FediForum

Next FediForum: October 6-7, 2026

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The next FediForum online unconference will take place:

October 6-7, 2026, online
8:00am to 1:00pm pacific time (17:00 to 22:00 central european time), so people from many time zones can participate

As always, most of FediForum will be an unconference. That means that you, the attendee, will help determine what subjects are discussed. So bring your session ideas! You can mention some during registration, but you can change your mind until the very morning of FediForum when we together make the agenda.

We will also again see speed demos of cool Open Social Web software using open protocols such as ActivityPub and ATProtocol. If you have a suggestion who we should invite to demo, please let us know.

(Have you seen some of the very cool demos from previous FediForum events? Check out our PeerTube channel. And session notes from previous FediForum events)

And there will be time for one keynote. To be announced.

Here are some reasons why you might want to come to this FediForum:

You’ve heard about the Fediverse or the ATmosphere or the Open Social Web, are intrigued, and would like to learn more. At FediForum, you certainly will!
You want to meet people who have moved from the closed commercial social media platforms onto the Open Social Web, and love it! Lots of people like this at FediForum, and the unconference format makes it possible to have good conversations with them.
You are thinking of, or are already developing software that supports any of these open social standard protocols. You want to connect to others who do. At FediForum, you can meet and engage with plenty of other developers.
You like to hang out with people who actually want to make a positive difference in the world with technology. Not just money. They exist! And at FediForum you can meet many of them. And make friends.

Any many more! Join us in October, we again have tickets for all wallet sizes, starting at almost free.

Recordings and session notes from FediForum April 2026 are now available

Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Go to the updated event page.

Announcing FediForum Connect

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Can you follow your government, or city, on the Open Social Web? (The good kind of government!) Or do they still post only to the closed commercial social media platforms?

What about your kids’ school or sports club? Are they on Mastodon or Bluesky? Or just on Facebook or Instagram?

Or news organizations – the kind of news organization that reports the facts as well as they can, instead of peddling misinformation: can you hear from them directly on then Open Social Web, or do you have to go through a platform whose algorithm rather prefers to put low-quality rage bait in front of you instead of the high-quality facts you want?

We think the world would be better if we all could connect directly with more mission-aligned organizations on the Open Social Web, instead of having their message distorted through profit-seeking algorithms on the closed platforms. And it would be better for them if they could directly connect with us.

So why aren’t more of them on the Open Social Web?

In our conversations we’ve heard one reason over and over again:

The number of projects on the Open Social Web is exploding (e.g. collected here and here). It’s really not viable for an organization to sift through hundreds of projects, and figure out which are maintained and which are not, which are in-development and which have been in production for a while, or which similar organizations have used them and have been successsful with them, or failed with them.

This is important, because no champion of an “Let’s move to the Open Social Web” initiative in an organization would want to recommend to work with software or services whose maintainers might lose interest next Monday (it has happened). Neither the champion nor their boss wants to get fired over recommending the wrong partner. How do they find the right partners to work with?

Enter FediForum Connect, which is going live today at connect.fediforum.org.

FediForum Connect is a website that has one specific purpose:

To connect mission-aligned organizations, community managers and creators to providers of products and services on the Open Social Web who are committed to make their customers successful.

FediForum Connect is not a general-purpose directory. It does not and will not list all projects that exist on the Open Social Web. It is not for everybody either! For example, if you are typical human being who has had it with Twitter/X and wants to hang out somewhere better, we’d love you to join the Open Social Web, but FediForum Connect is not intended to help you with finding out how to best do that. (There are other great sites that do that already.)

But if you are an organization, community manager or creator, and have heard something about the Fediverse, the ATmosphere, open decentralized social protocols, the Open Social Web, or something like that, but aren’t sure whether any of this would work for you, or how, then you can browse FediForum Connect and connect with projects that are ready to help you.

Conversely, if you are part of an Open Social Web project, and you are committed to think of your users as customers – customers who you intend to serve and make successful –, and if your intended customers are organizations, community managers or creators, then we want to list your project next to the couple of dozen we have so far! Because we want those customers to be able to find you more easily than they currently can!

So we curate who gets listed on FediForum Connect according to this objective. The criteria are still in flux, the overall categorization of products and services and what information we list about each is work in progress as well, but it’s good enough to make it public today. We’d love to hear what you think. Please be gentle, this is just a beta right now and we are sure we got some things wrong :-)

A few more tidbits of background:

FediForum Connect is an offshoot of FediForum, the unconference for the Open Social Web, where we already have been curating interesting projects for our software demos and where how to apply all this new technology in mission-aligned organizations is a frequent discussion subject. This seemed like a natural next step.
We do not charge for listings (although some projects have offered to pay!) because we want the listings to be unbiased. (We may offer additional programs in the future that we may charge for, because the bills need to be paid, but the base listings are intended to remain free.)
Want to discuss? Come to the next FediForum, April 28-30, 2026, online, where we’ll run a session on the subject. We’d love to hear what you think and how to make this site as useful as we can.

Oh, and we accept suggestions for additional listings.

The recordings of the talks at the Fediverse track at SFSCon, November 7-8, 2025, are now available

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Check out the event page.

FediForum special event: Robert W. Gehl introduces his new Fediverse book: "Move Slowly and Build Bridges"

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Robert W. Gehl, award-winning author, professor and researcher of contemporary communications technologies, has been following and researching the Fediverse for many years. He has now published his insights in his new book:

Move Slowly and Build Bridges. Mastodon, the Fediverse, and the struggle for democratic social media. Oxford University Press, August 2025.

Move Slowly and Build Bridges tells the story of activists, software developers, artists, and everyday people who have built the fediverse – a large, noncentralized, alternative social media system. In contrast to big tech corporations like Meta, TikTok, or X, the fediverse is comprised of thousands of small, independent communities who use a powerful internet protocol to communicate with one another. These small communities can govern themselves and moderate content at the human scale – in stark contrast to the global and advertiser-friendly interests of Meta or X.

The Mastodon network is perhaps the most notable and successful platform in the fediverse. Founded in 2016, Mastodon has positioned itself as an alternative to Twitter – one that can be completely under the control of its members, from it to its daily operations to it underlying software.

Making a noncentralized, ethically-run social media system is no easy task. The people building the fediverse have faced burnout, bigotry, angry debates, and death threats. And they face constant, nagging doubts: can we really do this? Can noncentralized social media survive? Can we – all of us – have our own social media? In this thoroughly researched book, Robert W. Gehl argues that the answer is yes – but it won’t be easy.

This will be the first-ever FediForum book tour event! Come to hear excerpts from the book, and bring your questions about the Fediverse and, as he says, “the struggle for democratic social media”!

The event is now over. Go to the recording.

FediForum Fall 2025 is scheduled for October 7-8

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Once again, the Open Social Web community is meeting online for the global FediForum unconference, to discuss, teach and learn, and move the Open Social Web forward.

If you think the commercial social media platforms are, let’s say, “not perfect”, and you are looking forward to alternatives that are:

decentralized,
community-governed,
based on open protocols (such as ActivityPub, ATProto, and others),
open-source,
open for innovation,
or all of the above and more!

Consider joining us and help the community build the future we all want to see. FediForum is scheduled from 8am to 1pm Pacific Time, which is 17:00 to 22:00 Central European Time. This allows people everywhere from central Europe and Africa to the west coast of the Americas to participate. We’ve had some brave souls come to FediForum from the Asia-Pacific region, too, so don’t let that deter you if you live there.

FediForum is an unconference, so You, the attendee, determine the topics that will be discussed. Bring your topic(s)! To see what has been discussed at FediForum in the past, browse the session notes from almost 200 sessions held over the past few years! And of course, there are the software demos!

Whether you are a geek, a product builder, a community organizer, a political scientist, a user, an entrepreneur, an employee of a big company, or independent, a trust and safety professional or volunteer, or many other things, changes are you will have fun and create some invaluable new connections! At least that’s what our attendees keep telling us.

Questions? Ask!

FediForum partners with Free Software conference SFSCON for November 7-8, 2025 in Bolzano, Italy

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Track program

For over two years, FediForum has been bringing together the people who move the Fediverse and broader Open Social Web forward in a series of online events with global participation. Building on this success, FediForum is now expanding the conversation by hosting the first in-person event, in partnership with SFSCON, an international Free Software conference in Bolzano, Northern Italy, November 7-8, 2025.

SFSCON is a well-established event; it’s been running for 20+ years and had about 1000 attendees last year.

For this occasion, we are planning to host:

the whole Fediverse track of the conference, with a curated set of speakers;
a Birds of a Feather (BOF), a space for open conversation and community exchanges, capturing the spirit of an unconference;
a special and experimental hands-on exhibit that enables people new to the Fediverse to learn what it is all about and why it matters;
an informal community gathering beyond the conference.

Organizers are: Tommi Marmo, Melanie Bartos and Johannes Ernst.

In conversations with our community, two major themes have emerged we want to put some emphasis on during this event:

Educating potential new users about Open Social Web, the Fediverse, the projects building software and the benefits of using it over the commercial platforms.
Meeting and connecting like-minded individuals and projects to enable them to coordinate with each other into larger roadmaps, with the goal of collaboratively solving the remaining technical and non-technical challenges still in the way of much broader use of the Open Social Web / Fediverse by organizations, governments and individuals.

We are inviting all members of the FediForum community to help us make the most of the opportunity to bring Fediverse and Open Social Web enthusiasts together in Europe in person and move the cause forward.

If you would like to present or demo in the conference track or at the exhibit, or have a relevant exhibit, please reach out to us by filling out this form, ideally by July 27, 2025, and we will get back to you.

Questions? Get in touch!