What's After WhatsApp? Rethinking Communication

We believe that real-time communication is fundamentally broken on today's internet.
Users have been lulled into believing that installing a wide range of independent chat and voip apps is inevitable, and that this somehow gives them control and choice over how they communicate.
In practice, we think that the user has lost control over ownership of their communications - forced to trust the app companies with their data, and has created an unusably fragmented user experience.
However we believe that there are alternatives.
Solutions exist today to give back control of communication to the users.
But are they all equivalent? Are they really solving the problem? What can be done so that realtime communications are as seamless and controlled as email?

Questions

1. Why can't we control our VoIP and IM communication on the internet like we can control our email?
2. Why can't all these messaging apps interoperate?
3. Why do we have to trust messaging/VoIP app vendors with our data anyway?
4. What are the current alternatives for restoring control over your online communication?
5. What future possibilities exist for empowering users to control their VoIP and IM experience as they choose?

Speakers

• Amandine Le Pape, Co-Founder, Matrix
• Matthew Hodgson, Co-founder, matrix.org

Organizer

Amandine Le Pape, Co-Founder, Matrix