When I reflect on this year vs last year at the stand, there was far less "oh, you're still alive?" and far more "we already use Matrix" or "I can't convert my friends & family".

I think the second one is a technical problem that's somewhat solved in a subset of clients & servers, and we could do more on that. But I think that's probably digital outreach rather than eventing.

I think the first one is a social problem, and I think there are a bunch of talks you can do around that. 
- How to quickly set up a server that ties into an auth provider for quick "free" chat with minimal server requirements 
- XMPP without Federation: Why Chat for Enterprise might want to segregate, and why that doesn't mean no S2S
- XMPP in the Cloud, and On-Prem
- It's not all talk: pubsub, forms, and other first class citizens of XMPP

I think there are topics above that hold some interest and some punch to keep XMPP alive in people's minds, whilst also increasing the chances of creating hooks for business and government (the latter of which I know was of interest at Summit). This is all riffing though - I'm sure others will have more and better ideas.

I'd hope, for keeping it low fuss and low cost, we'd only need slideware for these. Of course, live demos are always cool, but some client/server demos can have some risk on the event network conditions etc.

I'd also love to see us attracting communities to organising around XMPP, in the same way they might do that around a Discord or Slack channel now. I believe that's a key driver for getting folks to bring it into the workplace, and to attracting developers and activists. But I don't have any ideas on how to get there...

Dan

On Thu, 5 Feb 2026 at 18:30, Guus der Kinderen <guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi everyone,

At the Summit, we had a good discussion about outreach and positioning of XMPP, and whether we could be more deliberate in how we present XMPP as a technology in relevant communities and markets.

One concrete idea that came up was: Having XSF representatives speak at selected events (conferences, meetups, etc.)

More generally, this raises questions such as:
  • Where do we want XMPP to be more visible?
  • What audiences should we prioritize?
  • What kinds of materials, messaging, or support would be needed?
  • How can we do this in a sustainable, volunteer-friendly way?
This thread is intended to collect ideas, experiences, and opinions on whether - and how - we might move toward more structured outreach.

No decisions are implied at this point; the goal is simply to start a focused conversation.

Kind regards,

  Guus