09-21, 10:15–11:00 (Europe/Berlin), LAB Green (Basement)
The talk is based on the speaker's research of the Matrix ecosystem a few years ago while studying at The Open University, applying the Viable System Model (VSM) to explore its organisational dynamics. I’ll start with a quick introduction to VSM, its origins and basic concepts; we’ll then review the current community structure, its evolution over the last few years, the implications from the VSM perspective and what the theory has to say about the future of Matrix.
It's the first time for me to discuss these particular findings in a public setting. Being in a sweet spot outside-Element-inside-Foundation allows me to claim a somewhat neutral position, which the audience will hopefully appreciate, as one of prominent topics will be the special situation of Element in the ecosystem and my view of it through the prism of VSM.
As most people in the audience are likely unaware of the theory, I expect to spend the first 15 minutes on a VSM crash course.
The talk title is a play on the name of Stafford Beer's book, "Brain of the Firm", where VSM has been originally introduced.
Known as Kitsune Ral in the Matrix community (nickname invented for the project), Alexey joined it in 2016, shortly after the public federation of homeservers was launched. He leads the projects under the Quotient umbrella: libQuotient, the Qt-based library for Matrix clients, and Quaternion, the reference implementation of a client on top of it. He's also a community representative in the Spec Core Team, and a technical advisor to startups that want to use Matrix as a part of their technology. When not messing with Matrix, Qt or startups, Alexey works for Red Hat as a telco IT technologist, and plays competitive table tennis. He's based in Amsterdam.