Holmes Wilson
Holmes is the founder of Quiet (tryquiet.org), a "Slackier Signal" that doesn't require servers, for organizations that need the privacy of Signal but the team features of Slack. He previously co-founded and co-ran the US-based tech policy activism group Fight for the Future (fightforthefuture.org), and also worked as a campaigner at the Free Software Foundation. Way back in the day, he co-founded a peer-to-peer video podcasting tool built on BitTorrent called Miro, and a collaborative subtitling platform Amara.
Session
6 years into building a peer-to-peer Slack (tryquiet.org), tortured by the hunch that there could be a much better and easier way, I went rogue and spent one year vibe coding ~10 prototype peer-to-peer stacks with the goal of making one that was a) adequate for meeting user needs and b) simpler than the first versions of BitTorrent. I didn't get as far as (b) but I discovered some really powerful approaches along the way, and/or completely lost all connection with reality. Come be the judge!