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  • Welcome to the � Federation - The Ecosystem is Moving
    2018-06-01 19:00
    Published at 20 May 2018

    On the 1st and 2nd of June Varia will host 'The Ecosystem Is Moving', a lecture by and worksession with Daniel Gultsch about federated instant messaging, open source software and the sustainability of open systems.

    • June 1st, 19.00 - 22.00 - introduction to XMPP and lecture by Daniel Gultsch
    • June 2nd, 10.00 - 18.00 - hands on worksession on design and federated chat systems.
      Please register for the worksession via info * varia.zone

    Daniel Gultsch is the developer behind Conversations, an open source instant messaging application for Android. In 2014, he decided to work full time on Conversations and try to make a living from it. Rather than starting from scratch with Conversations, he built it as a client for the existing federated messaging protocol XMPP.

    Since an XMPP messenger can, in a way, only be as good as the entire ecosystem, Daniels work on Conversations also meant work on expanding and improving that larger XMPP ecosystem. This work includes helping to draft and implement protocol standards, such as OMEMO, a modern and user-friendly end-to-end encryption based on Signal's protocol. He also contributed code to other XMPP servers and clients in the ecosystem to bring them up to speed with modern uses. Additionally, through his critical essays he is a vocal defender of XMPP and open standards in general.

    Conversations is notable because, through its continuous focus on user experience, design and security it has garnered a lot of interest for both itself and the XMPP ecosystem as a whole. This makes it an interesting example to talk about what the design field could potentially contribute to critical software practices.


    Welcome to the � Federation

    Welcome to the � Federation is grounded in a renewed interest in 'alternative' on-line services such as social media and chat. Through meetings and worksessions the project hosts various events around software projects that are working towards these ecosystems. A particular focus will lie on those projects whose activities have reinvigorated interest for their underlying protocols, in part by their focusing on design, language and user experience (UX).

    The Wtt�F question is to explore how arts and design communities can play a supportive role in these processes by contributing skills, knowledge, time and exposure. For more information please visit: Welcome to the � Federation


    This project is made possible with the support of Varia and CBK Rotterdam.