9 Mar
2026
9 Mar
'26
10:27 a.m.
Hi Polarian,
Thanks for bringing this to the list, and congratulations on becoming a
member!
This sounds like a fun and worthwhile idea! I'm not personally very
familiar with EMF Camp, but from what I've seen it seems to attract a
fairly similar crowd to Chaos Communication Camp. Since you mentioned that
there has been XMPP-related activity there before, it might be worthwhile
reaching out to some of the people who were involved with that and asking
about their experiences. They may have useful insights about what worked
well, what didn't, and what tends to attract people in that kind of
environment.
Another thing that might be useful is to look at the feedback that was
published last week about the XMPP presence at FOSDEM. There were quite a
few observations and suggestions in there that could probably translate
well to a setup like the one you're describing.
One suggestion from my side: it can help to have something "moving" on
screens at the booth. Things like a rotating set of "Did you know?""
factoids about XMPP, or something visual such as the XMPP network graph,
tend to catch people's attention when they walk past. When people stop to
look for a moment, that naturally creates an opportunity to start a
conversation and get them interested.
Also, you're already putting quite a lot of thought and effort into this,
which is great to see. At the same time, I'd encourage you not to
overextend yourself. It's perfectly fine to start with a somewhat smaller
setup, see what works (and what doesn't), and then improve things over
time. Many successful event presences have evolved exactly that way year
over year.
From the XSF side, there is a bit of support available through the Summits,
Conferences, and Meetups Team, though it's somewhat limited in scope -
typically things like helping to get stickers or leaflets to people who are
representing XMPP at events. That said, there is quite a lot of collective
experience across the community when it comes to organizing or attending
conferences and camps. It might be useful to find a way to tap into that
knowledge ahead of time. And afterwards, it would be great if you could
share what you learned so others can benefit from it in the future.
All in all, this sounds like it could be a really fun outreach opportunity.
I hope it works out and becomes a success!
Kind regards,
Guus
On Sun, Mar 8, 2026 at 5:47 PM Polarian via Members <members(a)xmpp.org>
wrote:
Good evening,
I have discussed this on XMPP already, however I was recommended to
bring this to the members mailing list, however back when I was
recommended I was not a member, so thank you all who elected me, and
for those who encouraged and helped me apply.
I feel like getting an XMPP presence at EMFCamp would be a good way to
outreach to new people. EMFCamp isn't just FOSS, its tech/engineering
as a whole allowing to outreach to people outside the usual bubbles. I
have been told that there is some XMPP stuff at CCCamp, this would be
similar.
What are villages?
Villages are groups of tents around a central theme, in this case it
would be XMPP. We would hopefully have people interested in XMPP camp
around the village, and then in the centre of the village have a few
tables or something to show off XMPP (see the idea) and have stickers
and stuff.
I still need to speak to some people on the feasibility of this, but
for now this is the "draft" so to speak.
The idea?
Villages should have a lot more space than at FOSDEM, so this gives a
lot more room to show more stuff off.
I am dividing it up into 3 areas.
1. Server side
I would like to copy Ralph's idea from FOSDEM, and setup an XMPP server
on a SBC, and then run it on a table for everyone to see. The event
itself is entirely Matrix (unfortunately), so my idea is to have an
unofficial chat for the event, and hopefully as we progress through the
event more and more people will yap on the XMPP MUC(s) hosted on a SBC
which you can see yourself, hopefully showing off the power of XMPP.
Someone suggested (sorry forgot who it was) that we also allow
antonymous login, to quickly onboard people for the event, the MUCs
and any accounts will be deleted after the event, and all data erased.
2. Client side
I have many spare laptops, and phones, as I do quite a bit of device
repair. I should have a spare iphone for showing off Monal, then I
planned to have an android phone (or a few) to show off conversations
(and maybe its forks, cheogram and monocles chat).
Then for desktop, gajim/dino, I might put gajim onto windows and then
dino on Linux so its more inclusive for those who don't daily drive
Linux.
Potentially show off some of the web implementations too, such as movim
and converse, however I don't want to do too many as I need to be able
to handle the workload.
The idea is so that people can pick up a device, and play with it (test
accounts), I stole this idea from PostmarketOS. Speaking of
PostmarketOS maybe it would be cool to have a Linux phone running XMPP
as well?
3. Providers (if I have help)
It would be amazing if one or maybe a few providers could be there. In
the modern age, I feel a lot of people are interested in where there
data is stored and how it is stored so it would potentially be
interesting to have someone who has hands on experience with this.
What do I need?
I can pretty much do most of this myself, I already have leaflets and
stickers from FOSDEM which I wanted to distribute at EuroBSDCon.
Most of the gear I can provide. I do not drive however, so I can carry
the devices to show off, stickers and leaflets, but might need some
help with the setup of the central part of the village to show off the
stuff. I have already had one person (forgot who it was) who offered to
help.
Obviously having as many XSF members, and XMPP users as possible would
be cool, but not required, most of this I could handle myself.
Attending?
The website [1] has a ton of information, this is a paid event, prices
can be seen here [2], tickets are released in batches, and are snapped
up quickly, so it might be difficult to get tickets, the times of
ticket dumps follows:
• Monday 9th March, 20:00 UTC
• Sunday 22nd March, 15:00 UTC
• Thursday 2nd April, 18:00 BST
If you would like to help out, please let me know. This is still a
"draft", and not set in stone. I haven't even got a ticket yet for
example :p
Thank you for reading,
--
Polarian
Jabber/XMPP: polarian(a)icebound.dev
[1] https://www.emfcamp.org/
[2] https://www.emfcamp.org/tickets