Welcome to the � Federation explores alternative federated ecosystems for online services such as social media and chat. It will focus in particular on those software projects whose activities have stimulated new interest for their underlying protocols, such as XMPP or ActivityPub, in part by their focusing on design, language and user experience (UX).

The Wtt�F question is to explore how arts and design communities can play a supportive role in these processes by contributing skills, knowledge, time and exposure.

Federation instead of centralized systems

Over the past few years there has been a renewed interest in 'alternative' on-line services such as social media and chat¹. These are services that promise to provide different experiences and models to the ones we are used to seemingly for free from corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Some of these alternatives are that in name only. These alternatives promise to be something else from the start, but often end up being more of the same since they use similar or identical business models as the platform they pretend to be an alternative to. In essence a different brand serving the same product.

Others projects take a different approach. They challenge the current state of affairs by putting effort in building fundamentally different ecosystems based around free software and open protocols.

One of the ways this current state of affairs is challenged is by insisting on federation, as opposed to centralized structures. Federation is the idea that various actors decide to cooperate in a collective fashion to make a network. Distributing responsibility and power as they do so.

These software practices can be understood as forms enacted criticism, developing a theoretical critique of systems into concrete and practical responses.

Wtt�F in 2018 & 2019

Wtt�F will host a series of gatherings that invite developers of these software projects and people active in arts and design. An evening of presentation and discussion is combined with a hands-on worksession during the day.

For these worksessions the invited developers will introduce and outline a few issues in the context of language, design and UX that participantes are invited to respond to. Concrete contributions are explored as a way to introduce these critical software practices in a tangible way.