2026-07-10 –, Resilience Base
How to connect communities who live and work in at-risk areas: war-torn countries, authoritarian regimes or remote rural areas? By guiding these communities to set up their own federated ecosystems, which they can adapt, manage and use in accordance with their own values, local culture, language and politics. dComms is a project run by eQualitie since the full scale invasion of Ukraine, where we set up first Matrix, Mastodon, Delta Chat, Peertube servers in 6 Ukrainian cities. The project expanded to include Mexico, Colombia, Nigeria, Russia, Lebanon. Come to this presentation to hear about the local adoption stories, failures and successes and discuss the future of resilient federated tech.
dComms is a decentralized-communications project developed by eQualitie, the Canadian free-software organization behind Deflect and the Ceno browser. It was initiated in February 2022 in direct response to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, originally to give Ukrainian users a fallback communication platform in the event of shutdowns, blocking, or censorship, and it has since broadened into a wider program of research, development, and test deployment of decentralized communications infrastructure across five countries facing repressive online censorship and surveillance.
Rather than a single app, dComms is an orchestration and deployment platform that helps communities stand up their own communication networks, bundling fediverse services such as Matrix/Element, Mastodon, and PeerTube alongside offline-first tools like the Delta Chat messenger and the Ceno browser. The design premise is that self-hosted, federated services offer a shutdown-resistant alternative capable of operating independently of global internet connectivity, creating small-world networks that keep communication reliable in low-bandwidth environments and resistant to censorship. Crucially, deployments are built on partnerships with local organizations to ensure project ownership and long-term sustainability, with tools tailored to the specific threat models and needs of journalists, activists, and marginalized communities in each context
TBD
Alex is a multidisciplinary professional with 20 years of experience working on six continents. Prior to eQualitie, Alex was an executive focused on developing and launching emerging technology programs in large organizations. As part of this work, he launched and led Amazon’s Worldwide Public Sector Innovation Studio and was a senior advisor in the White House, where he led national initiatives in sustainability, technology modernization and identity management. He is also a co-founder of multiple award-winning sustainable agriculture companies supporting global food security. His passion is using technology to help make the world more equitable and sustainable for all living things. Alex holds a JD from UC Berkeley, an MBA from Oxford University and a Masters in Environmental Management from Yale University.