Hilke Ros
The Belgian musician landed a radio hit with her dream pop band Amatorski in 2010 and toured with the band as their manager throughout Europe until becoming involved in the Swiss indie scene in 2013. For her solo album under the name "Hilke", she found a home at Red Brick Records in 2021, where she now also coordinates releases for the musicians' collective. In 2025 she also became a board member of Indiesuisse, the association of Swiss indie labels.
Besides her musical activities, Hilke has always had a passion for digital technology and social media. She has been working for 10 years as a software developer and, in the past year, geopolitics and rising fascism reignited her interest in open social media. She has been studying alternatives to Instagram, TikTok and others, not only from a technical perspective, but also from a queer, feminist, and artist perspective. Her main focus is on the developer and activist community around Bluesky and the AT Protocol.
Session
Building artist community and audience reach in the realm of music, art and other cultural topics has been held hostage by monopolistic platforms like Instagram and Tiktok. How can we rethink the online tools that artist communities need and build something new in technical ecosystems like atproto, Fediverse and beyond.