Watch the talks

Jan-Lukas Furmanek, Aileen Rabsahl

Texting Through the Silence: Medical Care over Matrix with Delay during a Simulated Moonwalk

Twenty seconds is a long time when someone can’t breathe. At ESA´s LUNA Analog Facility we turned that reality into a design constraint: a moonwalk emergency with voice cut by design, Matrix/Element carrying clinical guidance across a built-in one-way delay. We tested two styles of instant messaging, open free-text versus a tiny, structured grammar, to coordinate assessment, treatment, and evacuation over a delay-tolerant (store-and-forward) network. The first signals are clear: structure lowers cognitive load and keeps decisions moving even when replies arrive “late.” We’ll share what worked, what didn’t, and how the same patterns translate to Earth during hospital IT outages. With publications in progress, this talk focuses on early signals and the method itself, showing how Matrix enabled care under delay and how small changes could improve resilience.

Consolidating Germany’s administrative communication: Towards a joint Matrix-based architecture

The German public administration aims to consolidate its disparate solutions for G2C and G2B communications and transition to a unified yet decentralized Matrix-based infrastructure. In this talk we will dive into this new federal infrastructure’s target architecture and explore its key requirements, drivers and architecture decisions – including the crucial choice of Matrix as the E2EE communications layer. We further share key learnings from the accompanying political process and reflect on the challenges ahead in constructing, negotiating and implementing transition pathways to achieve change in the complex brownfield-environment of Germany’s administrative IT.

Trialing Matrix within the European Commission for resilient and sovereign communications

Looking for more resilience and sovereignty, the European Commission has been running a trial Matrix deployment. This talk will present some of the work done.

The German BundesMessenger

The BundesMessenger is the soverein communication solution for the German government and armed forces. Developed to be robust, secure and interconnected it serves as the basis for collaboration in the public sector. With a sharp focus on user experience, an uncompromised commitment to free and open-source software and state-of-the-art deployment of cloud technologies, it brings a high-quality messenger to firefighters, soldiers and office workers. Want to know what makes the BundesMessenger quite a special piece of software? Is it better than fax? And will it shut up after I call it a day? Join the talk to find out!

An Update on reaching the German Government via Matrix

With *Beyond Instant Messaging: Matrix in the Public Sector* last year, we presented FITKO and the German Federal Ministry of the Interior joining efforts to pilot a Matrix-based next-generation communication infrastructure for digital government services, with the goal to showcase end-to-end encryption, great usability and machine-readable communication between citizens and public authorities. Lets take another look at the project, what we have done since and what else there is to come for *reaching the German Government via Matrix*

From Healthcare to Governments: Building Europe’s Secure Messaging Standard

With the TI-Messenger, built on the Matrix protocol, Famedly has enabled secure and interoperable communication across the German healthcare system, from hospitals to pharmacies. Adoption is growing rapidly, with millions of potential users on the horizon. In this opening talk, we’ll look back at TIM’s journey so far, highlight its impact and adoption, and then take a step beyond healthcare into the government. We’ll also give a glimpse into MLS and how it will strengthen security and interoperability for all Matrix-based applications in the future.

The TI-Messenger Story

In this talk, we’ll take you through the real-world journey of developing and approving a TI-Messenger - a secure, interoperable messaging application built on top of the Matrix protocol for use within Germany’s healthcare system. What began as am idea soon grew into a tightly regulated, multi-stakeholder project, with high demands on privacy, trust, and compliance. This session is less about features and more about transformation. It’s a case study of how we shaped a Matrix-based messenger to meet the strict security, interoperability, and governance requirements defined by the gematik specification, and how that shaped our development process in return. Unlike general-purpose Matrix clients, the TI-Messenger is deeply constrained by legal frameworks, security audits, and standardized certification making the path from concept to approval full of unique challenges. We’ll reflect on what we learned about applying Matrix in high-trust environments, what we would do differently, and how our experience could inform similar efforts elsewhere. Whether you’re working in the public sector, healthcare, or simply curious how Matrix can scale to more regulated use cases, this talk offers an inside look at what it takes to make Matrix meet mission-critical standards.

Matrix’s Role in the German Healthcare System: The TI-Messenger as a Communication Infrastructure for Healthcare

In this presentation, we will examine processes within the German healthcare system and explore the underlying structural challenges that make intersectoral communication so difficult. We will discuss why Matrix is the ideal protocol for the foundation of this infrastructure and explain how we build upon the Matrix specification to meet healthcare-specific requirements. Special insights will be shared regarding the challenges and lessons learned during the implementation of the TI-Messenger in Germany’s healthcare system. The presentation will outline the different stages of development and highlight specific use cases that demonstrably improve the quality of care.

Matrix as a Bridge – Enabling Cross-Border Healthcare Communication Through Open Standards

European healthcare communication is at a turning point. Fragmented national systems are reaching their limits, while the need for interoperable, secure, and user-friendly digital spaces across borders continues to grow. This talk explores how the open-source Matrix protocol has become a strategic foundation for secure messaging in healthcare — powering derived solutions like TI Messenger and CGM Messenger. Our approach highlights not only the technology itself but also the importance of collaboration with the open-source community, especially through our partnership with Element, to drive innovation, scalability, and trust. Key themes include deep integration into primary systems, the use of headless clients, and tackling challenges around usability, eID identity models, and technical complexity. We argue that while Matrix alone is not the silver bullet for interoperability, it provides the missing bridge between siloed infrastructures and the vision of a unified European Health Space — rooted in open standards and coordinated implementation.

Patrice Zoe Brend'amour

Healthcare

Famedly – Secure Communication in Health Care with Matrix

Nobody likes fax machines, yet everyone still uses them – that's the reality in German hospitals. Since 2019, Famedly has been challenging this status quo. With our TI Messenger, built on the Matrix protocol, we've created a secure and decentralized alternative. Learn how we're using and extending Matrix to modernize communication in the German healthcare system.

Krille (Christian K.)

Healthcare

The one with the braid (she/her)

Nationwide Rollout of Matrix-Based Instant Messaging (TI-M) for 74 Million Statutorily Insured Citizens in German Healthcare

On July 15, 2025, Germany’s statutory health insurance funds will introduce the Matrix-based instant messaging service TI-M (Telematikinfrastruktur Messenger) into their electronic patient record (ePA) apps. This marks a significant milestone, as Matrix-based messengers will become potentially available to 74 million insured individuals across Germany. This talk will provide an overview of the nationwide rollout, highlighting the technical and organizational challenges faced during the development and operation of TI-M, including interoperability, security, and scalability within the highly regulated healthcare environment. We will present up-to-date usage data and insights on user adoption, reflecting the initial impact and acceptance of TI-M among patients and healthcare professionals. Finally, the session will offer an outlook on the future of secure, decentralized communication in the German healthcare system, discussing opportunities for further integration, innovation, and the broader implications for digital health infrastructure.

Large-scale multi-tenancy hosting for TI-Messenger

In this talk we will introduce Synapse Pro, the Matrix server for professional environments from Element. Synapse Pro is built to support professional Matrix deployments in terms of scalability, efficiency and high availability. It comes in two flavours, Synapse Pro for Small Hosts and Synapse Pro for Large Hosts. The Small Hosts solution introduces multi-tenancy capabilities in order to host plenty of small Matrix servers in a resource-saving and cost-efficient way. The Large Hosts solution enhances Synapse with more efficient implementations of its subsystems and provides auto-scaling as well as high availability capabilities. This talk will give you detailed insights on both solutions and their benefits for Element customers.

Beyond Olm: About challenges and opportunities in Messaging Layer Security (MLS)

[matrix] as an end-to-end encrypted communication standard has its flaws. Flaws in privacy, flaws in complexity. With the standard of Messaging Layer Security (MLS), the [matrix] ecosystem has the opportunity to address old flaws, rethink room state and increase interoperability. In this talk, I will provide a beginner's guide on challenges of [matrix] 3.0.

Matrix and MLS - Water, Oil and Mayonnaise

MLS and Matrix don't mix well. But why is that and what can we do about it? Since I got to touch that area a bit, I'll try to give some answers, but don't expect solutions. We will be looking how MLS and Matrix work internally, how a tree is a DAG but a DAG not a tree and maybe we will have some glorious idea or get frustrated. No promises!

Nico

Florian Heese, Timo Kandra, Aaron Thornburgh

NeoBoard S: a whiteboard matrix client offering endless possibilities for real-time collaboration

Last year, we introduced NeoToolSuite, Nordeck’s productivity suite of Matrix widgets designed for efficient collaboration and communication. This year, our focus shifts to our flagship product: NeoBoard Standalone. This real-time collaborative whiteboard matrix client has evolved through continuous development and iteration and now it features an immersive infinite canvas that redefines what’s possible for open-source productivity and creative tools. Join us for a tour of NeoBoard’s latest features and share our vision for the future of real-time collaboration, powered by the Matrix protocol.

SIP/Element: Unifying Telephony and Modern Communication

Our project's main goal was to fill a gap by developing a telephony bridge that natively integrates XiVO enterprise telephony (based on SIP) within the alternative and open-source Matrix/Element ecosystem. Our focus with this bridge is to offer a credible and high-performing alternative to dominant proprietary solutions, such as Teams and its "Telephony System" licenses.

Element Call: Redefining conferencing for privacy, scale, and sovereignty

Element Call, the flagship MatrixRTC application by Element, is shaping the future of secure, federated calling. As the successor to the traditional call system in Element apps, it now powers large-scale, end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) group calls with improved reliability and seamless federation support. This talk follows up on last year’s introduction of Element Call, showcasing a year of rapid innovation — from new media transport mechanisms to enhanced mobile features — all aimed at making secure communication effortless and intuitive.

Beyond Chat

Runi Hammer, Arnas, Johannes

Commercialising Matrix

Can Matrix compete with Big Tech? That remains an open question - but the market conditions in Europe have never been more favorable to sovereign, European software solutions. So how do we build commercially sound companies based on Matrix? This talk will focus on real-world use cases, showcase features built for public-sector customers, explore viable business models, and share hard-earned lessons from bringing Matrix to market.

Business with Matrix

Benedict Benken, Dr. Patrick Alberts

The High Price of Open Source: Building a Business Around Matrix

Open Source has never been easy, but doing Open Source in the Matrix ecosystem poses a unique set of challenges. Add the pressure of sustaining a company on top of that, and you quickly find yourself in uncharted, and often uncomfortable, territory. This talk reflects on the reality of maintaining open source projects in the Matrix universe, especially from the perspective of a business. It dives into the tension between openness and exploitation, when others take your work without contributing anything in return, undermining sustainability and motivation. Through real-world experiences and hard-learned lessons, this session will outline the structural and cultural issues that make it harder for corporate contributors to survive in the ecosystem. We'll look at why fair contribution is hard to enforce, how "Trittbrettfahrer" (free riders) hurt long-term progress, and what we as a community - maintainers, companies, and individuals - can do to shift the dynamic. Whether it's licensing strategies, community governance, or pushing for upstream responsibility, this talk will explore the imperfect but necessary mechanisms we need to keep Matrix open, but not exploitable. The goal isn't to complain, but to open up a grounded and honest discussion about sustainability, fairness, and the future of open collaboration in Matrix.

Business with Matrix

E2EE Direct Messaging in Bluesky with Matrix

See a demo of E2EE encrypted DMs in Bluesky powered by Matrix. We will highlight the simple user experience and other advantages of this approach to adding E2EE to Bluesky.

Ranga Krishnan

Friday 17^th October

The Element update: Shininess, scalability and sustainability

A whistle stop tour of Element’s progress over the last year! Highlights include Element Server Suite Community, the latest on Element X, Spaces, Threads and Element Call. There’s also Element Server Suite Pro, Synapse Pro and the launch of Element Pro; the Element app specifically for the workplace!

Governing Board transparency update

In this talk we will cover - what is the Governing Board about - how does it fit into the Foundation - reviewing the last 12 months and outputs - showing some of the different processes like establishing Working Groups, what Committees are, interactions with the Foundation - what next - how to get involved in open governance - take some questions

Luxchat(4gov)

Presentation of the Luxembourg efforts to establish a sovereign instant messaging ecosystem for the public and private sector for Luxembourg. More details to follow.

How Matrix is becoming the communication standard for Public Sector

Matrix was built to become the open communication of the web and serve everyone. But, as the Internet and email did, its network effect started with governments. Today, and as proven by the audience in the room, most European governments and several others are either using it or looking at implementing it for their communications. This talk will tell the story of how we got there and why.

ESS - Element’s distribution for Matrix deployments

In this talk we will provide insights on the new Element Server Suite (ESS) editions which provide an Element-supported way to deploy Matrix stacks. ESS is available in three editions - [ESS Community](https://github.com/element-hq/ess-helm) - the free Matrix distribution from Element for small-/mid-scale, non-commercial community use cases - [ESS Pro](https://element.io/server-suite) - the commercial Matrix distribution from Element for professional use - [ESS TI-M](https://element.io/server-suite/ti-messenger) - a special version of ESS Pro focused on the requirements of TI-Messenger Pro and ePA We will dive deep into each edition, explain how they're meant to be used, shed light on the components they include and discuss which use cases they are tailored to.

No Desk Is an Island: Enabling Cross-Border Workspace Communication

As EU member states (co-)develop sovereign workspace solutions for the public sector, the need for seamless communication between these platforms becomes increasingly important. France, Germany, and the Netherlands are among the countries working on such solutions together, with the goal of facilitating cross-border collaboration and data exchange while maintaining security and sovereignty. In collaboration with our French and Dutch partners, we at ZenDiS are developing a framework to enable communication between our openDesk office and collaboration suite and its international equivalents. Our effort aims to facilitate cross-border information sharing and promote a more integrated European digital landscape.

Alexander Smolianitski

Aaron Thornburgh, Andreas, Doug Earnshaw

Matrix French gov deployment: opening a private federation securely

The French government has deployed a private Matrix federation for French civil servants called Tchap. Currently this federation has about 300 000 monthly active users and its usage is growing constantly. Today our federation is closed and we would like to be able to connect with other public French Matrix nodes (local authorities for instance), and also other European countries. We should implement measures to ensure that the federation remains resilient against potential attacks, both technical (e.g., DDoS, data interception) and organizational (e.g., unauthorized access, insider threats) : - How can we restrict the servers we wish to communicate with? How can we be sure that we are actually communicating with them? Since TLS can be vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks by state actors, we can't rely on it entirely. - How can we trust the identities of users from external deployments that we don’t control? - How can we limit the interactions that external users can have with users from our federation? We spent a lot of time thinking about this and now have a plan that looks legit, and that we are currently implementing. I'm sure you want to know more about it, right? In this talk, we will share the approach we’ve taken to address these challenges and we will present the architecture we designed.

Secure and Sovereign communications for United Nations International Computing Centre and its Partners

Secure communication leveraging the Matrix protocol for UNICC and its partners

Element X and Pro Updates

We will provide you with the latest updates on Element X mobile apps, as well the plan to sunset our classic Element apps. This includes both the current state, as well as a look into what to expect during the next couple of months and details about specific features like threads and spaces that many people are looking forward to on Element X. In the second part we’ll cover the intent and purpose behind the Element Pro apps - who are these for and why, and as part of it, look into how we’re allowing our customers to publish self-branded apps for a complete sovereign messaging solution.

Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Thomas Grechenig

Supporting TF-X with Matrix: best practices and pitfalls

NATO organised a TaskForce-X Baltics event where we very quickly contracted, deployed and integrated telemetry and video streams from uncrewed platforms. This required a lot of coordination and this was done through our on-prem Matrix capability. I would like to share my experience by using Matrix to support this very demanding operational project.

The Role of the Matrix Protocol within Germany’s Sovereign and Secure Health Messenger Solution – A Loyal Player Embracing the Evolution of Secure Architectures

Germany’s digital health infrastructure has long been built on the principles of sovereignty, open standards, and interoperability. With the electronic patient record (ePA) and KIM for secure data and document exchange, Germany established a federated ecosystem using standards such as FHIR and OIDC with sectoral identity providers. The recent introduction of the TI-Messenger (TIM) extends this ecosystem to real-time communication — now connecting over 25 million insured citizens through the RISE TI-Messenger, directly integrated into their ePA app (ePA FdV). Matrix serves here not as the foundation of sovereignty, but as a loyal enabler within an existing sovereign architecture. Operating own Matrix instances (e.g. via the RISE Cloud) ensures data locality and governance under German regulatory control, while federation allows secure inter-institutional communication. This approach balances federated flexibility and controlled trust domains, distinguishing Germany’s model from purely centralized or global platform solutions. The talk discusses the integration of Matrix within the sovereign health stack — ePA, sIDP, KIM, TIM, and OIDC — and explores risks and resilience in large-scale federation. It illustrates how Germany’s health communication layer evolves from document exchange to conversational care, preserving sovereignty while embracing interoperable, open technologies.

Healthcare

Florian Jacob, Hannes Hartenstein

Eventually Consistent Access Control: Practical Insights on Matrix from Decentralized Systems Theory

Access control is the core of any system's security, but usually provided by a single, centralized server. However, access control in a Matrix room is decentralized: every participating server *independently* decides *who* is authorized to send and receive *which* events, without consulting any other server. To the surprise of many, these decisions are still *eventually* consistent even if all but one server is malicious, but seeing *why* requires a new way of thinking about access control. I will explain the necessary design patterns from decentralized systems science, and show how they can be weaved together for a practical explanation of what Matrix is, and why Matrix can reach its astonishing levels of security and resilience.

Improving the security of the federation protocol

The federation protocol is how Matrix homeservers communicate between each other. In private federations this isn't particularly challenging as the network is trusted but in the public federation this isn't true. This talk dives into what protocol improvements are in the works to make the public federation more secure against Byzantine actors, particularly against "state resets": an unintended rollback of room state. We'll explore why this problem is hard, what some of the failure modes are, and how we are working on addressing them.

Kegan Dougal

Invisible Crypto: can Matrix be both secure and easy to use?

The Invisible Crypto initiative intends to make Matrix easier to use by ensuring that encrypted messaging is secure by default, and the user is not bothered by irrelevant information. In this talk we will give a status update, hopefully explaining why crypto needed to become slightly more visible on the journey towards making it disappear. We'll go into some detail about what we've done (and why some of it makes things a little more noisy) and what we plan to do to really get there.

Andy Balaam

Joining the conversation: balancing privacy with usability for encrypted messages

Being able to read the conversation in a room before you joined is a critical feature for some usecases, but end-to-end encryption makes it tricky to implement. In this technically-focussed talk, we'll cover the challenges behind implementing "history sharing", why previous attempts in this area failed, and how we solved those problems with minimal impact on the security or efficiency of the protocol.

Richard van der Hoff

Why do I have 2 passwords? How to talk about encryption in Matrix

Most modern software applications give total trust to the service provider. End-to-end encrypted (E2EE) services are different: the service provider is a gateway, and the real trust is with other people. This is unfamiliar, and can make using E2EE confusing. When you add in federation (meaning lots of different service providers) and a diverse set of client apps, trying to make Matrix's encryption understandable is tricky. It would help to have a shared set of words and definitions. In this talk I describe MSC4161, which attempts to establish a shared vocabulary, and then my own thoughts about some metaphors we can use to make these ideas easier to grasp.

Andy Balaam

Danielle Kirkwood, David Langley, Gaëlle Hunt

Element X Web

Element X is coming to web and desktop! What does that mean? We’re going to make the apps simple, familiar, reliable and fast! Come learn more about the vision we have put together and all the progress we have made so far!

The one with the braid (she/her)

Lessons learned from implementing Native OIDC from scratch

Are we OIDC yet ? YES ! We are ! OpenID Connect evolved as the one and only identity standard in the modern web. With MSC3861, the [matrix] ecosystem is finally moving to OIDC as the authentication standard amongst clients and homeservers. Out of curiosity, I started implementing a native OIDC implementation from scratch : no OAuth 2.0 library, no Ruma ; just the [matrix] Dart SDK, an HTTP client and the MSC in front of me. This talk will be about the lessons learned.

Benedict Benken, Michael Thiele

Rocket.Chat: Entering the Matrix

In this talk, we trace the journey of evolving Rocket.Chat from a standalone collaboration server into a full-fledged Matrix home-server — all built in TypeScript. We’ll dive into the architecture decisions, the incremental features (federation, room state sync, identity translation, event routing, crypto, and bridging), and the real challenges of combining two paradigms (Rocket.Chat’s internal model + the Matrix spec) in one codebase. You’ll hear about lessons learned: when to build vs reuse, how we manage consistency under asynchronous federation, strategies for performance and rate limits, and how we maintain feature parity while gradually merging homeserver responsibilities. Whether you’re running a chat platform, building a new homeserver, or simply interested in bridging monolithic systems with Matrix, this session will provide deep technical insight and lessons you can bring back to your project.

MatrixRTC - Introducing a new concept to the Matrix-specification

In this talk, we will share the newest improvements to MatrixRTC. We'll focus on how the security and encryption architecture has evolved to provide robust, private communications for Matrix users. Additionally, we will show how to integrate Element Call into clients using the Rust or JS-SDK in a matter of minutes. Whether you're building a custom Matrix client or want to know what makes MatrixRTC such a great solution for secure communication, you'll walk away with practical knowledge to bring encrypted calling capabilities to your users and an in-depth understanding about the key distribution for real- time (MatrixRTC) sessions.

MatrixRTC - The key sharing problem

Why is having large encrypted group calls difficult? How do other providers solve this? The future? Demos!

The Matrix SDK No One Talks About

Trixnity is rapidly emerging as a powerful, flexible, and fully asynchronous SDK for building Matrix applications using Kotlin Multiplatform. What many don't realize: Trixnity is already in widespread use - potentially powering apps usable by over 50 million people. It’s embedded in multiple Matrix-based messengers, though you’d only know it by digging into app license disclosures. This talk shines a light on Trixnity’s hidden but significant role in the Matrix ecosystem and why more developers should pay attention. This session also presents the current state of Trixnity in 2025, highlighting key milestones, recent developments, and its growing adoption in real-world applications.

Saturday 18^th October

Closing

See you next year!

Solving the Fork Dilemma: How We Built a Maintainable Matrix Messenger

Tammy is a multiplatform Matrix Messenger designed to be redefined by you. Want a different room list layout? Need a messaging interface tailored to a specific use case? Tammy’s extensible architecture makes that not only possible - but easy. In this talk, we’ll showcase how Tammy empowers developers to create radically customized Matrix experiences through its extension system. We’ll walk you through how we’re using Tammy to build Timmy, a TI-Messenger variant tailored for a very specific user group, with a completely different look and feel - all without forking or rewriting the core client. Expect a live demo, some under-the-hood insights, and a glimpse into the roadmap: spaces, audio/video, Matrix 2.0 and more. Whether you want a more focused UI, a minimalist mobile mode, or something wildly experimental, Tammy gives you the tools to build it.

Francois HERBRETEAU, Anthony

Integrating Matrix in a trustworthy collaborative ecosystem

At Oodrive, our mission is to offer a secure and sovereign solution to manage our partners' most sensitive data. Building on this foundation, we are developing a secure collaboration platform that fully aligns with these values. Collaboration cannot happen without communication, therefore we decided to integrate a secure chat in our product. We chose the Matrix protocol to achieve that goal. Now that a first version is out and available to our partners, we want to share with the community how we integrated matrix in our product, and the challenges we overcame. Namely : - How we provision user accounts in our matrix instance. - How users authenticate transparently in the chat. - Make a demonstration to illustrate the seamless integration

Scaling Real-Time in NeoBoard: Our Journey from P2P to MatrixRTC + LiveKit

[NeoBoard](https://neoboard.io/) is an open source real-time collaborative whiteboard built on the Matrix protocol. It functions both as a widget within chat-focused Matrix clients like Element Web, and as a standalone web app that acts as a lightweight, whiteboard-centric Matrix client In this talk, we’ll share how we migrated NeoBoard’s real-time collaboration feature from a peer-to-peer WebRTC implementation to MatrixRTC with a LiveKit backend, a shift that was key to scaling to hundreds of concurrent users. We’ll cover the challenges we faced, the lessons we learned, and the architectural decisions that made the transition smooth. We’ll also touch on what’s still missing and what’s next for both NeoBoard and MatrixRTC.

Getting started with Element Server Suite Community

Join us for an introduction to the Element Server Suite Community, the simplest way to deploy a Kubernetes-based Matrix 2.0-ready stack, maintained by Element. This workshop will deploy all the components of the suite: a Synapse homeserver with Matrix Authentication Service enabled, a Matrix RTC backend for calls, and an Element web client. You'll be able to try it on your local laptop using your Docker daemon, or deploy it on a virtual machine with a single-node Kubernetes setup. Whether you're new to Kubernetes and Matrix or looking to expand your server capabilities, this session will give you the foundation to get started and experience the latest Matrix features on your own machine.

Tune Your Chat

This workshop is an "interactive talk" with an introduction by the host but the wish for attendees to also present their ideas about [matrix] bridges, bots & other integrations.

Kim Brose

Hands-on

Alan Turing

No Video

Lisa Kostrzewa, Jan Krammer (Janonym), Philipp Monz, Dr. Roland Alton

Schulchat RLP as [matrix]-based school messenger

fairkom has developed a [matrix]-based school messenger for the Department of Education of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate to serve up to half a million users. Schulchat RLP has one code base for all platforms and is available as app on Apple and Google Play Stores. What makes this solution unique is the deep integration of the identity and user management system from the "Bildungsportal RLP", ensuring seamless use for teachers, students, and even parents - from primary to vocational schools.

Matrix in Education

Building Matrix-Powered Campus Communication Platform Thousands Students

In this talk I will present my journey in developing a decentralized and secure communication platform for a university with thousands students and faculty members. Using Matrix and Element as foundation I tailored the solution to meet academic needs, ensure data privacy and integrate with some systems, bots, widgets etc. The session will cover: - Why Matrix was chosen over other platforms. - Technical stack and deployment model. - Customization of Element and federation decisions. - Challenges (including authentication, onboarding, moderation and compliance). - Real-world impact and feedback. - Future plans including bridging, widgets and improvements. This case study shows how Matrix can empower large academic communities and help other institutions explore privacy-respecting and scalable alternatives to traditional messaging platforms. By the way, it is real story. :)

Portable identites (MSC 2787) and the GDPR right to rectification, a pressing need for server operators

Most of the discussions around privacy laws have been focused on the protection of data and condition of processing. But some others rights are starting to be litigated more widley and will soon play a bigger role for IT systems managers. This talk will focus on the GDPR article 16 (right to rectification), and how the current Matrix spec is inadequate for servers operators aiming to let people change their username, since MXID can't be changed (as of this proposal writing in June 2025). Based on the ongoing work done by the [Fedora community](https://fedoraproject.org/) on the [Fedora Username Change project](https://communityblog.fedoraproject.org/call-for-volunteers-regarding-the-fedora-username-change-project/), on recent legal cases in Europe, we will see why the adoption of [MSC 2787 (Portable identites)](https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec-proposals/pull/2787) should be more than a nice to have, and how it intersect with questions of privacy and anti-discrimination. The talk will also touch on the topic of SSO configuration and downstream consumers best practice to deal with such changes.

Michael S.

A Contextual Integrity approach to privacy in interoperable messaging

This talk will introduce the Helen Nissenbaum's theory of Contextual Integrity as a framework for understanding privacy in messaging platforms. Contextual Integrity views privacy not as keeping information secret, but as making sure information flows in ways that match people’s expectations in a given context, or in other words, what feels appropriate to share, with whom, and for what purpose. For example, if Alice shares her live location with Bob through a messaging app, she likely expects the app to use her location only to deliver it to Bob. But if the app also uses her location to target ads, she may feel that her privacy was breached. The problem isn’t that the location was shared, but that it was shared in a way that didn’t match the context or her understanding of how the information would be used. I will explain the theoretical framework with examples of how it can be adapted to identify and explain privacy expectations of particular messaging features, and discuss how it can be applied to interoperable messaging to identify potential privacy concerns.

Carla Griggio

How do messaging app users feel about untraceability?

Messaging platforms offer to protect user privacy via a variety of features, such as disappearing messages, password-protected chats, and end-to-end encryption (E2EE), which primarily protect message contents. Beyond such features, "untraceable communication" tools for instant messaging protect users from network attackers observing transport layer metadata, which can reveal who communicates with whom, when, and how often. However, unlike E2EE, the effectiveness of these tools depends on large anonymity sets, making widespread user adoption critical. This talk presents a research study with 189 users of messaging apps about their perceptions of "untraceability" as a concept, as well as their opinions on the widespread availability of tools for untraceability. The study explores their perceptions of "untraceability'' from a broad conceptual standpoint; rather than focusing on a particular tool or implementation, we analyze how users reason about what features should be incorporated by two fictitious messaging platforms, Texty and Chatty, to prevent third parties from "knowing who communicates with whom". The results point to a critical gap between how users and privacy experts understand untraceability, as well as tensions between users that see untraceability as a protection to individual privacy and users that see it as a threat to online safety and criminal accountability. Beyond untraceability, I discuss how this research is relevant to the design of messaging platforms that promote privacy as a central value.

Carla Griggio

Denise Almeida, Amandine Le Pape

Leading the way into CRA compliance: Element’s approach to the incoming regulation

The Cyber Resilience Act is a new European regulation that has the main goal to increase European cyber security and resilience, through accountability. A lot has been said about the impacts of the CRA on open source, in particular towards non-profit foundations, but what about organisations - such as Element - that operate complex licensing models with a mix of monetised and non-monetised products? In this talk we endeavour to shine a light on our thinking regarding CRA compliance for our products, as well as implications for the wider ecosystem of vendors and communities building on Matrix. We also introduce our roadmap of communications around the CRA, aimed at those using and building on top of our products.