new chapters and only losing one.

When I ask contributors what they enjoy most about the project, the answer is almost always about the people. We work together as teams, we support each other, and in only five months time we were able to build the equivalent of a 600 page book! It was an enormous challenge, and while we haven’t solved the world’s problems, we’ve shown what’s possible when people choose to work together.

Please enjoy the 2020 Web Almanac, the culmination of our labor of love for the web. And be sure to reach out if you’d like to join the team.

— Rick Viscomi, Web Almanac Editor-in-Chief