Holding the Fort: How did bridges happen (matrix-conf-2025)

Take a trip back through time with me as we learn about how bridges happened. Why did we do it at all? Whose idea was it to hook up the then fledgling matrix.org network to the biggest IRC network? How many databases were shredded in the line of duty? This talk features a journey back through time as we look at bridges and integrations that have been built on Matrix over the years, and what we can hope to learn from it. There will be laughter, there will be eyebrows raised, there will be content...

Portable identites (MSC 2787) and the GDPR right to rectification, a pressing need for server operators (matrix-conf-2025)

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...

Integrating Matrix in a trustworthy collaborative ecosystem (matrix-conf-2025)

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...

Leading the way into CRA compliance: Element’s approach to the incoming regulation (matrix-conf-2025)

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...

A Contextual Integrity approach to privacy in interoperable messaging (matrix-conf-2025)

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...

Solving the Fork Dilemma: How We Built a Maintainable Matrix Messenger (matrix-conf-2025)

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...

Getting started with Element Server Suite Community (matrix-conf-2025)

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...

Scaling Real-Time in NeoBoard: Our Journey from P2P to MatrixRTC + LiveKit (matrix-conf-2025)

[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...

How do messaging app users feel about untraceability? (matrix-conf-2025)

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,...

39C3 — Community-Bühnen: Alles bleibt anders

Sicher erinnert ihr euch noch an die beiden Community-Bühnen auf dem 38C3 und das tolle Programm, das dort, von der Community eingereicht und von den Habitaten kuratiert, auf die Beine gestellt wurde. In diesem Jahr wird es die Community-Bühnen nicht mehr geben. Stattdessen haben wir uns dazu entschlossen, das Hauptprogramm um einen neuen Community-Track und eine vierte Bühne zu erweitern und zusätzlich im Rahmen der Self-Organized Sessions eine eigene Bühne für Talks zur Verfügung zu stellen.

Warum diese Änderung?

Kurz gesagt – ihr wart einfach zu gut!

Länger gesagt: Die Qualität der Talks auf den Community-Bühnen stand denen im Hauptprogramm quasi in nichts...