The original promise of the Internet was to be an interoperable platform for distributing data. However, we have since increasingly seen our data fragmented and trapped in a number of proprietary silos. Matrix hopes to fix this by being a federated, open standard for data exchange that any service can use.
The Decentralized Web Summit is a meetup for anyone interested in building the Decentralized Web, which aims to make the Web open, secure and free of censorship by distributing data, processing, and hosting across millions of computers around the world, with no centralized control. It takes place at the Internet Archive, San Francisco, CA on Wednesday June 8 and Thursday June 9, 2016.
Matrix will be represented at the event, and we hope to also host a workshop or a talk about Matrix.
The meetup has a Slack room set up for pre-meetup conversations - you can also access this room via Matrix: #decentralizedweb-general:matrix.org
We are looking forward to interesting people and interesting conversations at the first Decentralized Web Summit!
TADHack-mini took place in east London over the weekend with 88 people in attendance. There were $8k in prizes, and five different services to hack on. This time, we didn't have too many people using Matrix in their hack, but we did have an excellent idea and implementation called Babelonio, who won our prize: a Phantom X Hexapod Mk3!
Babelonio adds speech-to-text and translation via Google translate to Matrix, via the Vector client and a Chrome extension. This is quite nice, because it means you don't have to run a custom client. And by using Google translate, you immediately get access to a lot of languages (although sometimes the translation doesn't quite work, as you can see in the presentation video). The project was done by Steven Bakker, Timo Uelen and Bart Uelen. You can see the presentation and demo of the hack here.
A good write-up of all the hacks and winners can be found on the TADHack blog.
Thanks to the TADHack organisers for another fine event, and also to everyone who came over to chat about Matrix - and again congratulations to the Babelonio team:
The Matrix team had a very successful trip to FOSDEM '16 last weekend. Many, many words were exchanged, and at times there was a queue of people just waiting to have a chat! We spoke to a whole lot of interested and interesting people, some of which had heard of Matrix already, and some who hadn't. The nice thing with the crowd at FOSDEM is that they very quickly "get" what we're trying to do with Matrix - and then start thinking aloud about how they might want to use it or extend it - which means we have many great conversations!
At the beginning of FOSDEM, I think we had around 2000 people "currently" in the Matrix HQ room - the next day, that number had increased by a hundred (and now it's even bigger due to a hackernews post where we mentioned Matrix)!
Our talk in the IoT dev room was very popular; unfortunately a lot of people that were queueing to get in never made it due to the limited space. However, the talk was recorded, and it's already been made available:
For now, you can look at the slides from the talk.
Another interesting talk where Matrix ended up being represented, was Daniel Pocock's Improving Telepathy talk. I'll add the video from that too, once it's available.
Finally, thanks to everyone who came to say hello and have a chat - and to everyone who has since set up their own homeserver. Please do join the Matrix HQ room (using any of these clients) and let us know how your Matrix experience is going!
We also have a stand on the 2nd floor of the K building - next to the Real Time lounge (potentially same spot as last year). If you're going to FOSDEM, please come and say hi to us at the stand or at the talks!
Our trip to FOSDEM '15 was very enjoyable; we met a lot of smart people and learnt about a lot of interesting technologies and projects. Hopefully we made a few people enthusiastic about Matrix as well!
Matrix will again be represented at the WebRTC Conference & Expo in Paris. Daniel and myself are catching the Eurostar tomorrow afternoon, and the conference will start early Wednesday morning with a panel about WebRTC for Mobile, where Daniel is one of the participants.
I'm sure we will have three days full of interesting talks and discussions (see the full schedule here). There will be demos as well, and Matrix is (of course!) also joining the demo competition. We hope to see many familiar faces - and hopefully meet some new ones as well!
If you are going to the conference, please come and say hello – we will have a stand at the expo (we're table #6 - see map here). And don't miss Daniel's Matrix One-year Status Report at 11.10am on Friday!
Matrix is sponsoring another TADHack, this time TADHack mini in Chicago on October 3-4. Come hack something cool together using Matrix, either in Chicago or remotely! At past TADHacks we've seen a robot controlled with Matrix, collaborative web page viewing with Matrix as the underlying protocol, and more.
As well as being lots of fun, we've teamed up with Trossen Robotics to offer a HR-OS1 Humanoid Endoskeleton for the best hack using the Matrix standard. The HR-OS1 is a hackable, modular, humanoid robot development platform designed from the ground up with customization and modification in mind. With a Raspberry Pi 2, webcam, wifi, bluetooth, and all of the limbs you expect for a human, there's a lot of scope for exciting projects to be had with it!
I for one would love to ask an open source robot to bring me snacks over chat. (Wow that's a sentence I never thought I would be able to say)
I'll be on site, (and also hanging out in on Matrix in #matrix:matrix.org) to help out with whatever creative things y'all come up with - I hope to see you there!
Also in Chicago the following week I'll be giving a tutorial on Federated Identity as well as attending and speaking about the problem of fragmented communication at the IIT Real-Time Communications Conference & Expo.
If you're going to be around, please do say hi - I only recently joined the Matrix team, and there's a lot of people I've yet to meet - I look forward to seeing you at one (or all) of these events!
The Matrix bandwagon goes on, and we have several conferences and events lined up in the next few weeks.
First up is TADHack mini in Chicago, October 3-4, where Matrix is sponsoring and handing out prizes to the best two hacks using Matrix in some way or another. The previous TADHack mini and the Global TADHack were both excellent events where we saw some really cool hacks - we are looking forward to see what people will put together this time!
Also in Chicago, a couple of days later, is the IIT Real-Time Communications Conference & Expo - October 6-8 - where we will be exhibiting and speaking about the problem of fragmented communication.
At the same time, we will also be represented at Elastix World, in Bogotá, Columbia, October 7-8, where Matthew is one of the keynote speakers! Matrix is also sponsoring this event.
Finally, we will be in Orlando, Florida for AstriCon, October 13-15. Matrix is sponsoring this conference as well, and we also have a speaking slot.
If you are going to any of these events, please do say hi - we are looking forward to talking to both old and new acquaintances! See you there!
After a successful visit to OSCON in Oregon last month, Matrix is this week represented at Clue Con in Chicago. We have a speaking slot later today - see the full schedule here. However, this time, we will be calling in remotely from London, but what better way to demonstrate video calling than by using it?
More upcoming events include Fosscon in Pennsylvania (August 22nd), where we have two talks scheduled, and ElastixWorld in Columbia (Oct 7 & 8), where we are participating as a keynote speaker. We hope to see you there!
Over 800 hackers all over the world spent this weekend working on hacks and prototypes in the Global TADHack hackathon. Some were working from home, and others gathered at one of the 14 official locations. Matrix were physically present at the London and Lisbon locations, and we also handed out two prizes (a massive amount of tessel modules) to the best hacks using Matrix in some way or another.
After a hectic weekend, over 90 different hacks were submitted and presented. There was a live stream available (archive here) so that everyone could watch all the submissions. We were of course particularly interested in Matrix-related hacks, and there were several:
Matt Williams continued his Project Clearwater/Matrix integration from TADHack-mini London earlier this year; this time he added support for IM{'<->'}SIP MESSAGEs.
Sacha Nacar and Mike Dauphinais wrote a sign-language interpreter that uses Matrix for conversations.
Igor Pavlov made it possible for users of Lytespark to be contacted via Matrix and OpenMarket's SMS AS when they are offline.
Phani Pasupula showed a PoC for using Matrix as a platform for starting a Dialogic XMS conference.
In the end, we had to pick only two of these awesome hacks, which wasn't easy. We are really encouraged by seeing the Matrix ecosystem grow bigger - and more bridges to various existing systems being built; this is exactly what Matrix needs!
We awarded our two prizes to Igor for his use of OpenMarket's SMS AS, which adds a new and very wanted feature to Lytespark - and Sacha/Mike for their inventive sign-language -> Matrix translator. Congrats to all of you! We were also happy to see Phani win one of Dialogic's prizes with his hack!
Below you can watch our two winners' presentations:
In our continuous journey around the world to promote Matrix, this week we have come to Kamailio World in Berlin, Germany. During the conference, there will be 5 technical workshops and 28 presentations about SIP, VoIP, WebRTC and other real time communication technologies - and Matthew will talk about Matrix at 11am on Friday.
I'm looking forward to lots of interesting talks (full schedule here), including an open discussion panel with Randy Resnick about real-time communications at 17:10 Thursday evening. Of course there will also be dangerous demos - and hopefully lots of people interested in Matrix! If you are going to the conference, please come and say hello - we will be exhibiting as well as presenting, and we will be there all day Thursday and Friday.
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