#talks-and-travels — Public Fediverse posts

Last Sunday, I had the pleasure and honour of delivering a keynote at the (milestone!) 20th edition of FrOSCon in Sankt Augustin, Germany.

My colleague David (one of the core developers on the Mastodon team) was one of the original founders of FrOSCon all the way back when it started, and the event is held near his home location, so it was a doubly wonderful opportunity for me to see him in person, and also to meet his family!

The FrOSCon 20th anniversary artwork

The last time I was in Bonn was in 1988, back then on a school trip exploring the Rhineland, in what used to be known as West Germany.

aside: I remember two things about that visit very distinctly – firstly, being in a group of youngsters that was closely tailed by security staff around a department store in Bonn, no doubt because shenanigans were afoot by some of my contemporaries (!); secondly, I had been given a Kodak disc film camera for a recent birthday, and the film shift mechanism broke during the trip, although one of my teachers tried to help me find a shop that could get it fixed, to no avail for such a niche device!

There have been many changes as a result of German re-unification and the compensation agreement between Berlin and Bonn, Vereinbarung über die Ausgleichsmaßnahmen für die Region Bonn. The university that hosts FrOSCon – Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences – is one of the institutions to have emerged as a result. The Open Source community is very fortunate to have such a wonderful venue to convene!

My talk was the keynote on the second day of the event. Due to unexpected circumstances I was only able to travel early on the Saturday and missed the opening of the event, but I arrived in time to see the huge interest in the keynote for day one: Daniel Stenberg of curl fame, talking about AI Slop Attacks on his development process. That was a fantastic talk, and I felt like it was a tough act to follow!

Daniel Stenberg at FrOSCon

I spoke about the importance of federated, decentralised systems as a way to preserve access to information and to enable digital sovereignty.

I spoke about the creativity of humans, and our remarkable ingenuity in building the world in which we live.

We find ourselves in difficult places politically, economically, socially right now: but, there is room for hope.

Of course, I also mentioned how Mastodon and the Fediverse are important parts of the digital ecosystem as we work to build an alternative, better, social web for everyone.

The excellent folks from the Chaos Computer Club video operations team did a great job at capturing all of the talks from FrOSCon – you can watch my talk on their site, I’ll embed a YouTube version below here for some level of convenience for those who use that platform.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApLjFlCuOGk

While I’m on the subject of the Fediverse, digital sovereignty, and FrOSCon, I’ll also point out some related talks of interest: Frank Karlitschek spoke about digital sovereignty; my colleague, David, spoke about Taking a Fresh Look at the Fediverse (updates in Mastodon, and in other projects across the ecosystem); and Georg Lukas spoke about reverse-engineering Samsung wifi cameras to post photos to Mastodon, which was a fun technical talk.

David talking about the FediverseGeorg hacking cameras

I am very grateful to the organisers, volunteers, hosts, and the Open Source community for the opportunity to re-visit this part of Germany after such a long time away. I was home again by 11pm on Sunday, exhausted but happy. Thank you for making my time with you so enjoyable!

David’s family #Plushtodon, “Masti”, had a fun time at FrOSCon! https://andypiper.co.uk/2025/08/22/talks-and-travels-froscon-germany/ #Froscon #digitalSovereignty #fediverse #freeSoftware #germany #mastodon #openSource #Plushtodon #publicSpeaking #talks #talksAndTravels #Technology #travel

A couple of weeks ago, I was on a panel at the PublicSpaces conference in Amsterdam.

PublicSpaces was an event I’d been tracking for a while, but this was my first opportunity to be there in person. It was a delight to discover that my friend Ian Forrester has been to the last five iterations of the event! It also included a bit of a “Mastodon and friends” meetup, of several folks from across the ecosystem here Europe.

A "Mastodon and friends" photo from the audience at #PubConf2025 @bjoernsta @samvie @FreddieJ @laurenshof @_elena

— Andy Piper (@andypiper) 2025-06-13T08:09:18.425Z

(apologies to everyone included, for the blurry image – I thought I’d done a better job of it than I had!)

A few people have suggested that the title of the panel was “slightly clickbait-y” – No Musk, Zuckerberg or Trump can shut us down – and look, OK, I can’t deny that!

We wanted to talk about how open, decentralised social web spaces and networks, particularly the Fediverse and ActivityPub-based platforms, can help to ensure that everyone has access to spaces for free discussion. In my case, this all aligned very strongly with my previous posts and talks around civic institutions and public bodies owning their own social media, rather than being subject to the whims of commercial third parties.

It was great to be invited to take part in this; we tackled some challenging topics. Thanks in particular to Björn Wijers for including me in the panel, and for being such a great human in general!
A little over a week after that visit to Amsterdam, I was in Brussels for an event hosted by the European Citizen Action Service, and another panel conversation highlighting the value of independent social platforms. There’s a lot more discussion – and implementation – to be done. Europe may be in better political shape than some other parts of the world at the moment, but it’s a constant and ongoing effort to keep things in a position where freedom, individual dignity, democratic rights and the rule of law are understood and appreciated. We work on this mission together.

I’d also be remiss not to include Elena Rossini‘s fabulous Introducing the Fediverse short film in this post. The video was launched only a week before PublicSpaces, at Fediforum. Elena herself was on the panel immediately before mine, and I had the delight of seeing an audience respond to seeing the film for the first time, in the same room. A fantastic four minutes to share with your friends and contacts.

The time to take ownership of your social profiles and content is now. Don’t look back!

https://andypiper.co.uk/2025/06/30/publicspaces-and-ecas-day/ #100DaysToOffload #amsterdam #brussels #events #fediverse #mastodon #panel #talks #talksAndTravels #Technology #travel

I’m currently in Taipei – my first visit to Taiwan.

This week I’m attending RightsCon 2025, along with my friend Felix from the Mastodon core team. It is a critical time for digital human rights (and for all human rights, privacy, and the future of online communities – and so, so many other things) and I’m keen to learn what I can from the different groups of advocates at this event, as well as to talk about what we’re working on. I’m here to discuss the importance of choosing authentic, user-centric platforms that are not driven by for-profit corporations, or “juiced” by algorithmic engagement.

Flying to Taipei 🇹🇼 this evening for #RightsCon next week, where I’ll be on a panel “How we build a new social web” at 9am on Tuesday. I’ll also be speaking at the #RubyJam meetup on Tuesday evening, about Ruby and the #Fediverse. My first visit to Taiwan – any tips?

— Andy Piper (@andypiper) 2025-02-21T11:12:33.362Z

Thank you, friends, for the great suggestions and tips ahead of the trip! I’m already using some of the useful knowledge you shared on the socials 😊

I will be taking part in a panel on Tuesday morning entitled How we build a new social web, where we will be discussing user empowerment and the decentralised, open social web platforms. It is an honour to be invited to be a participant in the conversation here, and I’m looking forward to explaining the importance of independent social networks in the form of the Fediverse.

If you’re interested in following the event, I configured a Fediwall to bring together related hashtags – RightsCon25.

Separate from the main RightsCon conference tracks, I’m also going to be speaking at the monthly RubyJam meetup on Tuesday night, covering The Fediverse and Ruby. I’m planning to take a deeper and slightly historical dive into the role of Ruby in the past, present and future of the Fediverse – a different angle to the keynote I delivered in Japan in December, to avoid direct repetition.

Some new Mastodon stickers, available to share at RightsCon

This evening ahead of the conference proper, we attended an excellent keynote by Roger Dingledine, co-founder of Tor, and met with various people from across the Tor community.

As always, I’m reminded of how much I have to learn from the different perspectives shared around me.

aside: I still need to write about FOSDEM, and also my upcoming trip(s), and also, also… agh, must be better at writing!

https://andypiper.co.uk/2025/02/23/rightscon-taipei/ #100DaysToOffload #advocacy #conference #digitalRights #events #fediverse #humanRights #mastodon #RightsCon #ruby #socialWeb #taipei #taiwan #talksAndTravels #Technology #Tor #travel