Moving the Fediverse Forward at FediForum and Beyond, with Johannes Ernst of Dazzle Labs

For stewards of the fediverse (they sound like superheroes, right?), FediForum is a key date on the calendar. The third edition of the “unconference” is happening March 19-20, 2024. With Threads saying it will federate later this year, FediForum comes at a time of growing curiosity and promises juicy topics and demos.

What are the issues that are top of mind for the developers and leaders in this movement? What needs to happen for the fediverse to cross the chasm from early adopters to the mainstream? What are the opportunities for entrepreneurs, and how should they think about business models in the fediverse?

Johannes Ernst, one of FediForum’s founders and an entrepreneur himself as the CEO of Dazzle Labs, discusses these questions and more with Flipboard CEO Mike McCue in this episode of Dot Social. Johannes’ projects also include FediTest, a test suite for the fediverse, and The Fediverse Developer Network.

Highlights of this conversation include:

1:30 Third FediForum: when, what to expect, who attends
3:25 Crossing the chasm and how technology markets evolve
6:12  Heterogeneous interoperability
7:45 How the fediverse enables innovation, imagining if Farmville sprouted in the fediverse
10:14 Decentralized innovation
12:21 The network is the application
12:49 What if every website was social?
15:38 Fediverse and business models
17:45 Which aspects of the Fediverse excite Johannes as an entrepreneur
19:54 Recent spam attacks and having to work together to solve
22:54 Principle of modularity and why it’s better
25:20 “The perfect storm” of things to talk through at FediForum 2024
27:04 Ryan Barrett’s bridge to Bluesky and its implications
29:55 Why having an event like FediForum is critical to collaboration
30:35 The freedom of association and non-association
32:27 Protecting communities in the fediverse and the cost of global connectivity
33:00 Criticality of expectation setting within an instance and need for more fine-grained controls
35:31 Governance questions
37:59 Everybody is welcome at FediForum
38:44 What to look out for from Johannes, FediForum and beyond

🔎 You can follow Johannes on Mastodon @J12t@social.coop. His projects are:
* FediForum: https://fediforum.org
* Personal home page: http://j12t.org
* Fediverse developer network: https://fedidevs.org
* Dazzle Labs: https://dazzlelabs.net

✚ You can connect with Mike McCue on Mastodon at @mike@flipboard.social, or via his Flipboard federated account, where you can see what he’s curating on Flipboard in the fediverse, at @mike@flipboard.com.

💡 To learn more about what Flipboard's doing in the fediverse, sign up here: http://about.flipboard.com/a-new-wave

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