XMPP Summit - 2025-02-04


  1. MattJ

    Thanks for a great FOSDEM everyone! Arrived home last night, somewhat later than planned due to a cancelled train, but the journey was smooth in the end ๐Ÿ™‚

  2. Intosi

    Cancelled trains are to be expected these days.

  3. Intosi

    Glad you made it back.

  4. Intosi

    Hope you brought your laptop.

  5. MattJ

    I did. I'm still not certain I remembered everything, but we'll see :)

  6. Daniel

    I usually like to keep the term Jabber in titles for conference talks and/or stands after having had *multiple* casual conversations with tech-ish people outside of work in which I went on to explain what xmpp is for a couple of minutes, with them looking at me rather confused only to finally say 'oh you mean jabber'

  7. Daniel

    That's an anecdotal way of saying: it doesn't matter what we call the protocol inside the community it matters what rings the most bells for someone not in our community

  8. ralphm

    The context here is the thread on the members mailing list (https://mail.jabber.org/hyperkitty/list/members@xmpp.org/thread/QUUDS4QBZTLUFFVNJXVAMJSZK6CPSTPX/). I get that people who have been around "somewhat longer" (says the gray beard), know about Jabber, but I don't remember anyone at the booth last weekend mentioning it. What we did notice is a lot of young people having discovered XMPP by themselves and it being a hip thing with the 20-year olds. That said, I don't have a problem with using Jabber, and would love to use it more, but it has been a bit of a contention in the past. As for using it as part of our booth, if we want to keep the Realtime Lounge bit in it (see reasoning in my mail), then adding Jabber too may make it a bit unwieldy. I think โ€œRealtime Lounge by XMPP Standards Foundationโ€ is more inclusive than โ€œJabber/XMPP Realtime Loungeโ€

  9. Zash

    Wasn't "Realtime Lounge" beacuse there used to be some SIP &c projects involved?

  10. Daniel

    Yes I agree that having both jabber and xmpp and realtime lounge in the title would be too long. So my proposal would be to drop the realtime lounge part of it ๐Ÿ˜…

  11. Daniel

    But yes I just wanted to make an almost unrelated argument saying that in my personal experience (and those weren't particularly old people) I had some success with the term jabber

  12. ralphm

    Zash: please read the thread first

  13. Zash

    I had, except for your message. Sorry.

  14. Intosi

    I do feel that we should refresh the idea of the real-time lounge at least. The way we're currently doing it feels messy and stale. I think we could do better.

  15. Intosi

    We weren't helped by the lack of light / entering a dark tunnel filled with crowds before even spotting us.

  16. Intosi

    Even though our booth was, unlike the other three, well lit.

  17. ralphm

    I agree, and welcome ideas there. But as I mentioned in my e-mail, the fact that we have the Lounge concept is a gift that we should exploit rather than just get rid off. I tried to explain in detail in my e-mail.

  18. ralphm

    I don't want to revert to a single-table booth with two chairs behind it.

  19. Daniel

    I remember a conference where we put jabber/xmpp into the title of the application and then they gave us two tables. One for jabber and one for xmpp

  20. deuill

    Hopefully federated though

  21. ralphm

    Daniel: yes, I mentioned this in my mail. Those were different times, and we got two tables for a single thing, not one for Jabber and one for XMPP. This was when they allowed you to have one or two tables, depending on your needs. But then in later editions they got so many more applications for stands, that they had to let that go. You only get 1 table, and you cannot be sure you'll get one next year.

  22. mathieui

    Thanks for your reply, ralphm, it does put things into perspective

  23. ralphm

    No problem. I hope we can figure out a way to revitalize the idea of the Lounge of something else that would justify needing more space.

  24. ralphm

    No problem. I hope we can figure out a way to revitalize the idea of the Lounge or something else that would justify needing more space.

  25. mathieui

    I also want to point out that I too have seen quite a few people interested in XMPP sit down at the lounge for discussions in the previous years (this year I haven't been around much, so I cannot comment on that), but of course people in the booths around do take advantage of this pleasant space, and I cannot fault that :p

  26. Daniel

    That was in reference to a different conference. Not fosdem. But yes I'm mostly sharing my 2c in here because while I have some experience running stands at other conferences and giving presentations I feel like I shouldn't be the loudest voice in the fosdem debate as I have no concrete plans to attend fosdem. (not saying I won't)

  27. ralphm

    In a previous life, I worked on interactive installations, and even did a interactive massage couch, where visitors could "top-up" other's massage time. Having something XMPP-powered in there would be cool.

  28. ralphm

    Daniel, there was a lot of interest and praise for Conversations. I would have loved to refer them to you every now and then.

  29. Intosi

    It was most definitely the most sought-after sticker.

  30. deuill

    I think maybe for next year I can bring various ancient devices as well (Palm Treo 650 from 2003, HP Jornada 650 from 1999, etc.) and show how XMPP still works perfectly on them.

  31. deuill

    (For the booth, anyways)

  32. ralphm

    I think that's a great demo

  33. deuill

    (HP Jornada 680, rather)

  34. Intosi

    "Time travellers welcome"

  35. ralphm

    And since we're collecting notes, we also need better advertise the demos we do have. In previous years I had a projector pointed at the long wall "behind" the lounge, and we could use something like that for grabbing attention.

  36. Fishbowler

    I loved discovering the wiki page for folks to connect their XMPP client to the League of Legends chat. Most visitors at the booth were unaware of quite how active XMPP is in the gaming space.

  37. ralphm

    Yes, we talked about case studies before, and being able to expose this more would be great. I'd say that nobody knows this, nor Zoom, nor Nintendo's notification systems and possibly others. However, I also heard people say "but they don't federate", and it can be hard to explain the advantage of Open Protocols for a public that is primarily interested in Free and Open Source, where closed things like in-game chat are irrelevant at best and evil at worst.

  38. ralphm

    Yes, we talked about case studies before, and being able to expose this more would be great. I'd say that nobody knows this, nor Zoom, nor Nintendo's notification systems and possibly others. However, I also heard people say "but they don't federate", and it can be hard to explain the advantage of Open Protocols to a crowd that is primarily interested in Free and Open Source, where closed things like in-game chat are irrelevant at best and evil at worst.

  39. MattJ

    deuill, we can demo interop with my pager ;)

  40. MattJ

    It would perhaps be good to do something of a showcase of XMPP through the years

  41. MattJ

    Someone mentioned Exodus on Sunday

  42. MattJ

    We could put some screenshots into chronological order to demonstrate the evolution of our offerings

    ๐Ÿ‘๏ธ 1
  43. MattJ

    Since a few people asked "what's new?"

  44. MattJ

    The XMPP network graph was a great conversation point this year too

  45. MattJ

    To me that's what the demos should be about - something fun/funny/quirky/interesting that sparks questions and conversations

  46. deuill

    Indeed yeah, and brings the variety of use-cases into perspective

  47. ralphm

    MattJ: as there were a few people asking โ€œwhat have you been up to recently, or the last 10-15 yearsโ€ we could maybe do a timeline of highlights indeed.

  48. mathieui

    maybe having a flyer with a timeline would be cool

  49. ralphm

    Or a projected slide or some such, indeed. I was surprised about the number of flyers taken.

  50. mathieui

    were a lot taken? It is hard to tell since you replenish them when they are dwindling

  51. Intosi

    I like taking stickers or flyers from booths I find interesting, so when I go through them when I'm back home, I have a reminder of 'I wanted to look at this'. I assume others have similar schemes.

  52. Fishbowler

    I've got some vague disagreement with focussing on the XMPP history. Having an old thing working in 2026 will be a great testament to interop and the work of the XSF, but I give no thoughts to Ubuntu 8 for example. When I explored stands, I wanted to learn what new capability I can have tomorrow, and what I'd get by investing my time in this rather than something else. Having XMPP QR information in A2 on the wall would be good. Having that client feature support chart as a giveaway would be useful - I had to tell 2 visitors that they couldn't take it.

  53. ralphm

    mathieui: not huge amounts, but quite a few still. Particularly the Snikket one and the two-sided explainer "for developer/individual".

    ๐Ÿ‘ 1
  54. Zash

    Past, <presence/>, future? :)

    โค๏ธ 1โค 1
  55. ralphm

    Nice

  56. mathieui

    Fishbowler, maybe we can motivate deuill to work on the porting the modern conversation bits to his blackberry :p

    ๐Ÿคฃ 1
  57. lissine

    > We could put some screenshots into chronological order to demonstrate the evolution of our offerings Screenshots from 2017: https://blog.prosody.im/prosody-0-10-0-released/#carbons

  58. nicoco

    > I think maybe for next year I can bring various ancient devices as well (Palm Treo 650 from 2003, HP Jornada 650 from 1999, etc.) and show how XMPP still works perfectly on them. and show that we can even bridge to matridge on these devices would be fun ๐Ÿ™‚

  59. nicoco

    > I think maybe for next year I can bring various ancient devices as well (Palm Treo 650 from 2003, HP Jornada 650 from 1999, etc.) and show how XMPP still works perfectly on them. and show that we can even bridge to matrix on these devices would be fun ๐Ÿ™‚

  60. nicoco

    I agree that the federated network graph was very successful. Computer screens tend to attract the eyes as we all know here ๐Ÿ‘€๏ธ

  61. Guus

    > The XMPP network graph was a great conversation point this year too Obligatory 'everyone add your server please' plead.

  62. Guus

    I'm bummed that I didn't realise/ask dwd (which just got autocorrected to 'dad' ๐Ÿ˜ฌ) to use that portable screen on day one.

  63. lissine

    Screenshots from 2023: https://www.nicoco.fr/blog/2023/01/08/slidge-rc1/

  64. nicoco

    I'm on my train back to Nice after a stop in Paris, it was really nice meeting you all in the flesh!

    ๐Ÿ‘ 1
  65. deuill

    On my way back to London as well... past week was super-fun, and a priviledge to put faces to avatars. See y'all next year, if not sooner!

    ๐Ÿ‘ 3
  66. gnemmi

    > Yes, we talked about case studies before, and being able to expose this more would be great. I'd say that nobody knows this, nor Zoom, nor Nintendo's notification systems and possibly others. However, I also heard people say "but they don't federate", and it can be hard to explain the advantage of Open Protocols to a crowd that is primarily interested in Free and Open Source, where closed things like in-game chat are irrelevant at best and evil at worst. Actually (and I'm pretty proud of this one ๐Ÿ˜Š) I gave a live talk about XMPP at the FLISoL (Argentina - Ciudad de Buenos Aires ) last year ( 04/27/2024 ) and did bring up exactly this point with the intent to let people know that XMPP is a whole lot closer to them than what they think it is.

  67. gnemmi

    Link to the talk: https://eventol.flisol.org.ar/events/flisol-caba-24/activity/496/

  68. gnemmi

    And here is that particular slide on my presentation ...

  69. gnemmi

    https://files.xmpp.social/upload/72890ba3e7e6bc7f1b993e487d3d149fd09e3184/lvxsooZzthCKzUKBtZpejcrrFoz0TWO6RQqj4zkp/flisol.png

  70. gnemmi

    That's "TESTED, TRUSTABLE AND DIVERSE" on the top of the screen .. and it says: "Used by:" and then the logos ... and I went on the let everyone know exactly how is it that every one of them use XMPP on their products ๐Ÿ˜Š

  71. gnemmi

    It was a full room .. and I really like to know that made a difference in the sense those attending understood that XMPP is an open protocol that real corps are using their products without customers even knowing about it

  72. ralphm

    gnemmi, did your presentation have descriptions for each of those?

  73. Daniel

    Also the many many organizations that we deliberately try to avoid mentioning ๐Ÿ˜‰

  74. gnemmi

    A brief one, yes .. I created the slide to present them one by one so I could have the time to explain how was it that each one of them was using XMPP in their products. I didn't use a written description because I wanted to explain and be open to questions at the same time.

  75. gnemmi

    The whole idea behind this particular slide was to make the attendants understand that XMPP is lot more than "just IM" and that it is actually so good that a lot of big players use it to their benefit. That they do that for a reason. And that, basically, if they are so heavily invested on the protocol ( having made it go through their legal, technical, and whatever else corpo procedure ) and spend all that money on that, it's because XMPP is a lot better that what they want you to believe when they try to sell you otherwise. So .. use XMPP at your favor: They are already doing it .. take advantage of all the corpo protocols it has already been through .. use "their" investment to your benefit ..

  76. gnemmi

    This was a 60 minutes long live presentation .. it ended up being a 140 minutes long full room presentation. Nobody moved. Not even to go to the bathroom ..

  77. ralphm

    Daniel: maybe we should rethink that

  78. Daniel

    'organizations we choose not mention' is a spectrum. We most certainly don't want to go all the way

  79. ralphm

    That's a bit vague, though.

  80. snowstorm

    Are those organizations militaries? Or something else?

  81. moparisthebest

    Why not both

  82. moparisthebest

    Re: jabber vs XMPP I suspect only old folks recognize "jabber" and anyone looking for info on it will face an entire first page of search results for the totally unrelated Cisco products https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jabber that's enough of a reason for me to avoid it fully these days

    ๐Ÿ‘† 1
  83. moparisthebest

    9 times out of 10 today I'm actually just recommending Snikket /shrug

  84. Zash

    SMPP?

  85. Daniel

    The jabber xmpp conversations lounge powered by snikket

  86. Zash

    Jabbering in the Snikkets

  87. moparisthebest

    Is this a good time to suggest we `s/JID/XID/g` in all the documentation ? ๐Ÿ˜

  88. Fishbowler

    Who chose the chocolatiers on the Friday evening? Because I'm gonna be dining on these spouse points for weeks. I'm very much indebted to you.

  89. ralphm

    moparisthebest: no

  90. ralphm

    Fishbowler: you're welcome

    โค๏ธ 1