Working full time on the Social Web

In January 2026, I will begin working full time in my role as Director at the Social Web Foundation. I am looking forward to the challenge of growing this young non-profit and fulfilling our mission to make a bigger, better Fediverse.

As a refresher: I have been working in the area of federated social networks since starting Identi.ca in 2008. Federated social networks are social platforms that let users on one platform connect to and interact with users on another platform. Linked up with open standard protocols, these platforms together form a Social Web that puts people first.

In 2018, I was a co-author of the ActivityPub standard for social network interoperability. I currently maintain the spec for the W3C and develop extensions for it. In 2024, I wrote ActivityPub: Programming for the Social Web for O’Reilly Media. And I co-founded the Social Web Foundation to further encourage the use of ActivityPub in social networks.

For the last year, I’ve been working nights, lunchtimes and weekends on SWF while holding down my full-time role as Director of Open Technology at the Open Earth Foundation. I love working at OEF; the organization build Open Source software to help cities fight climate change. I have felt very fulfilled in my work there, and I’ve made really strong friendships with the team. It’s been a very special place to work that has changed how I think teams can be.

But over the last year, SWF has had some really amazing opportunities, and in 2026 we’ll be making some big steps forward for the Social Web. I can’t keep doing both jobs, and I feel like, after 4 years at OEF, I’ve done what I can to build up that organization, and I am ready to start on this next one.

It will feel good to have my full attention focused on the Social Web. I’m looking forward to seeing my Open Source friends at FOSDEM 2026 in Brussels at the end of January where I’m helping to organize the Social Web track. I’m speaking at Princeton mid-February, and I’ll be in the Bay Area at the beginning of March. All this time, I’ll be working hard to get the next version of ActivityPub released and to push out several software projects to make the Social Web more fun and interesting.

Thanks to everyone who’s put time, effort and help into the SWF. Thanks to my coworkers at OEF for encouraging me on my next steps in my career. Thanks to my wife and family for tolerating yet another leap into the void.

I hope you have as exciting a New Year as I will.

#activitypub #career #job #socialweb #swf

Evan Prodromou

2025-10-31 17:16:56

FOSDEM 2026 – Social Web Devroom – Call For Participation

The Social Web Foundation is pleased to announce the Social Web Devroom at FOSDEM 2026, and invite participants to submit proposals for talks for the event.

FOSDEM is an exciting free and open source software event in Brussels, Belgium that brings together thousands of enthusiasts from around the world. The event spans the weekend of January 31 to February 1, 2026 and features discussion tracks (“devrooms”) for scores of different technology topics.

The Social Web Devroom will take place on Saturday, January 31.

Format

There will be three available talk formats:

• 50 minutes – for bigger projects, followed by 10 minutes of questions.
• 25 minutes – for bigger projects, followed by 5 minutes of questions.
• 8 minutes – micro-talks on smaller or newer projects, in groups of 3, followed by 6 minutes of combined questions for the group.

Topics

The Social Web Devroom is open to talks all about the Social Web AKA the Fediverse, including:

• Implementations of the ActivityPub protocol or ActivityPub API
• Clients for ActivityPub-enabled software like Mastodon
• Supporting services for the Fediverse, like search or onboarding
• ActivityPub-related libraries, toolkits, and frameworks
• Tools, bots, platforms, and related topics
• Advocacy, organization and social activity in deploying Open Source ActivityPub applications

Important dates

• Submission open: 1 Nov 2025
• Submission deadline: 1 Dec 2025
• Acceptance notifications: 10 Dec 2025
• Final schedule announcement: 15 Dec 2025
• Devroom: 31 Jan 2026

Submissions

Submit talk proposals to https://pretalx.fosdem.org/fosdem-2026/cfp. Select “Social Web” from the “Track” dropdown, and include the length of your talk (8/25/50) in the submission notes. (Note that the “Lightning Talks” track is a separate event-wide track; if you’re proposing a Social Web micro-talk, please choose the “Social Web” track!)

Code of Conduct

All attendees and speakers must be familiar with and agree to the FOSDEM Code of Conduct.

Contact

Questions about topics, formats, or the Social Web in general should go to contact@socialwebfoundation.org.

Social Web Foundation

Towards a bigger, better fediverse

^{Social Web Foundation}