Open Tech Will Save Us

Edition 20: 25th October 2022

Event #20 was held on 25th October 2022. Watch the recording here.

The future lies in education. This is a critical place to teach about how open source can have a positive social impact, but it would be very ironic not to use open source there!

• Martin Dougiamas, CEO of Moodle, covers the history of the open source platform for teaching Moodle. He will tell us why open source, why it matters in education, and share his views on the future of technology and humanity.
• Dominik George will tell us everything about their school management system AlekSIS, currently deployed in schools in Germany. We may have a glimpse of his activities for teckids if time allows!

Edition 19: 28th September 2022

Event #19 was held on 28th September 2022. Watch the recording here.

People start to be familiar with password managers, which are a good way to mitigate the proliferation of accounts ruling our digital lives. On the enterprise side, past a certain size for the company the proliferation of accounts is solved by SSO.

Let's talk about everything identity, the state of the art, the impact is has on users, on administrators, why companies decide to deploy such projects, whether it can make sense for smaller scale deployments, and much more.

• Jens from Authentik, the supercharged all-in-one identity system will tell us about everything identity: why not just letting services have their base of accounts, what is the state of the art, is this just a systems administrators thing or does it benefit users as well?
• Quentin who works on a deeper integration of OpenID Connect in Matrix will reveal the not so secret plans he has to take advantage of what OpenID Connect has to offer so Matrix users get the best experience in the long run.

Edition 18: 27th July 2022

Event #18 was held on 27th July 2022. Watch the recording here.

A massive episode of Open Tech Will Save Us on the very broad topic of platforms! What makes a platform? Are there different levels of platforms? Who uses them? What are they useful for? What can be expected from a platform? And the controversial topics: are Linux or the Web a platform?

To answer those questions, who other than the Linux desktop most advanced projects GNOME and KDE, and people working on Matrix, the protocol that wants to become as unmissable as the web itself?

Edition 17: 29th June 2022

Event #17 was held on 29th June 2022. Watch the recording here.

A special edition of Open Tech Will Save Us on Thunderbird, the multi-purpose client to organise your digital life. Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Feeds, and even Instant Messaging: Thunderbird can be a central piece in your workflow.

Ryan Lee Sipes, Community and Business Development Manager for Thunderbird is joining us to talk about the revival of Thunderbird, and the big plans they have for it.

Edition 16: 25th May 2022

Event #16 was held on 25th May 2022. Watch the recording here.

• Quentin and Maximilien from Deuxfleurs are creating Garage, a robust and distributed storage backend that can run on old computers. Who can use it? Why? And when should I not use it? Let's find out!
• Nathan from the Guardian Project is working with wind, butter, and rasperries to provide applications and messaging to people in low-connectivity areas. A fascinating dive off the grid.

Edition 15: 27th April 2022

Event #15 was held on 27th April 2022. Watch the recording here.

• We will speak about the relevance of open standards with Italo from The Document Foundation and how it works in practice with the OpenDocument format. Who are open standards for? Are there cases when open standards can be a problem? Are they just a technical matter? Let's find out!
• Jean-Marc Liotier from Openstreetmap has a lot to tell us not only about open standards but also about open data. Let's dive in the open map project and see what collaboration can bring to citizens and organisations at large.
• Half-Shot from Element is the author of the hookshot project… and it loves open standards! Hookshot is a multi-purpose bridge which thrives when it can use open APIs and open standards. How does interoperability help bringing value? Half-Shot will show us in practice!

Edition 14: 30th March 2022

Event #14 was held on 30th March 2022. Watch the recording here.

• pnu from Exodus Privacy will tell us everything you need to know about how apps can track their users, what they do to raise awareness about it, and how you can get a better view of what your apps know about you.
• Gael from /e/ will tell us everything about their de-googled devices and services, and how they make it easy for privacy mindful people to reclaim their digital dignity.
• Nad from Element will give us the perspective of designers and product managers and how they use analytics. He will tell us how Element does its best to use analytics in a privacy respectful way

Edition 13: 25th February 2022

Event #13 was held on 25th February 2022. Watch the recording here.

• Jos Poortvielt from Nextcloud will tell us about how Nextcloud provides software for both enterprises and individuals, and how their needs are different.
• Alexandre Aubin from YunoHost will tell us how their distribution makes it easy not only to put self-hosted services online but also to keep data safe.
• Neil Alexander from Element will tell us about the reasons why he's working on Pinecone, and what the vision behind Matrix P2P is, and why he thinks the best server is no server.

Edition 12: 14th April 2021

Event #12 was held on 14th April 2021. Watch the recording here.

• Creating a SAFE SUPPORT CHAT on the Matrix API
  • Kim Allen of PRIMAL GLOW Communications will be joined by Safe Support Chat Project Team Members, Sharon Kennedy of Nomadic Labs and Brent Edwards to talk about why and how this online crisis support tool for sexual assault centres was built on Matrix, using a custom implementation of Element and other Open Source resources.
• Open Web Docs: web documentation as critical infrastructure
  • Will Bamberg is a technical writer who works on MDN Web Docs, originally for Mozilla and now for Open Web Docs. He's especially interested in ways we can make documentation more engaging and accessible. Open Web Docs is a collective of people and organizations that exists to support web documentation.
• Hydrogen Deep Dive
  • Bruno from Element will do a deep dive into the architecture of Hydrogen, the upcoming next-generation Matrix web-client. What are the guiding principles, what makes it fast, what is different about it, and how could it also benefit Element Web?

Edition 11: 10th March 2021

Event #11 was held on 10th March 2021. Watch the recording here.

Get ready for 10th March 2021!

• Gaelle from Element presents all things Voice & Video including recent UX improvements, upcoming features like voice messages, and bleeding edge designs for Voice & Video rooms
• David Benqué @dbenque:matrix.xwiki.com, Designer at CryptPad, presenting the open source & end-to-end encrypted collaboration suite. @[email protected] @cryptpad
• David Revoy, known for his artwork, Pepper & Carrot webcomic and design tutorials in the Open Source space, performs a digital painting demo, and speaks about his use of open tools!

Edition 10: 10th February 2021

We're skipping January 2021! Next event will be 10th February 2021.

• Matthew Miller, Distinguished Engineer at Red Hat and the current Fedora Project Leader:
  • Linux on the Desktop: It's Not About "Better" (or, This OS Was Made for You and Me)
• Alex Siman, Founder of Subsocial, presents:
  • Subsocial Network: an open protocol for social finance on Polkadot and IPFS tech stack
• Plus, a chat with the Matrix team responsible for pulling off FOSDEM2021: a fully-online, decentralised conference

Edition 9: 9th December 2020

Event #9 was held on 9th December 2020. Watch the recording here.

• Angie Gaudion, Coordinatrice at CHATONS, presenting Mobilizon: a new libre events management tool https://joinmobilizon.org/en/.
• Ben Francis (@bfrancis, @benfrancis:mozilla.org) from Krellian (@KrellianUK) talks about the spinning out of the WebThings (@WebThingsIO) IoT platform from Mozilla, explains how to build your own private smart home with WebThings Gateway 1.0 and gives a whistle-stop tour of the Web Thing API. (slides)
• Nad Chishtie, Product Lead at Element, presents Matrix Spaces: a new vision for room groups in Matrix

Edition 8: 11th November 2020

Event #8 was held on 11th November 2020. Watch the recording here.

• Muhammad Radwan, on behalf of Tactical Tech, will present their work on The Glass Room Misinformation Edition.
  What happens when we increasingly rely on social media and the web for nearly all our information? What information do we see, and what do we miss? How do we know if a picture or a tweet is genuine or truthful? And what can we do if we can’t be sure?
• Popi from CHATONS will present the work done by CHATONS ("Collective of Alternative, Transparent, Open, Neutral and United Hosters") CHATONS has been initiated by Framasoft, in the wake of the success of its campaign "De-google-ify Internet". A CHATONS member pledges to propose fully FLOSS-based online services, in an ethical and united spirit.
• Hubert|Uhoreg Chathi will present on the state of encryption in Matrix, and more broadly Why the PGP model is insufficient, what properties we want from encryption (e.g. why we want perfect forward secrecy), how the newer protocols (OTR, double-ratchet, megolm) give us some of the properties we want, and then what's coming in the future (MLS, and what that gives us)

Edition 7: 14th October 2020

Event #7 was held on 14th October 2020. Watch the recording here.

• Holger and Karissa, representing DeltaChat, and Matthew from Matrix, will hold robust discussions on the subject of Open Tech: will it save us? Surely Open Tech can be used for all kinds of bad things? They will also discuss how Matrix and Delta Chat's approaches differ technically and organisationally.
• Dendrite, a next generation Matrix homeserver written in Go, has entered beta. Join Kegan, from the team, to find out the state of the project and why we're all excited about it again.
• David Jacovkis (@dvdjaco:matrix.org) from femProcomuns (https://femprocomuns.coop) will present https://meet.coop, a videoconf service operated by coops. He'll discuss the challenges and opportunities of this approach for the sustainability of Free and Open Source projects.

Edition 6: 9th September 2020

Event #6 was held on 9th September 2020. Watch the recording here.

• Ag3m, from La Quadrature du Net will join us to present "Some thoughts on moderation and censorship in a decentralised world" .
  As a member at LQDN for three years and a volunteer for more than that, Ag3m cofounded a queer feminist hackerspace in Paris called le Reset.
• Sean DuBois (Sean-Der, @sean-der:matrix.org), WebRTC-knower and author of WebRTC for the Curious will discuss his recent work in the space.
• Damir Jelić presented the latest news on the Matrix Rust SDK

Edition 5: 12th August 2020

Event #5 was held on 12th August 2020. Watch the recording here.

• Jonathan Beri, known Maker of Things ( @[email protected]) will be presenting Making it easier to make Things: WebAssembly and the Internet of Things
  WebAssembly is moving beyond the browser - but is it ready for IoT apps and tiny embedded devices? Yes...ish. In this talk, learn about the state of running Wasm on embedded devices and what's left to solve.
• Matthew Petry from Pine64 ( @fire219:matrix.org ) presents his experience with running Synapse on RockPro64 cluster, plus some thoughts on his time with Pine64!
• Nad from Element dives into the recent rebrand, in which he worked to combine three brands into one, all while working to maintain a strong identity - highly recommended for Design and Product nerds fans

Edition 4: 8th July 2020

Event #4 was held on 8th July 2020. Watch the recording here.

• Jay Graber (@arcalinea, @arcalinea:matrix.org), creator of Happening and all-around decentralisation fan will summarize an overview of the decentralized social media ecosystem that they're working on.
• Ania M. Piotrowska (@aniampiotrowska), known for her work on Nym, Loopix, and at UCL will present "Building private future for the internet with the Nym mixnet".
• Burak Nehbit (@nehbit, @burak:tomesh.net) will give a deep dive into his work on Aether P2P.

Edition 3: 10th June 2020

Event #3 was held on 10th June 2020. Watch the recording here.

• rabble , who has worked on a whole lot of things, will be discussing Planetary, his in-beta Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) venture!
• Annie Elequin , creator of Ditto Chat will discuss her work to produce great UX in an Open Source messenger with React Native.
• Our very own Erik Johnson will give an overview of the recent sharding work being done to improve Synapse performance. Users of the Matrix.org homeserver may have already seen these benefits!

Edition 2: 13th May 2020

Event #2 was held on 13th May 2020. Watch the recording here.

• Mike Hoye from Mozilla will be talking about "Verbs in the fediverse"
• Eugen ( @[email protected] ) will talk about "how we keep mastodon.social running at scale" as a Q&A
• ... and a new VIP tour of Dendrite, the next-gen Matrix Homeserver!

Edition 1: 8th April 2020

Event #1 was held on 8th April 2020. Watch the recording here.

• Matthew Hodgson technical co-founder of Matrix.org to introduce and speak about the importance of decentralisation and privacy
• Saúl Ibarra Corretgé from Jitsi on the rapid growth they've experienced since the start of the 2020 crisis
• David Dias from IPFS IPFS introducing gossipsub in libp2p, including the security hardening work that they've been putting into v1.1!
• Valère , from Matrix and Riot , who will present the importance of UX and cross-signing keys in end-to-end encrypted communications.