Banner of Open Tech Will Save Us. It displays an abstract tree, the name of the show, and the date of the episode: 2022-10-26

Open Tech Will Save Us

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Open Tech Will Save Us is a virtual meetup, taking the form of a monthly live video stream broadcasting on the last Wednesday of every month at 6pm Paris time.

We discuss issues relating to technology, especially the importance of Open, Interoperable standards, and how they can enable decentralised tech to keep our data private while still enabling communication.

Previous Events

Edition 19

Banner of Open Tech Will Save Us. It displays an abstract tree, the name of the show, and the date of the episode: 2022-09-28

You can watch a recording of this event 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

Banner of Open Tech Will Save Us. It displays an abstract tree, the name of the show, and the date of the episode: 2022-07-27

You can watch a recording of this event 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

Banner of Open Tech Will Save Us. It displays an abstract tree, the name of the show, and the date of the episode: 2022-06-29

You can watch a recording of this event 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

Banner of Open Tech Will Save Us. It displays an abstract tree, the name of the show, and the date of the episode: 2022-05-25

You can watch a recording of this event 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

Banner of Open Tech Will Save Us. It displays an abstract tree, the name of the show, and the date of the episode: 2022-04-27

You can watch a recording of this event 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

Banner of Open Tech Will Save Us. It displays an abstract tree, the name of the show, and the date of the episode: 2022-03-30

You can watch a recording of this event 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

Banner of Open Tech Will Save Us. It displays an abstract tree, the name of the show, and the date of the episode: 2022-02-25

You can watch a recording of this event 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

Banner of Open Tech Will Save Us. It displays an abstract tree, the name of the show, and the date of the episode: 2021-04-14

You can watch a recording of this event 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

Banner of Open Tech Will Save Us. It displays an abstract tree, the name of the show, and the date of the episode: 2021-03-10

You can watch a recording of this event here.

Edition 10

Banner of Open Tech Will Save Us. It displays an abstract tree, the name of the show, and the date of the episode: 2021-02-10

You can watch a recording of this event here.

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

Banner of Open Tech Will Save Us. It displays an abstract tree, the name of the show, and the date of the episode: 2020-12-09

You can watch a recording of this event here.

Edition 8

Banner of Open Tech Will Save Us. It displays an abstract tree, the name of the show, and the date of the episode: 2020-11-11

You can watch a recording of this event 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

Banner of Open Tech Will Save Us. It displays an abstract tree, the name of the show, and the date of the episode: 2020-10-14

You can watch a recording of this event 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

Banner of Open Tech Will Save Us. It displays an abstract tree, the name of the show, and the date of the episode: 2020-09-09

You can watch a recording of this event 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

Banner of Open Tech Will Save Us. It displays an abstract tree, the name of the show, and the date of the episode: 2020-08-12

You can watch a recording of this event 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

Banner of Open Tech Will Save Us. It displays an abstract tree, the name of the show, and the date of the episode: 2020-07-08

You can watch a recording of this event here.

Edition 3

Banner of Open Tech Will Save Us. It displays an abstract tree, the name of the show, and the date of the episode: 2020-06-10

You can watch a recording of this event 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

Banner of Open Tech Will Save Us. It displays an abstract tree, the name of the show, and the date of the episode: 2020-05-13

You can watch a recording of this event 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

Banner of Open Tech Will Save Us. It displays an abstract tree, the name of the show, and the date of the episode: 2020-04-08

You can watch a recording of this event 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.