Next DWeb Virtual Meetup: Bluesky & Beyond
DWeb Virtual Meetup: Bluesky & Beyond | Weds, Feb 19, 2025
On Wednesday, February 19, 2025, join us for our next virtual meetup where we’ll discuss Bluesky, AT Protocol, and the future of decentralized social media.
In 2019, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey announced that the company was funding a small team of researchers to “develop an open and decentralized standard for social media”. Now fast forward 5 years later, that project is now known as AT Protocol, better known as Bluesky, the social network that is the first implementation of the protocol.
Bluesky has now surpassed 30 million users worldwide as users quit Twitter in droves over the policies enforced by its billionaire owner. One of the promises of Bluesky is that anyone can build a competing platform using the Authenticated Transfer (AT) Protocol. So even if Bluesky were to be compromised in some way, the protocol promises to allow users to easily move their data and identity to other competing services.
What would it take to create an alternative social network to Bluesky? We explore this question at the meetup. Join us at the next virtual meetup on Wednesday, February 19, 2025 11:30am PT to discuss Bluesky, AT Protocol, and efforts to build an open, interoperable ecosystem of social networks.
Speakers include: - mai ishikawa sutton, Senior Organizer, DWeb - Mallory Knodel, Executive Director, Social Web Foundation - Bryan Newbold, Protocol Engineer, Bluesky - Boris Mann, Organizer, ATMosphere Conference
WHEN AND WHERE: Wednesday, February 19, 2025 | 11:30am Pacific Time Virtual
Support DWeb + g0v's Workshop at RightsCon
Before RightsCon kicks off in Taiwan, DWeb and g0v are co-hosting a hands-on workshop on how to build community-driven local networks in the face of internet shutdowns. This workshop will dive into the core concepts of community networks, their technical setup, the real-world impact of digital empowerment and how they’re making a difference in under-served communities worldwide.
This is so important right now as authoritarian governments around the world are shutting down the internet to control people’s access to information, and their ability to mobilize and sound the alarm about what’s happening in their region. In other parts of the world, internet access is severely restricted due to limited resources and geographic constraints. For these communities, local community networks are a lifeline.
The workshop will be held in Taipei on Sunday, February 23, 2025. Experts will train community leaders, activists, technologists, and policymakers on how to set up resilient local networks—from their software and hardware components, funding models, policy challenges, and more. Support this work and help provide decentralized, resilient network technologies to those who need it most. Your support will go towards covering the costs of travel and labor for the trainers and facilitators, networking equipment, and other event logistics.
COMMUNITY NEWS, UPDATES AND OPPORTUNITIES
- Saturday, February 22, 2025—Lofi Hackathon for Local First Apps in SF: Come build local-first x AI apps in SF on February 22 from 8am to 6pm. This event is organized by Basic.tech and cosponsored by Hugging Face with support from the Mozilla community. It will be a day of hacking with community demo hour to showcase projects and meals provided. Sign up at lofihack.com.
- Saturday, March 22 and Sunday, March 23, 2025—ATmosphere Conference, Seattle: The ATmosphere Conference is a 2-day event featuring a selection of curated speakers, lightning talks and demos about apps, protocol features, and an unconference for community organized topics of interest. The mission of this first conference is to connect those building, supporting and using AT Protocol powered apps, infrastructure, and community. It is a chance to connect in person, to plan, learn, and collaborate in building an open social web. If you’d like to attend, learn more or present at the conference, find out more on the conference page.
- Interested in attending What Hackers Yearn (WHY) 2025? WHY2025 is a nonprofit outdoors hacker camp taking place in Geestmerambacht, the Netherlands (approximately 42km north of Amsterdam), from August 8 - 12, 2025. The event is organized for and by volunteers from the worldwide hacker community. There will be knowledge sharing, technological advancement, experimentation, connecting with your hacker peers, forging friendships and hacking (everything from computers to food) are at the core of this event. If you’ll be interested in collaborating around this event, reach out to DWeb Camp’s Creative Director Ira Nezhynska who is planning to attend via email iryna@nezhynska.com.
If you have any events or community updates to share, email us at dweb@archive.org so we can share them with everyone! Thanks for reading!Questions? Write to dweb@archive.orgStay in touch via our Matrix Channel, Discord, Bluesky, Mastodon, or X. Our mailing address is:300 Funston Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94118Want to change how you receive these emails?You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.