Matrix Conference 2025

Sr. Product Designer at Element

ESA

Alexander Smolianitski is Head of Products at ZenDiS, the German Federal Center for Digital Sovereignty. His career path ranges from working at a renowned PR agency to jumpstarting his own tech startup and serving as the CDO of one of Germany's largest cities.

Amandine is a co-founder and Guardian of the Matrix.org Foundation. The Foundation is the custodian for the Matrix open standard, a unique initiative aiming to democratise secure online communication and solve the problem of fragmentation in current Chat, VoIP, VR and IoT technologies. Matrix makes open real-time-communication as universal and interoperable as email, and brings the power back to the user on choosing who they trust with their data and how they want to communicate.

Amandine is also COO and co-founder for Element, the company building the eponym open source, secure and interoperable collaboration tool built on Matrix. Element delivers Matrix solutions to millions of users, including the French Government, the German Armed Forces, and private companies like Mozilla or Red Hat.

Amandine heads the Business and Impact section of the European Open Source Academy and previously set up and led product management for the Unified Communications line of business within Amdocs. Amandine has a degree in telecommunications engineering from Ecole Supérieure de Chimie, Physique et Electronique de Lyon as well as an EMBA from ESC Rennes.

Senior Product Manager for Element mobile apps & End-to-End Encryption. Previous experience in reinventing customer service platform in Glia, including building the PM function from the scratch while the company scaled to be the 10th unicorn of Estonia. Engineering background from the very early days of the 25-year career, and experience from numerous domains, including space, throughout the career. Passionate about ski racing as a hobby.

Andy is a long-time free/open source contributor who has worked as a programmer in many different industries, using a variety of technologies including C++, Java, Python, JavaScript and Rust. His hobbies are writing programming languages, coding retro games, and making programming videos.

He loves working with people to craft clean, well-tested code, and feels very privileged to be able to work on Matrix full-time in his job at Element.

Product owner of SAFOS that thrive best in collaboration. Working closely with Swedish authorities to make the service as value-creating as possible.

Développeur java chez Oodrive.

As a Chief Technology Officer at Meedio, I lead the development processes and the strategic adoption of new technologies, with a particular focus on the Matrix protocol and end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) video communication solutions. I have been with Meedio for over six years, initially joining as a Lead Backend Developer, then advancing to Head of Development, and eventually becoming CTO. In the leadership role, I have been instrumental in building new teams, driving technological direction, and delivering tailored, high-security communication solutions for strategic clients. I also oversee compliance and certification processes, including the implementation of GDPR.

Before joining Meedio, I had worked in the fintech sector on projects aimed at centralizing multi-bank access for users, enabling consolidated asset management across financial institutions. In recent years, my primary focus has been on secure, encrypted video communication in regulated sectors, particularly IT healthcare, where data security and governance play a critical role.

Maintainer of Trixnity and founder of connect2x.

Carla is a tenure-track assistant professor at the Department of Computer Science at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, where she researches and teaches Human-Computer Interaction. Her main research studies how communication technologies, especially messaging apps, affect interpersonal relationships, and how the way people use one platform interconnects with the way they use others. She conducts empirical studies to understand how people adapt software to fit their communication needs and builds prototypes that explore ways of providing them with richer control over their expression and online privacy. She currently manages a 4-year long research project about managing privacy and social boundaries in interoperable messaging platforms.

Danielle works in Product at Element, leading the Web and VoIP teams & features. They are passionate about advancing secure communication, especially in the public sector, with a focus on integrations and user experience. Danielle enjoys collaborating with the wider Matrix community to turn ideas into practical solutions, with an approach that emphasises openness, usability, and trust in technology for end-users.

Engineering Manager for Element Web and Desktop

I am a privacy, policy and regulation professional, currently working on the future of decentralised communication at Element. I have also just submitted my PhD thesis at UCL, on the topic of technology worker's attitudes and behaviours towards privacy and change. My main research interests are centred on privacy, change, human rights, privilege and power, ethics, and algorithmic accountability, particularly around how these areas interact with different social, demographic and contextual factors.

As an IT-architect at the Federal IT-Cooperation (FITKO) in Germany I work on both strategic and technical aspects of national software infrastructure in the German public bureaucracy. I have an interdisciplinary background with touchpoints in public policy and administration, management, data science and comupter science.

Doug is a senior software engineer at Element working as part of the iOS team on Element X, Element Pro and Compound. Outside of Matrix he can usually be found writing Swift, drinking tea and tinkering with anything audiovisual related.

Chief Product Officer (CPO) and Managing Director at Element

Before, I worked as Chief Product Officer of New Work and XING, as Managing Director of kununu, and as Project Leader of the Boston Consulting Group. I've also founded and exited an Internet consumer startup.

I hold an MBA from INSEAD and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence in Seismology from Imperial College. In addition, I had the privilege to attend executive education courses in branding at Kellogg School of Management and completed the Advanced Management Program of Harvard Business School.

Dr. Roland Alton is the chairperson at fairkom. There we do open source consulting and scalable hosting.
Educated as an IT professional. Good at planning, deploying and managing complex communication solutions for various customers. Active as a free software & creative commons evangelist.
Located in Austria/Europe.

Florian has always been a passionate supporter of Matrix and deeply resonates with the Matrix Manifesto. After working extensively on centralized (video) communication systems, he now focuses on the exciting challenge of expanding (video) communication to decentralized systems, with Matrix being the obvious choice. In his role as Expert Cluster Lead at Element, Florian is actively driving this vision of decentralized communication with industry leading end-to-end encryption forward.

An expert in audio signal processing and real-time communication, Florian holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from RWTH Aachen University. He has contributed to VoIP technologies with patents in jitter buffer optimization and acoustic feedback reduction. His extensive industry experience includes leading the development of key audio technologies like WebRTC, MCU Conference Engine, and SFU, as well as pioneering research in perceptual jitter buffers and spatial audio. His work has powered platforms like GotoMeeting and GotoWebinar, supporting millions of users globally.

Florian Jacob started to pursue his Ph.D. on the scientific foundations of Matrix at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in 2019, and has since worked there as a scientific staff member in the Decentralized Systems and Network Services research group. His research interests are the security and resilience of decentralized communication and collaboration systems like Matrix, specifically in formalizing and verifying the properties of event authorization and dissemination in the systems' replicated data structures.

Java software developper since 20046

Java Tech Lead @ Oodrive

Gabriel Engel is the CEO and co-founder of Rocket.Chat, the world’s largest open-source communication and collaboration platform, trusted by governments, defense organizations, and highly regulated industries worldwide.

Product designer

Half-Shot (or Will) was the lead maintainer of integrations on matrix.org for many years, and now is retired to simply doing all the other things instead. Famous for causing things such as the libera.chat IRC bridge, replacing everything with the Hookshot bridge, and the most cursed implementations of bridge encryption.

When he's not doing Matrix things, he is making terrible indie games, running somewhere, or possibly making a fuss of a dog!

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Hi, I’m Jan. I’m driven by the belief that technology improves lives. My focus lies in innovative software solutions, especially in Health Care, where enhancing patient outcomes and quality of care is at the heart of what we do.

As Product Owner for the TI Messenger at gematik, I’m shaping secure healthcare communication.

Great software connects people, simplifies processes, and enhances patient outcomes and quality of care—this inspires me every day.

Hi! I am a nerdy ambivert who recently moved to Vienna and I'm trying to not trip over my own fingers while learning jazz and classical piano.

I started seriously tinkering with Linux and FOSS in high-school and that addiction only got worse over time. Fast forward 15 years and that gusto got me into working with universities and institutions running their own FOSS stacks: from Jitsi to Matrix, Linux to Kubernetes and more.

I work closely with Fairkom and their projects, especially in the Linux and Kubernetes infrastructure and of course a lot of Matrix.

Researcher in medical informatics at FAU Erlangen and IT project manager at University Hospital Erlangen, where I lead the Matrix-based TI-Messenger rollout. For 15+ years I’ve been active in civil protection, focusing on information & communications, outage resilience, and critical infrastructure. I studied Information Management in Healthcare (Ulm) and Medical Process Management (Erlangen). My PhD, IM-CURE (Instant Messaging for Crisis & Urgent Response in Emergencies), explores how structured, asynchronous messaging can keep clinical care safe during IT failures and crisis scenarios.

https://technodisaster.com/

please don't ask me how anything works, if it works, CELEBRATE!

Jeroen Franssen is a project manager in the Innovation Branch in Allied Command Transformation. He leads the rapid integration and deployment team.

Contributor to Matrix and the BundesMessenger.

Kegan Dougal is one of the core engineers who created Matrix back in 2014, designing many aspects of the client-server protocol.

He has extensive experience with most of the Matrix ecosystem including servers (Synapse/Dendrite), clients (Element-Web/JS SDK), bots (Go-NEB) and bridges (IRC bridge). He has written several test frameworks from Complement to Chaos, ensuring the entire ecosystem remains interoperable, robust and reliable. His current focus is on improving the federation protocol and is collaborating with academia in the CRDT field to ensure Matrix remains secure against Byzantine actors.

IT-architect at Swedish Social Insurance Agency, with focus on delivering secure collaboration solutions to Swedish authorities(SAFOS).

Also known online as HarHarLinks. Matrix server host since 2017, Matrix community event organizer since 2022, Matrix.org Foundation governing board member for Matrix Community Events. Co-organizer of this conference.

Professional "told you so" artist.
I'm a software engineer/systems architect working on Matrix and open source software at Nordeck IT + Consulting GmbH.

Ask me about room upgrades.

Creator of FluffyChat. Works full-time at Famedly GmbH.

Avencall est l'éditeur de XiVO, la première solution open source et française de téléphonie IP, communications unifiées et centre d'appels. Scalable et interopérable, XiVO facilite la collaboration au sein de l'entreprise.
Outils collaboratifs, gestion d'accueil, softphonie, centre d'appels, statistiques, interconnexion outils métiers, XiVO offre des fonctionnalités avancées et évolutives.
Depuis plus de 15 ans, plus de 500 entreprises privées, collectivités, universités, centres d'appels l'utilisent au quotidien.
Académie de Normandie, Université Toulouse Paul Sabatier, Université de Lille, Université de Grenoble Alpes, Université Paris Saclay, Centrale Marseille, Ecole du Louvre, CNRS, Mines Saint-Etienne, Université de Limoges (...) aujourd'hui plus de 30 universités et écoles ont rejoint XiVO !
La solution XiVO est ainsi solidement ancrée au sein de l'Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche. Depuis décembre 2023, l'entreprise Avencall fait partie du Groupe Volaris, un leader mondial du secteur logiciel.

Project and product management for [matrix]-based messenger solutions at fairkom.

Marie Ruddeck works as a product manager for the TI Messenger at gematik. The trained industrial designer previously gained experience in the healthcare sector as the founder of two companies: At “Frau Kettner” (est. 2018), she focused on the development and production of certified medical aids, such as a one-handed plate and a cutting board for people with unilateral limitations. After leaving that company, she developed a holistic care and service management platform for insured persons in her second startup, “Humanize Health.

Project Lead and Guardian, Matrix.org
CEO/CTO, Element

Matthias Stürmer is professor at the Bern University of Applied Sciences (BFH) and Head of the Institute for Public Sector Transformation (IPST) in the BFH Business School. In the context of these two affiliations, he is involved in teaching, research and consulting on digitalization topics such as digital sustainability, open source software, artificial intelligence and machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), open data, linked data, open government and ICT procurement. Since 2020, he is a private lecturer at the University of Bern through his habilitation "Perspectives on Digital Sustainability".

From 2009 to 2013, Matthias Stürmer worked as consultant at EY (Ernst & Young) and as a project manager at the Swiss software company Liip AG. Prior to that, he completed his PhD at the Chair of Strategic Management and Innovation at ETH Zurich (Dr. sc. ETH Zurich), where he researched the collaboration between open source communities and technology companies. He studied business administration and computer science at the University of Bern and graduated in 2005 with a licentiate thesis on open source community building (lic.rer.pol.).

Today, Matthias Stürmer is president of the Digital Impact Network and president of the open source association CH Open. And he is managing director of the Swiss Parliamentarian Group for Digital Sustainability (Parldigi) since 2009 and was member of the city parliament of Bern for 8 years.

System administrator for the Red Hat Open Source Program Office

Matrix specialist and software engineer working at Nordeck, building products and services built on Matrix.

Neil is Chief Engineering Officer at Element, leading engineering strategy and delivery. Passionate about scaling technology and people, he draws on experience from high-growth start-ups spanning Telecoms to Search. Neil holds an MEng in Electrical and Information Sciences from the University of Cambridge.

Hi! I'm networkException (she/they) and have been around as such for quite a few years in the Matrix Community and everywhere else online.

By day, I'm an IT architect at FITKO, a German government agency facilitating cooperation on IT topics between the federal government, member states and various other federal actors. Here I'm looking at Matrix as a tooling to achieve various goals like sovereignty, sustainability and security- and privacy by design within the ever evolving, ever more complicated IT landscape surrounding the German government.

At night I'm more of a developer, system administrator as well as train-, privacy- and security nerd and open source linux distribution and browser maintainer. I'm active in various communities, including maintaining the ungoogled-chromium browser patchset, improving open data for public transit or simply hosting (currently) 4 Synapses (and counting!) for fun and no profit

Developer of Nheko.
Representing the ecosystem on the governing board.
Employed by Famedly to work on Matrix in the healthcare sector.
Noisy and too involved in too many things.

I am still very proud of fixing the bug, where Synapse wouldn't let you rejoin rooms you have been unbanned from, unless another user from your server was in the room.

I got rid of reply fallbacks.

Patrice Zoe Brend'amour is a Vienna-based technology leader with extensive international experience spanning Germany, the United States, and Austria. Having led diverse, globally-distributed teams across the US, South Africa, and Europe, she brings a unique perspective to healthcare product management and development, understanding firsthand the complexities of cross-border collaboration and the critical need for seamless communication infrastructure in healthcare settings.

Her career has focused on shipping healthcare products while managing international development teams, navigating diverse regulatory environments, and fostering collaboration across time zones and cultural boundaries. This global leadership experience has provided deep insights into the challenges healthcare organizations face when coordinating care, sharing data, and maintaining communication across different jurisdictions and technical standards.

Drawing from her international product development background and understanding of varied regulatory frameworks, Patrice advocates for open protocols that enable healthcare organizations to transcend geographical and institutional barriers. Her work consistently emphasizes solutions that maintain rigorous security standards while enabling the collaborative workflows that modern healthcare demands.

At this year's Matrix Conference, Patrice will address "Matrix as a Bridge – Enabling Cross-Border Healthcare Communication Through Open Standards," exploring how decentralized communication protocols can transform international healthcare data exchange and support seamless provider collaboration regardless of location. This presentation will demonstrate practical approaches for implementing open standards that break down current silos limiting cross-border healthcare innovation.

Product Manager at Element, responsible for all things backend and ESS

Project Manager for Luxchat4gov project at Ministry for Digitalisation.

I am part of the fairkom team, where I work as a software developer on various open source projects, including SchulchatRLP, DisplayEurope, Termino, and more.

Philipp Kurtz is a medical doctor and co-founder of Famedly, the first company in Germany to launch a gematik-approved TI-Messenger. For over six years he has led the team in building secure, interoperable communication tools that are now expanding beyond healthcare into the public sector. His mission: to shape the future of digital collaboration and sovereignty in Europe.

Privacy enthusiast bringing E2EE to bluesky

Rich is a Staff Engineer at Element, and has been part of the Matrix project since 2015. In that time he's touched all sorts of things, including Element-Web and Synapse. He implemented the early steps towards encryption in Element Web, and more recently is back in the encryption sphere as part of Element's Crypto team.

Neoboard S product owner. Nordeck's product owner and product development lead for Matrix-based products.

Runi Hammer is an entrepreneur and TEDx speaker who has co-founded and led several tech startups across diverse industries, including artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and telecommunications. He is currently the founder and CEO of Meedio — a secure and compliant Matrix-based video and messaging solution designed for the public sector, healthcare, and other sensitive domains, with a strong focus on sovereignty, confidentiality, and privacy.

Hello, my name is Braid (she/her) !

I'm working consultant in the Matrix ecosystem, specialized on Encryption, Client development and Healthcare applications.

Before ending up in the Matrix world, I've been working as Software Architect for Cryptography Architecture in healthcare, later on as Matrix Client developer and nowadays as general Matrix Solution Architect.

Apart from work, I'm developer of < polycule > and a couple of other open-source projects. I use AArch64 hardware, fight for digital sovereignty, privacy and libre software everywhere.

I'm member of The Matrix.org Foundation's Events Working Group. You can ask me about railways !

Ms. Tima Soni joined UNICC in 2016 as Head, Information Security Services. In 2019, she was appointed as Chief, Cybersecurity Division that oversees the security programme for UNICC and that delivers cybersecurity services to UNICC’s Clients and Partner Organizations.

Ms. Soni oversees UNICC’s cybersecurity team of experts in New York, Valencia, Rome and Geneva for UNICC’s more than 50 subscribers to information security services. She has served as Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for several UNICC Partner Organizations including UN Women, the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) and currently also serves as the CISO for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

VoIP engineer at Element.

Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. techn. Thomas Grechenig (TG) is an architect of very large, complex, and innovative information systems, and a distinguished R&D and digitalization personality with professional activities in Berlin, Paris, Vienna, the Arab economic region, and India.

He is the founder and CEO of RISE, an R&D-driven company originally spun out of TU Wien. Since 2004, RISE has been responsible for the continuous development and software maintenance of Austria’s e-Card infrastructure, driving the technical evolution of its security devices. Between 2005 and 2013, RISE contributed decisively to the architecture of Germany’s national telematics infrastructure (TI) and has since carried out ongoing technical, planning, and implementation work for gematik and various partners in Germany. Since 1990, RISE and its research groups have been active in large-scale e-Health projects across Europe, the Arab world, and the DACH region, contributing to more than 100 master’s theses and dissertations in medical informatics and health information systems.

RISE maintains close cooperation with national IT-security institutions and holds recognized expertise in data protection, privacy, GDPR compliance, and high-security architectures for personal health data. Its teams have delivered core specifications and reference implementations for critical TI components — including connectors, brokers, audit services, and specialized applications — and contributed to the overall TI security concept, eHealth card terminal specification, and PKI and system testing methodologies. RISE also developed certified security tools, such as the BSI-certified eHealth G2 COS Consistency Check Tool (TR-03143) and the PVTe G2 Personalization Validation Tool.

Today, RISE plays a leading role in Germany’s sovereign e-Health ecosystem — providing core infrastructure for electronic patient records (ePA), secure medical messaging (KIM), sectoral and central identity services (IDP), and the TI-Messenger (TIM). The RISE TI-Messenger, approved by gematik in 2025, enables more than 25 million insured citizens to securely and intuitively communicate with healthcare providers directly from their ePA app, marking a major milestone in Germany’s journey toward a secure, federated, and sovereign digital health infrastructure.

Individual Entrepreneur Vladislav Kalinin has been living his dream in love with computer science for the last 15 years dedicating that time to building IT solutions across many layers of the bits and bytes world.

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