PublicSpaces Conference 2024

PublicSpaces and Waag Futurelabs recently held their yearly conference in Amsterdam, titled ‘Taking Back the Internet’. PublicSpaces is a network of public organisations fighting for an internet based on public values. The Fediversity Project attended, to share ideas, and learn more about how people and organisations think about an ethical internet. If you are interested, you can view all sessions here (hosted on PeerTube!).

Alexandra van Huffelen, who was Dutch Secretary of State of Digitalisation until last month, gave the opening talk to discuss digitalisation and public values. In the talk, van Huffelen said that the Netherlands has a prominent lead in the EU with the promotion of public values in the digital infrastructure. Van Huffelen has been a prominent supporter of open standards and decentralisation, and has pushed the usage of Mastodon within the Dutch government, which fits well with the goals and vision of the Fediversity project. Project Lead Koen de Jonge took the opportunity shortly before the talk to hand van Huffelen a Mastodon pin, which she proudly wore during her talk, as you can see in the header image!

There were quite some other talks about the Fediverse as well, discussing how to move the space forward. The goal of the Fediversity Project is to provide the technological infrastructure that makes it easier for people to join an open, free and fair social internet. The strength of Fediversity is in our technological capabilities, making the infrastructure more accessible. For our project to be successful, we also need a social infrastructure, that teaches people what it is and how it is beneficial for them, and how to get them on board. We also need public organisations to lead by example. Both of these social aspects of growing the fediverse were on full display during the PublicSpaces conference, and there is a real enthusiasm in growing the social internet. Fediversity is a strong supporter of organisations like PublicSpaces; while organisations like PublicSpaces help facilitate people and organisations with their thinking about why they should join the fediverse, and which steps should they take, Fediversity can provide the technological infrastructure that makes it all as easy as possible.