Chat of the Future Initiative

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Chat of the Future Initiative

  • Idea: Adding a new holistic space for collaboration and exchange with the community and perspective on the entire XMPP ecosystem.
  • Opportunity: Far thinking from here, this can help us formulate more strategic thinking and act accordingly more aligned across the network.
  • What kind of ideas?
    • Potential areas across the eco-system to act that were told as example:
      • Interoperability sessions
      • Encryption (of the Future?)
      • Onboarding of Developers
      • XMPP Myths (you folks mentioned that two years ago)
      • XMPP on iOS (or other platforms)
      • ?
  • Communication: The initiative is planned with presence in the media channels we have (and are expanding to) and offer >explicitly< participating actors and projects.

Meeting netiquette: Use the hand-raise function, keep yourself short and keep a respectful, constructive and positive tone.

Blogposts

Sessions

The sessions take place in this Big Blue Button conference.

  • Tue 13 January, 2026: Kick-off Session
    • Session pad
    • Rating: 4.7 / 5
    • Summary:
      • What do we do well?
        • Diversity in Ecosystem, Clients and Server
        • Open and transparent processes from the XSF and XMPP as IETF standard
        • Protocol reliability and robust servers
        • Fully end to end encrypted image sharing
        • Focus on core features of message exchange
        • Efficient and hardware friendly technology
        • Independent chat and communication technology
        • International Friendly community
        • Self-hosting and run your own service including customisation
        • Collaborating with developers on common goals
        • Provide my friends and family a secure place to bring the conversations that most matter to them
        • No need for a phone number
      • Where do we have potential to improve? What can we do differently?
        • Where can we act today? (Within 3 months)
          • Need for interoperability testing
          • Communication along myths and capabilities of XMPP (recently: gatewaying)
          • Community building / more ways for us XMPP fans to socialise. Joint fediverse/XMPP hosting.
          • Welcoming community: Puts people first and making sure people can feel safe with us.
        • Where can we act tomorrow? (Within 6-9 months)
          • Onboarding: Missing simplicity, from F-Droid, finding reasons to excite others to join (killer use cases?), the "empty” client, easier creation of invitation links (and joining on the receiver side) also to to semi-private channels and channel-groups, combined with introduction to the eco-system
          • UI/UX: Missing “common ground” for the end user, limited formatting options, overly focus on security features over easy onboarding & user expected features
          • High abundance of options to end-user.
          • Understanding the difference from centralised platforms and also understanding limits
          • Clear guide for totally new users, with minimal technical knowledge and efforts of thinking required
          • Official looking website (not necessarily xmpp.org) + opinionated list of modern XMPP clients
        • Where can we act in the future? (From 9+ months)
          • OMEMO: Management, deleting old keys, getting my contacts to trust new keys, backfilling encrypted chat history between devices, old messages cannot be decrypted, diagnose failure to decrypt messages, export/import keys, users & Perfect-Forward-Secrecy, automatic client-to-client synchronisation of chat history, XEP for auto-syncing a new client, Get rid of OMEMO
          • Diversity: Client and provider side
          • Fitting XMPP’s model into the way phones work
          • Private group video calls
          • Full featured, modern client for iOS
          • Inability to switch off other “connected devices” from any given client
          • No information on missing features on other parties client.
          • Resource availability to XMPP developers
          • Complying with the specs (test suites?)
          • Switch between providers and particularly clients (Backfill of chat history, Automatic contact import)
          • Implementation of group chats
          • Make my newly onboarded contacts feel at home: Switching to XMPP shouldn’t be a traumatic experience nor an adventure into uncharted territory for people that has been using IM for decades now.
          • A simplified mental model for XMPP as a chatting protocol, so that people have the right expectations (Actor-Network Theory)
          • XEP consistency adopted by clients: Allowing a more flat experience for users between clients and platforms
          • Build moderation tools to manage community and protect it from SPAM and abuse
  • Tue 20 January, 2026: Focus Session - User interface (UI), User experience (UX), community building
    • Session pad
    • Rating: 5 / 5
    • Summary:
      • Having a well known way to mention people in MUCs
      • Password reset flows are obscure
      • Cryptographic stuff should be ON by default where it’s possible and we should show less technical information to regular users
      • Lack of formatting
      • Set servers to delete old messages
      • Invite flow is difficult with F-droid
      • Contacts find MUCs and contact names confusing
      • More “discord-like” features or specific clients
  • Tue 3 February, 2026: Spring Activities Discussion Session
  • Tue 17 March, 2026: Spring Check-ins Session
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