Objective

Since the Twitter takeover by Elon Musk over three years ago, the Open Social Web has been adopted by an enthusiastic community. People word-wide are building and using open social platforms and open social protocols to better interact with others online.

However, the Open Social Web still has only a tiny fraction of the users of the closed social media platforms, and growing that number significantly has turned out harder than expected.

This online event will bring together the global community of people who would like the benefits of the Open Social Web to be in the hands of more people, analyzing obstacles, proposing and brainstorming ideas for how to grow the Open Social Web, and connecting people to leverage each other’s efforts.

Who this un-workshop is for

• People using the Open Social Web themselves, and have experience (positive and negative!) with attempting to get their friends or families to join them;

• People who have unsuccessfully tried to use the Open Social Web, and are willing to share why it did not work for them;

• People who have done customer / user research with actual / potential adopters of the Open Social Web, and are willing to share their results;

• Advocates who are working to get value-aligned organizations on the Open Social Web (e.g. public service organizations, governments, libraries, schools, media etc);

• People who are advocating for Open Social Web adoption from inside their organizations;

• Open Social Web builders who would like their software / projects / products / services / to be used by more people;

• Experts in design thinking, serving customers, pitching, fundraising and more.

This un-workshop is not for people who do not share the goal of significantly growing the Open Social Web. We respect their opinion, but it is out of scope for this event.

Format: what is an un-workshop?

We will be using a modified form of the very successful FediForum unconference format that enables us to have a productive half-day that is focused on a particular subject:

• Prior to the un-workshop, we invite participants to submit a short post or position paper that summarizes their own perspectives on the subject. This may include experiences (positive and negative), learnings, ideas for new projects, proposals for the future and more. (Length: between two paragraphs to no more than two pages.) If you are working on growing the Open Social Web, tell us what you are doing and why you think that will help.

• In advance of the event, we distribute a (lightly curated) set of these position papers to other participants of the un-workshop for preparation.

• We will identify topic clusters from the submitted papers and pre-schedule sessions on those topics. Most of the time will be spent on discussion, rather than presentation.

Tentatively, on the day of the event, the agenda will look roughly like this (pacific time). Note that we may deviate from this depending on the number of position papers submitted and registrations.

• 8:00am – welcome, intro

• 8:15-9:15am Session 1: Topic 1

  • 3-6 attendees present their paper on Topic 1 (5min each)
  • Discussion
  • Break (5min)

• 9:20-10:20am Session 2: Topic 2

  • 3-6 attendees present their paper on Topic 1 (5min each)
  • Discussion
  • Break (5min)

• 10:25-11:25am Session 3: Topic 3

  • 3-6 attendees present their paper on Topic 1 (5min each)
  • Discussion
  • Break (5min)

• 11:30am: Lessons learned, next steps, and closing

• 12:00noon: End

People from all over the world are welcome, if you can make the time slot work for you:

• 8am to noon: Pacific Time
• 11am to 2pm: East Coast Time
• 13:00 to 17:00: Brasilia
• 16:00 to 20:00: London / UTC
• 17:00 to 21:00: Central European Time

Topics

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

• Experience reports: what has worked and what hasn’t getting people or organizations on the Open Social Web

• The needs of particular communities / verticals, how well we meet / do not meet them and what we can do about that.

• Use cases and usage scenarios: what exactly do people do on the Open Social Web? Can we lean into specific use cases and usage scenarios, and highlight those?

• Missing capabilities / products / features / services we currently don’t have on the Open Social Web, the evidence that we need them for specific audiences, and how we could gain them.

• Speaking the right language and solving the right problems: how do we move from a culture of protocols and technology to a culture of solving the real-world communities' and customers’ problems?

• Allies: are there value-compatible movements beyond the Open Social Web who we could partner with for larger impact? How would that look like?

… and more.

We will identify the actual topics for the tracks based on the submissions.

We encourage participants to not dwell too much on shortcomings, but on proposing promising ways forward that they are already working on or willing to help lead.

Venue

Unlike other FediForum events, for this un-workshop we are planning to use remo.co.

How to register and/or submit

During registration, you will be asked to submit a brief post or position paper on the topic of of this un-workshop. While it is not required to participate, we encourage you to do so.

If you forgot, or would like to do it later, just e-mail it to us at hello@fediforum.org.

Expected outcomes

We will publish the position papers, and summaries of the discussions here on the FediForum website.

Organizers and hosts

For this un-workshop, your hosts are:

• Johannes Ernst. Founder of FediForum. More of his background here on the FediForum website.

• Mike Masnick. Mike publishes the Techdirt blog, is the author of the paper “Protocols, Not Platforms”, and a member of the Bluesky board of directors.