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Welcome To The � Federation was a research project that sought to understand how knowledge and skills from communities in the arts and design can contribute to the creation of alternative digital ecosystems based on open standards and federation. Of specific interest were those software projects whose activities have reinvigorated interest for their underlying protocols, in part by their focusing on design, language and user experience (UX), projects such as Converstations, Mastodon and PeerTube.

The project unfolded in part as two two-day events that invited developers and contributors to Conversations and Mastodon to Varia. On the first day the project was presented and on the second day a hands-on worksession was organized where practitioners in arts and design could contribute to specific issues with regards to the development of these applications.

The Ecosystem Is Moving

Conversations and XMPP being presented in Varia

Scene in Varia from the worksession

The first event in june 2018 was called The Ecosystem Is Moving and invited Daniel Gultsch to present Conversations. During the worksession we worked on improving the way group chats are represented within the app and wireframed numerous proposals some of which later were merged in to the application.

A stack of promotional material for The Ecosystem Is Moving

Mastodon and the Fediverse

Late work on collaborative translation

The second event was called Mastodon and the Fediverse and invited Joene Praat to present Mastodon and their work on localizing the software to Dutch. During the worksession we translated the then newly re-designed front page of the project joinmastodon.org to Dutch.

Two flyers called Mastodon and the Fediverse

Collaborative translation of joinmastodon.org on etherpad

This project was made possible with the support of Varia and an research grant by CBK Rotterdam.