What is “Decentralization Unchained”?
Decentralization Unchained is an “Un-conference” co-organized by the team of developers, cryptographers, hackers, researchers and activists behind Delta.Chat, the new decentralized secure messaging tool, with the help of Ukrainian local digital security trainers and tech enthusiasts.
Decentralization Unchained is one day of talks, workshops, informal discussions and hacking around the topics of decentralizing infrastructures and communities, building communication tools with users and for users. Decentralization means more and often something different than what is happening in the online blockchain worlds. Instead of building “solutions” in a top-down approach, guided by stereotypes of an “ideal user in a vacuum”, we try a format where “western” hackers meet users and their not-typically-western mixed environment.
Where?
The Decentralization Unchained unconference will happen at the i-Zone (Naberezhno-Lugovogo street, 8, Podil district, Kyiv, Ukraine – on November 3, from 11:00 to 19:00.
It will be followed by an afterparty at Сoschey Local DIY bar where we will watch sci-fi crazy psychedelic videos, dance to experimental electronic music, taste home-made spirits and join the speculative fiction team game about “cyber apocalypsis” and how to save the world from robots.
Unconference program?
We are collectively growing the program of talks and workshops now. We will regularly update the program here. For the “fullest” version please check the “program” section of this website.
Session/Talk time is ~15-30 minutes. Note that several of the talkers are experts in their fields who gave keynotes at other conferences. People who gather at the Decentralization Unchained event are connected to such projects as Delta.Chat, Autocrypt, PEP/Sequoia, DAT, Riseup, LEAP, and so on.
If you have a topic you’d like to present on – please show up in the morning and talk to the organizers. This is an unconference which means that not all talk topics are pre-settled.
[some of confirmed talks]
Tech track:
- Offline-networking: about the breakdown of online-dependent systems
- Uses of encrypted communication in commercial / enterprise setups
- Email in the trenches, experiences from an email provider
- Transport security for email delivery
- Building offline p2p databases
- Building apps on p2p databases using node.js (file sharing, spreadsheets, chat, map editor)
- User Interface considerations for Delta/Desktop (screenshots, comments and thoughts)
- Insights to deltachat-core (the C-library at the core of Android/Desktop/iOS apps and the language bindings)
Social/Political track:
- Overview of users’ threats and needs based on Needfinding research
- The right to be plural: decentralization of identities, pseudonymity and security (based on user-interviews with at-risk users)
- Digital security desires, fantasies and needs of local activists
- Internet infrastructures for Rojava
- A short intro to Scuttlebutt
- Is there life in decentralized Internets? An experience of a Google-free diet (Degoogle.bindl.xyz)
Wanna join?
We encourage interested people to propose talks (15-30 minutes), around the following topics:
- decentralization
- secure communications
- networking and communication infrastructures
- current challenges for Ukrainian hosting, ISP and email providers
- user experience with technologies – stories from activists and journalists
- current threats for civil society and media
- needs, desires and fantasies about secure communications
- and so on…
How to join?
Decentralization Unchained is an uncoference – so we encourage spontaneous proposals from interested participants.
2 ways of participating are possible:
- Contact delta@codespeak.net or ksenia@transcyberian.org to propose your talk (no formal “abstract” is needed – just write the title of your talk and 2-3 sentences describing what you want to talk about). You can write in Ukrainian, Russian and English.
- Improvise! Come directly to the venue on November 3. We will have informal brunch with our team and friends from 11 to 12 am. You are welcome to join, you can propose your talk directly there and write it down on the white board.
User-testing
The delta.chat team and friends come to Kyiv for a whole week of Oct 28 – Nov 4 and will conduct two real-time user-testing sessions to try out some of their current developments with Ukrainian testers from activist and journalist communities. But we also hope to meet with the local Ukrainian IT community, providers, hosters, developers, people working on mesh or fighting Internet censorship and surveillance in their country. If you want to take part in user-testing and/or come meet us to learn more about the project, suggest collaboration or just chat around aforementioned topics, please contact delta@codespeak.net or ksenia@transcyberian.org [@kissmychaos on Telegram / @xeniax:matrix.org on IRC/Riot / @ksenia_e on Wire]
Why Kyiv?
Delta-XI happens in Kyiv, Ukraine, because decentralization is not just a technical idea but also about social and geographical de-centering. Ukraine is currently going through a challenging process of political transformation. Four years after the Revolution, how did people manage to maintain their infrastructures? How do they work with the Internet and how do they try to defend Internet freedom? What are their needs in terms of secure communication and how can we help? One of the goals of this event is to actually meet with people who really need and will use our technologies: local journalists going to war zones in the East of Ukraine or to the annexed Crimea; activists facing the right-wing uprising in big cities like Kyiv or Lviv; and human rights defenders working everyday with war refugees or other at-risk groups.