Discussion: Potential second XMPP Summit in 2026 (online?)
Hi everyone, During the recent XMPP Summit, we discussed the idea of organizing a second Summit in 2026, potentially as an online-only event. The motivation behind this idea would be to: - Keep momentum going between in-person Summits - Lower the barrier to participation - Create space for focused discussions or follow-ups that don’t necessarily require physical presence At this stage, this is very much an open exploration, not a proposal. Some questions that might be worth discussing: - Is there interest in an additional Summit this year? - What goals would such an event serve? - Would an online format make sense, or are there better alternatives? - What kind of scope or duration would be reasonable? I'd like to use this thread to gauge interest and collect initial thoughts. If there's enough energy around this, we can look at concrete next steps later. Looking forward to your input. Kind regards, Guus
As someone who pushed for it at the Summit, I'm clearly in favour. We got a lot of content covered in last month's Summit, and I can't believe it'd take a year to come up with that many ideas again. - I can't think of any conference content that required physical presence, aside from seeing quite how eagerly someone had their arm up - I think that keeping it runtime under a day would make sense, given folks will have home life commitments - I think that unconference is ace, and we should keep that, but since time is more limited, we should do that async in advance (can Memberbot help with this?) Dan On Thu, 5 Feb 2026 at 18:28, Guus der Kinderen <guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi everyone,
During the recent XMPP Summit, we discussed the idea of organizing a second Summit in 2026, potentially as an online-only event.
The motivation behind this idea would be to:
- Keep momentum going between in-person Summits - Lower the barrier to participation - Create space for focused discussions or follow-ups that don’t necessarily require physical presence
At this stage, this is very much an open exploration, not a proposal. Some questions that might be worth discussing:
- Is there interest in an additional Summit this year? - What goals would such an event serve? - Would an online format make sense, or are there better alternatives? - What kind of scope or duration would be reasonable?
I'd like to use this thread to gauge interest and collect initial thoughts. If there's enough energy around this, we can look at concrete next steps later.
Looking forward to your input.
Kind regards,
Guus
Hi all, I notice there's been relatively little feedback here on the list so far. During the recent Summit session, the idea seemed to have stronger support, so I'm wondering: are we reaching the same people on this list, or is there actually less enthusiasm for this than I anticipated? If there isn't clear support, it might indicate that there's little appetite to move this forward. I'd appreciate anyone's thoughts (either way) so we have a better sense of whether it's worth pursuing. Thanks! Guus On Thu, Feb 5, 2026 at 8:58 PM Dan Caseley <dan@caseley.me.uk> wrote:
As someone who pushed for it at the Summit, I'm clearly in favour. We got a lot of content covered in last month's Summit, and I can't believe it'd take a year to come up with that many ideas again.
- I can't think of any conference content that required physical presence, aside from seeing quite how eagerly someone had their arm up - I think that keeping it runtime under a day would make sense, given folks will have home life commitments - I think that unconference is ace, and we should keep that, but since time is more limited, we should do that async in advance (can Memberbot help with this?)
Dan
On Thu, 5 Feb 2026 at 18:28, Guus der Kinderen < guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi everyone,
During the recent XMPP Summit, we discussed the idea of organizing a second Summit in 2026, potentially as an online-only event.
The motivation behind this idea would be to:
- Keep momentum going between in-person Summits - Lower the barrier to participation - Create space for focused discussions or follow-ups that don’t necessarily require physical presence
At this stage, this is very much an open exploration, not a proposal. Some questions that might be worth discussing:
- Is there interest in an additional Summit this year? - What goals would such an event serve? - Would an online format make sense, or are there better alternatives? - What kind of scope or duration would be reasonable?
I'd like to use this thread to gauge interest and collect initial thoughts. If there's enough energy around this, we can look at concrete next steps later.
Looking forward to your input.
Kind regards,
Guus
Great idea, I can online join online due to my situation and would participate. eevvoor On 2/17/26 8:53 PM, Guus der Kinderen wrote:
Hi all,
I notice there's been relatively little feedback here on the list so far. During the recent Summit session, the idea seemed to have stronger support, so I'm wondering: are we reaching the same people on this list, or is there actually less enthusiasm for this than I anticipated?
If there isn't clear support, it might indicate that there's little appetite to move this forward. I'd appreciate anyone's thoughts (either way) so we have a better sense of whether it's worth pursuing.
Thanks!
Guus
On Thu, Feb 5, 2026 at 8:58 PM Dan Caseley <dan@caseley.me.uk <mailto:dan@caseley.me.uk>> wrote:
As someone who pushed for it at the Summit, I'm clearly in favour. We got a lot of content covered in last month's Summit, and I can't believe it'd take a year to come up with that many ideas again.
- I can't think of any conference content that required physical presence, aside from seeing quite how eagerly someone had their arm up - I think that keeping it runtime under a day would make sense, given folks will have home life commitments - I think that unconference is ace, and we should keep that, but since time is more limited, we should do that async in advance (can Memberbot help with this?)
Dan
On Thu, 5 Feb 2026 at 18:28, Guus der Kinderen <guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com <mailto:guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi everyone,
During the recent XMPP Summit, we discussed the idea of organizing a second Summit in 2026, potentially as an online- only event.
The motivation behind this idea would be to:
* Keep momentum going between in-person Summits * Lower the barrier to participation * Create space for focused discussions or follow-ups that don’t necessarily require physical presence
At this stage, this is very much an open exploration, not a proposal. Some questions that might be worth discussing:
* Is there interest in an additional Summit this year? * What goals would such an event serve? * Would an online format make sense, or are there better alternatives? * What kind of scope or duration would be reasonable?
I'd like to use this thread to gauge interest and collect initial thoughts. If there's enough energy around this, we can look at concrete next steps later.
Looking forward to your input.
Kind regards,
Guus
Topics that would be useful to discuss: a) How to distinguish official XSF statements and actions from individual ones announced to the XSF community as not everyone may check council and board chat/email logs. b) Legal considerations on hosting chat servers in different jurisdictions. On Thu, Feb 5, 2026, at 10:58 PM, Dan Caseley wrote:
As someone who pushed for it at the Summit, I'm clearly in favour. We got a lot of content covered in last month's Summit, and I can't believe it'd take a year to come up with that many ideas again.
- I can't think of any conference content that required physical presence, aside from seeing quite how eagerly someone had their arm up - I think that keeping it runtime under a day would make sense, given folks will have home life commitments - I think that unconference is ace, and we should keep that, but since time is more limited, we should do that async in advance (can Memberbot help with this?)
Some time for discussion is good, but, it is helpful to have a few view points on a topic briefly presented.
Dan
On Thu, 5 Feb 2026 at 18:28, Guus der Kinderen <guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi everyone,
During the recent XMPP Summit, we discussed the idea of organizing a second Summit in 2026, potentially as an online-only event.
The motivation behind this idea would be to:
- Keep momentum going between in-person Summits - Lower the barrier to participation - Create space for focused discussions or follow-ups that don’t necessarily require physical presence
At this stage, this is very much an open exploration, not a proposal. Some questions that might be worth discussing:
- Is there interest in an additional Summit this year? - What goals would such an event serve? - Would an online format make sense, or are there better alternatives?
If there are sufficiently many people that can get to a location for a physical event, those are good as well.
- What kind of scope or duration would be reasonable?
Being online for 8 hours can be tiring. Either have a single session of at most 4 hours or two sessions of between 2-4 hours each with some stagger in the timing to better accommodate people outside European time zones.
I'd like to use this thread to gauge interest and collect initial thoughts. If there's enough energy around this, we can look at concrete next steps later.
Looking forward to your input.
If the summits are open to general public and not only members, maybe helpful to use summit@xmpp.org for discussion and ask for feedback in the newsletter. The main focus is typically chat, but other use cases might also attract interest, and having focus sessions on particular use cases might also be useful.
Kind regards,
Guus
Hi, I personally remain skeptical with regards to the quality and enjoyability of an online only summit. However as a team member of SCAM I’m willing to help co-organize something. I think we will face a lot of constraints with regards to trying to find time slots for a world wide, diverse audience. For example I reckon we have many people who only want to do weekdays and an equal number of people who can only do weekends because they have 'normal' work. Additionally finding a time slot that fits people between Vietnam, Europe and the Americas is going to be difficult as well. So here is a concrete proposal. We do two subsequent days on Friday and Saturday. Roughly between 13:00 and 16:00 UTC. That’s morning on the east coast. Very early morning on the west coast. and late evening in Vietnam. Each 3 hour day would be divided into two slots and we maintain the unconference format of the summit. (That gives us 4 topics that we can discuss) Honestly the question that an online only summit has to find answer to is not "how can we make a bad approximation of Summit" but "what value can we provide that the async~ish chat room and our mailing list doesn’t have. Maybe a question for the people who want more (online) meetings: What do you want out of these that the daily discussions that are already going on in the chat room (and in back channels) are not providing for you. cheers Daniel On Fri, Feb 6, 2026 at 2:28 AM Guus der Kinderen <guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi everyone,
During the recent XMPP Summit, we discussed the idea of organizing a second Summit in 2026, potentially as an online-only event.
The motivation behind this idea would be to:
Keep momentum going between in-person Summits Lower the barrier to participation Create space for focused discussions or follow-ups that don’t necessarily require physical presence
At this stage, this is very much an open exploration, not a proposal. Some questions that might be worth discussing:
Is there interest in an additional Summit this year? What goals would such an event serve? Would an online format make sense, or are there better alternatives? What kind of scope or duration would be reasonable?
I'd like to use this thread to gauge interest and collect initial thoughts. If there's enough energy around this, we can look at concrete next steps later.
Looking forward to your input.
Kind regards,
Guus
Hi all, As we prepare putting together a concrete plan for a possible online follow-up Summit, I want to make sure that what we come up with actually reflects what people are hoping to get out of such an event (rather than what SCAM expects people to want). So if you're interested in participating, now is a really good time to speak up and let us know what you care about. In particular, it would help a lot to hear what you would consider important for an online event to be worthwhile for you: things like format, length, level of interaction, tooling, timing, or any practical constraints. That input can directly shape the plan we will be working on. I'd also like to explicitly invite people who have experience attending or organizing online-only events to share their perspectives. The SCAM team has mostly enjoyed in-person events so far, and practical insights from those with good online experience would be extremely valuable. Kind regards, Guus On Fri, Feb 20, 2026 at 8:27 AM Daniel Gultsch <daniel@gultsch.de> wrote:
Hi,
I personally remain skeptical with regards to the quality and enjoyability of an online only summit.
However as a team member of SCAM I’m willing to help co-organize something.
I think we will face a lot of constraints with regards to trying to find time slots for a world wide, diverse audience.
For example I reckon we have many people who only want to do weekdays and an equal number of people who can only do weekends because they have 'normal' work.
Additionally finding a time slot that fits people between Vietnam, Europe and the Americas is going to be difficult as well.
So here is a concrete proposal. We do two subsequent days on Friday and Saturday. Roughly between 13:00 and 16:00 UTC. That’s morning on the east coast. Very early morning on the west coast. and late evening in Vietnam. Each 3 hour day would be divided into two slots and we maintain the unconference format of the summit. (That gives us 4 topics that we can discuss)
Honestly the question that an online only summit has to find answer to is not "how can we make a bad approximation of Summit" but "what value can we provide that the async~ish chat room and our mailing list doesn’t have.
Maybe a question for the people who want more (online) meetings: What do you want out of these that the daily discussions that are already going on in the chat room (and in back channels) are not providing for you.
cheers Daniel
On Fri, Feb 6, 2026 at 2:28 AM Guus der Kinderen <guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi everyone,
During the recent XMPP Summit, we discussed the idea of organizing a
second Summit in 2026, potentially as an online-only event.
The motivation behind this idea would be to:
Keep momentum going between in-person Summits Lower the barrier to participation Create space for focused discussions or follow-ups that don’t
necessarily require physical presence
At this stage, this is very much an open exploration, not a proposal.
Some questions that might be worth discussing:
Is there interest in an additional Summit this year? What goals would such an event serve? Would an online format make sense, or are there better alternatives? What kind of scope or duration would be reasonable?
I'd like to use this thread to gauge interest and collect initial
thoughts. If there's enough energy around this, we can look at concrete next steps later.
Looking forward to your input.
Kind regards,
Guus
Hi, If there will be two slots, would suggest varying them by time so that the time pain is distributed a little bit. 8:00-11:00 UTC, 13:00-16:00 UTC and 16:00-19:00 UTC would seem like reasonable choices. There are active people also in Hawaii. No matter what choice is made, it will be 3:00am for someone. Suggestion of a Friday and a Saturday is ok, though for some people Friday or Saturday are rest days similar to Sunday, but these could be varied in future events. Have run online conferences using a self-hosted BigBlueButton, with streaming to other services. The breakout room feature is particularly helpful for small group discussions focused on a topic. Found that reserving 30-50% of the time for presentation and the rest for discussion was helpful - the presentation raised key concerns that focused the discussion, something often missed in chat. Movim and Sylkserver both integrate XMPP into a multi user video conference. There are other streaming servers that could be linked with XMPP, so probably also a good opportunity to determine what new standards could help ensure interoperability. Suggestion of 4 target audiences seems good: a) Protocol decision-makers b) Protocol implementers c) Product builders d) End users Summit has typically focused on (b) and (c) while Fosdem targets (d). People in (a) would be good to reach out to for an online event, but they need not be the only ones. On Fri, Feb 20, 2026, at 12:57 PM, Guus der Kinderen wrote:
Hi all,
As we prepare putting together a concrete plan for a possible online follow-up Summit, I want to make sure that what we come up with actually reflects what people are hoping to get out of such an event (rather than what SCAM expects people to want). So if you're interested in participating, now is a really good time to speak up and let us know what you care about.
In particular, it would help a lot to hear what you would consider important for an online event to be worthwhile for you: things like format, length, level of interaction, tooling, timing, or any practical constraints. That input can directly shape the plan we will be working on.
I'd also like to explicitly invite people who have experience attending or organizing online-only events to share their perspectives. The SCAM team has mostly enjoyed in-person events so far, and practical insights from those with good online experience would be extremely valuable.
Kind regards,
Guus
On Fri, Feb 20, 2026 at 8:27 AM Daniel Gultsch <daniel@gultsch.de> wrote:
Hi,
I personally remain skeptical with regards to the quality and enjoyability of an online only summit.
However as a team member of SCAM I’m willing to help co-organize something.
I think we will face a lot of constraints with regards to trying to find time slots for a world wide, diverse audience.
For example I reckon we have many people who only want to do weekdays and an equal number of people who can only do weekends because they have 'normal' work.
Additionally finding a time slot that fits people between Vietnam, Europe and the Americas is going to be difficult as well.
So here is a concrete proposal. We do two subsequent days on Friday and Saturday. Roughly between 13:00 and 16:00 UTC. That’s morning on the east coast. Very early morning on the west coast. and late evening in Vietnam. Each 3 hour day would be divided into two slots and we maintain the unconference format of the summit. (That gives us 4 topics that we can discuss)
Honestly the question that an online only summit has to find answer to is not "how can we make a bad approximation of Summit" but "what value can we provide that the async~ish chat room and our mailing list doesn’t have.
Maybe a question for the people who want more (online) meetings: What do you want out of these that the daily discussions that are already going on in the chat room (and in back channels) are not providing for you.
cheers Daniel
On Fri, Feb 6, 2026 at 2:28 AM Guus der Kinderen <guus.der.kinderen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi everyone,
During the recent XMPP Summit, we discussed the idea of organizing a
second Summit in 2026, potentially as an online-only event.
The motivation behind this idea would be to:
Keep momentum going between in-person Summits Lower the barrier to participation Create space for focused discussions or follow-ups that don’t
necessarily require physical presence
At this stage, this is very much an open exploration, not a proposal.
Some questions that might be worth discussing:
Is there interest in an additional Summit this year? What goals would such an event serve? Would an online format make sense, or are there better alternatives? What kind of scope or duration would be reasonable?
I'd like to use this thread to gauge interest and collect initial
thoughts. If there's enough energy around this, we can look at concrete next steps later.
Looking forward to your input.
Kind regards,
Guus
participants (5)
-
Benson Muite -
Dan Caseley -
Daniel Gultsch -
eevvoor -
Guus der Kinderen