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March 31, 2026

Special: Local-First Conf 2026

Special: Local-First Conf 2026
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Transcript

0:00:00 Intro
0:00:00 AI is really shaking up everything.
0:00:02 I think putting software as a entire, like industry a little bit in a different
0:00:07 light now, and, I think this does not make local-first at all, less relevant.
0:00:13 I think this is, as for most things, a huge tailwind.
0:00:16 But given that, both of us have been really like, immersed in that new AI
0:00:21 space as well, now, I think we can come with a perspective where we can speak
0:00:26 as insiders from the local-first space, but also as insiders from the AI space.
0:00:32 And with that fresh perspective, I think we wanted to give this year's
0:00:35 Local-First Conf a new, code of paint.
0:00:39 Hey Adam, so great to have you back.
0:00:41 How are you doing?
0:00:42 Hey Johannes.
0:00:42 I'm good.
0:00:43 Looking forward to the arrival of Spring here.
0:00:46 So I was just joking that the two of us have been on the last
0:00:51 localfirst.fm episode since it hasn't really been on a regular cadence
0:00:56 over the last couple of months.
0:00:57 I'm taking a bit of a, pause from the podcast to reorient myself
0:01:02 in this new crazy world of AI and coding agents, et cetera.
0:01:07 And like, I wanted to get my own hands even more dirty again.
0:01:11 And yeah, little bit recalibrate, and I think that's also gonna be quite the theme
0:01:16 for, an announcement we're making today.
0:01:19 And to foreshadow a little bit.
0:01:22 What this year's Local-First Conference will be about.
0:01:25 So with that out of the way, yeah, curious what's on your mind, Adam?
0:01:31 The Evolution of Local-First Conference
0:01:31 Well, obviously as we ramp up to this Conference and we're,
0:01:33 we're doing something pretty different this year, I think so.
0:01:35 I don't know.
0:01:36 Maybe I can give some, some history for, I espect a lot of your listeners have either
0:01:40 been to the Conference or know about it.
0:01:42 but just for context, this will be our third year and we started in 2024.
0:01:48 we really weren't sure honestly, if there was enough demand for it.
0:01:52 You sort of had the idea of like, Hey, I think there's space for or
0:01:56 interest, you know, a latent interest in local-first and we could build a
0:01:59 conference around it on data ownership and CRDTs and all that goodness is
0:02:03 things that yeah, need a venue and a place to meet in person and share ideas.
0:02:08 And we were genuinely really concerned.
0:02:09 We just wouldn't sell enough tickets and we'd lose money on the
0:02:12 venue and all this kind of thing.
0:02:13 Instead, what happened was, I think our venue held like 150 or 180, something
0:02:17 like that, we sold it out within a week.
0:02:18 It was actually kind of embarrassing because we had to be turning wonderful
0:02:22 people away and plus ones for our speakers and things like that, just
0:02:25 'cause we were at the venue capacity, so.
0:02:27 And for me it was also a big question about bringing together eclectic mix
0:02:32 of people, you had both academic people who had been working on CRDT theorems
0:02:36 and things for a decade and more kind of fringy, you know, Brett Victor, Alan Kay.
0:02:43 Tools for thought, perspectives with more practical software
0:02:48 engineers build React apps, just looking for the newest and greatest
0:02:51 technology to make their jobs easier.
0:02:53 Startups, there was, sync vendors were starting to become a little
0:02:56 bit of a thing then, and, you know, would these people even gel?
0:02:59 And I think the answer was yes.
0:03:00 The event was a huge success one day.
0:03:02 Single track, everyone loved it.
0:03:05 and it was a pretty obvious thing then the following year, 2025 to
0:03:08 expand it, we had a venue for 350.
0:03:10 We did two full days plus a community day, to more talks, more people.
0:03:14 Everything was 2 to 3x the scale.
0:03:18 And I think it really showed that we had this, community here and
0:03:21 that, that there was a lot of cohesion and people wanted to come.
0:03:24 Come back to it at the same time, I think, because sync and sync engines were
0:03:27 having a pretty big moment last year that ended up being a, at least one of the
0:03:31 day, was largely given over to that topic and we explored that pretty thoroughly.
0:03:36 So now we find ourselves thinking about, okay, one, we just enjoy
0:03:40 bringing this group of people together in this community of people together.
0:03:42 We want to get our friends back together in Berlin in the spring or the
0:03:46 summertime to just spend time together.
0:03:48 But at the same time, we also know the industry's changing and we also
0:03:51 know that it would be a little boring to just retread the same ground.
0:03:55 So that's causing us to want to be a little more creative with the
0:03:58 direction we're going this year, which is I think why we wanted to get
0:04:01 together and talk about that today.
0:04:02 Yeah, and I think if you're
0:04:05 just now looking back over the last two to three years, I feel that the
0:04:10 world is just such a different place.
0:04:12 When we look back then, local-first was really like, a wake up call
0:04:17 in this kinda like very almost.
0:04:19 not by today's standard, almost like static world, where things have
0:04:24 feel like seem pretty settled in terms of technologies, et cetera.
0:04:28 And we have like our best practices.
0:04:30 And local-first at that point was much more of sort of like a provocation,
0:04:35 hey, we can think differently about this and like rethink, the
0:04:40 typical like cloud model, et cetera.
0:04:42 And like it stirred up quite a bit of dust.
0:04:44 And I think this is what, what got people really interested about like
0:04:47 insiders who've been thinking about those lines for like many years.
0:04:51 Some even like, decades and have always built software this way.
0:04:55 And, then last year's conference I think has really shown a huge step to the year
0:05:01 before in terms of like how much further, how much mature the ecosystem has gotten.
0:05:07 But, I think it would be, like this year is different.
0:05:11 It's not just like, yes, the ecosystem has gotten a lot more mature and like
0:05:16 all of those technologies are more production ready, there's like more
0:05:24 AI's Impact on Local-First
0:05:24 AI is really shaking up everything.
0:05:27 I think putting software as a entire, like industry a little bit in a different
0:05:31 light now, and, I think this does not make local-first at all, less relevant.
0:05:37 I think this is, as for most things, a huge tailwind.
0:05:41 But given that, both of us have been really like, immersed in that new AI
0:05:46 space as well, now, I think we can come with a perspective where we can speak
0:05:51 as insiders from the local-first space, but also as insiders from the AI space.
0:05:56 And with that fresh perspective, I think we wanted to give this year's
0:06:00 Local-First Conf a new, code of paint.
0:06:03 this is where, you've been this year leading the effort around the CFP.
0:06:08 And yeah, so I'm excited to, talk through the different themes we're expecting
0:06:13 for the conference where we have a set of curated speakers already, but
0:06:18 we think, the best content is really brought up from the community, who is
0:06:23 building things in the local-first space.
0:06:25 And this is, like the people who are maybe listening to this podcast, or who
0:06:29 have attended, the last few conferences.
0:06:32 So yeah, this is, what I would love to talk to you about.
0:06:35 Yeah, well, maybe we can just start with that call to action really upfront, which
0:06:38 is we're broadening the umbrella for what kind of talks we want a lot this year.
0:06:42 And so if you do nothing else, you can just stop listening to the podcast.
0:06:45 Go read the CFP page.
0:06:47 If you think there's any chance of what you're working on, which has something
0:06:49 to do with empowering users or making, computers and software and the internet
0:06:55 freer and more capable for enhancing human life, then you should submit
0:07:00 a talk that's your CTA right there.
0:07:02 To drill, one level deeper.
0:07:04 you already mentioned the AI topic and obviously that feeds into this.
0:07:07 There's also the desire to continue to build and expand on the themes of this
0:07:11 community and respond to other things that are happening in the tech industry.
0:07:15 On the AI side, obviously, where I believe, you know, creation of software
0:07:19 is changing fundamentally with AI assisted coding, and I think people in our
0:07:22 community have a very wide mix of views.
0:07:25 There's people who come from a. very skeptical point of view, I probably
0:07:28 lean more in that direction myself, especially up until recently, there's
0:07:32 some bubble, it's gonna burst soon, it's overhyped, it's, you know, whatever.
0:07:36 And on the other end, there's probably plenty of maximalist, people that,
0:07:39 you know, I think it's not even such a bold thing now to say that 2026 might
0:07:43 be the last year that humans do all that much direct coding in terms of
0:07:48 like writing out programming syntax.
0:07:50 and I suspect people listening fall in a wide range of, views there, and
0:07:54 we wanna make room for all of that.
0:07:56 But, you know, at the same time, we're acknowledging that this industry shift is
0:08:00 happening while also staying grounded in our values and what we're all here for.
0:08:05 For the record, October, 2025 was the last time I wrote a
0:08:08 single line of code by myself.
0:08:10 So, but I'm leaning into that, quite heavily.
0:08:14 But I think as you say that's a wide spectrum.
0:08:16 And nonetheless, I think that makes, even more clear that we need really
0:08:21 good principles for the software we're creating, and that we also want to use, I
0:08:26 think, software through AI, like through the terms like slop software, et cetera,
0:08:31 I think has made it even more, even more important to really care about like what
0:08:36 we're using, not just for the perspective of that "it's nice to use", but also for
0:08:41 the perspective of like, data ownership, privacy, security, all of those.
0:08:47 And I think local-first is still the guiding light for us.
0:08:52 It's kinda like the gold standard for what software should feel like, what
0:08:57 software should be architected around.
0:09:00 And I think this is where we hopefully get the best of both worlds, where we
0:09:04 can have the cake and eat it too in that regard that we can dream about
0:09:09 software that follows those principles.
0:09:12 But now it's a lot more feasible to build those and to build those,
0:09:17 not just for the sake of like building software for potentially
0:09:22 like a million target users, but for yourself, like personal scale software.
0:09:27 And this is where we had this amazing closing keynote from Maggie
0:09:32 Appleton at the first Local-First Conference about Homecooked software.
0:09:36 And I think in a way this year,
0:09:38 barefoot developers, I think was the term she, she used.
0:09:41 That's right.
0:09:42 And certainly what you could do with language model assisted coding
0:09:44 back then was, you know, much.
0:09:47 more limited than what you can do today.
0:09:49 But even then, she predicted that, which I think is a good, a good illustration
0:09:52 of the kinds of people that are in our community that, you know, were
0:09:55 values driven, but very forward facing.
0:09:57 She, she saw what was coming years before.
0:10:00 Exactly.
0:10:01 And like now, this year's conference is basically like, really like double
0:10:05 clicking on her entire vision here where like everyone can dream about
0:10:10 software and like now make it a reality.
0:10:13 And local-first doesn't just make it, more secure and private, but like overall
0:10:18 also like solves a whole bunch of other problems that is still hard with software.
0:10:23 So I'm really excited how like those two or the, how the conference
0:10:27 can be a place where those two different worlds can come together.
0:10:31 All of like the relentless, accelerated AI community, who wants to, build things
0:10:37 really quickly, but also the people who like really care about software
0:10:41 quality and like those principles.
0:10:43 And this is something where I think it can be, a really nice meeting space for folks.
0:10:48 So, Adam, how about you wanna give us a broad overview of the different
0:10:57 User Empowerment as a Central Theme
0:10:57 Yeah, sure.
0:10:58 So the overall theme for the conference this year is user empowerment.
0:11:01 that comes from, actually a panel we had last year.
0:11:04 I host a panel and one of the, panelists was Martin Kleppmann, who
0:11:07 this year is a keynote speaker for us.
0:11:09 Obviously he's really one of the, founding fathers of, local-first.
0:11:13 But the way he described it was, we were talking here a little bit about the kind
0:11:17 of the specific implementation details of sync engines and CRDTs versus the
0:11:22 broader set of values and principles.
0:11:24 And I think he put it really well in saying.
0:11:26 It's all about user empowerment.
0:11:27 If something gives users more empowerment, more control, more capabilities, more
0:11:33 options, more freedom, then that to him falls under the umbrella of local-first.
0:11:38 And if it's something that sort of takes agency away, which there are times
0:11:41 where that makes sense, especially in consumer software or whatever, that
0:11:45 people want less control over how they're using their computers, that's fine.
0:11:49 But that, leaves it outside the realm of local-first.
0:11:51 So we're borrowing that idea and expanding on it.
0:11:54 User empowerment, greater agency, obviously a lot of that tends
0:11:58 to flow through data ownership.
0:12:00 'cause the data ultimately when you're creating documents on a
0:12:03 computer, the data and feeling like it belongs to you is, tends to be
0:12:07 core to that feeling of empowerment.
0:12:09 So with that overall theme, took together with our, collaborator, Eileen Wagner,
0:12:13 also a long time member of the community who is, helping us here with the CFP.
0:12:19 But she basically sorted us into three categories here.
0:12:21 We've got new territories, which of course includes plenty of AI stuff.
0:12:25 We've got local-first maturity, which is trying to see, you
0:12:29 know, now we're pretty far along.
0:12:30 There's a lot of great sync engine vendors.
0:12:32 There's some real world success stories, but there's also
0:12:35 interesting new challenges to face user experience challenges, legal
0:12:39 challenges, or legal frameworks.
0:12:41 And then where we're really trying to expand here is the larger ecosystem.
0:12:45 And there's a lot of exciting stuff happening in, whether it's in something
0:12:49 like the area of game developments, but also something like social media.
0:12:53 I think, you know, with ATproto and to a lesser extent sort of the masked
0:12:57 on ActivityPub world of things is having their own moment and kind
0:13:00 of causing people to ask questions about data ownership and freedom and
0:13:05 decentralization in this realm that traditionally has been a very kind of
0:13:09 centralized, closed, big tech, you know, inscrutable algorithm world of things.
0:13:15 And to what extent are data ownership and local-first values applicable there.
0:13:19 So those three frames, the kind of new territories, the maturity of local-first
0:13:24 and the larger ecosystem are where we have kind of a few subtopics for each
0:13:28 one, and we're trying to hope, hoping to get a good coverage on, CFP submissions.
0:13:33 Awesome.
0:13:33 Thanks so much for providing this great overview.
0:13:36 I would actually love to double click on each of those and dig a
0:13:41 little bit more in, since I think each topic has, so much potential.
0:13:46 And I think we could, like, if we'd had a lot more time and space for the
0:13:49 conference, we could almost like make each of those their explicit like theme day.
0:13:54 And so now we only have, well, those two days for the conference.
0:13:59 for the talks in one extra day.
0:14:01 So we need to curate and pick.
0:14:03 But I think this gives us like a really nice broad buffet of like different,
0:14:08 topics and talks to choose from.
0:14:10 And ideally, those, themes speak to people who want to submit a talk.
0:14:16 So yeah, let's go through them.
0:14:18 So maybe starting with the, local-first maturity, maybe that is, where we, can
0:14:23 reconnect the most from where we've left off the first two years of the conference
0:14:29 and also Sync Conf and, I think this is like local-first maturity is really like
0:14:34 that that is the essence of what last year's conferences, were about, where we
0:14:43 Local-First Maturity and Success Stories
0:14:43 The UX challenges of local-first.
0:14:45 This is, you've mentioned Eileen before.
0:14:47 She's given an amazing talk about that last year legal framework.
0:14:51 Maybe a little bit more top of mind this year around, let's start with
0:14:56 those like local-first success stories.
0:14:58 Anything that comes to mind for you in particular.
0:15:01 Well, for sure the success stories should be, there's obviously people building
0:15:05 libraries, you know, the sync engine vendors who are well funded and have a
0:15:08 lot of customers and that sort of thing.
0:15:09 But what I really wanna hear about is the end user applications.
0:15:13 You mentioned Linear, Linear CTO Tuomas has been kind enough to give us
0:15:17 excellent talks the last two years but I also think of on a smaller scale,
0:15:21 there's something like, we had a talk last year that was about someone
0:15:24 building a forestry application.
0:15:26 So this is where someone walking around with a phone that needs to basically
0:15:30 tag each tree in the forest with what's going on with it, whether it has a bug
0:15:34 infestation, whether it needs whatever else and it's a pretty simple thing.
0:15:38 And you know, I like that talk a lot because also they basically said,
0:15:42 look, our data modeling is very simple.
0:15:45 They built their own sync that needs to, of course, not only work
0:15:48 offline, but for a big chunk of time.
0:15:50 But it's a pretty simple queue.
0:15:51 And unlike full text editing, that is a rich text editing that's very
0:15:55 complicated you actually can accomplish all the goals of local-first with not a
0:16:01 huge amount of engineering for some of these simpler, use cases and domains.
0:16:05 So I think there's plenty of people in the community that have their
0:16:07 hobby projects or whatever that they use together with their friends.
0:16:12 But what I like to see we're far enough along now is what is at scale.
0:16:16 I wanna see a Linear and Obsidian or some of these smaller scale things
0:16:20 like the forestry app that have been doing this for a long time.
0:16:23 You have real world data and you can talk about the challenges of debugging.
0:16:26 You can talk about the challenges of accumulating data history.
0:16:29 You can talk about what are the ugly and difficult parts of this
0:16:33 that we're grappling with from using this frontier technology.
0:16:37 Yeah, definitely.
0:16:38 And I think there's, just thinking through like the software and new
0:16:41 software that I've been using over the last like year or so, I've been
0:16:45 using like Rayon for example, quite a bit, which is like a Figma like,
0:16:50 software, but for more like architecture use cases as I'm like remodeling
0:16:55 the house I grew up in and that's been like really nice to get sort of the
0:17:00 benefits that I'm like spoiled with of like using production software
0:17:05 like Figma now for more use cases.
0:17:07 And I think that's just like one example for like, that seeping into more and
0:17:11 more parts of the software we're using.
0:17:14 And I think that will just, continue and like, particularly
0:17:18 now where, AI is another driver of like personalized software.
0:17:24 I think it's just like very clear that we want those benefits of
0:17:28 like collaboration, that things should work offline, et cetera.
0:17:32 Like if anything, those problems are now even more pressing, where when
0:17:37 we have software that is like meant for individuals, and to have like
0:17:41 that software, be shared, across like family members or, friends.
0:17:46 This is where you don't like, you, probably don't build it out as like
0:17:50 a SaaS architecture from the get go, but you're building this like
0:17:54 in a different way to begin with.
0:17:56 SQLite certainties having a bit of a moment again as well.
0:17:59 So I think we're gonna see a lot more of that.
0:18:02 Files are, are, are are the hot new thing again.
0:18:06 Unix
0:18:06 tools.
0:18:06 Yeah.
0:18:07 Honestly.
0:18:08 Honestly, files could have almost been like another category, in itself.
0:18:12 Like it should really also, and not to sound like a broken record,
0:18:16 but like, yeah, with the AI hat on, files and folders are like the best
0:18:22 foundation for agents to do good work.
0:18:25 And it has, intentionally or not really, like, become, again, a main way of like
0:18:31 how data collaboration works, et cetera.
0:18:34 And so, yeah, I think there's a lot to be explored there.
0:18:37 A lot of creative people doing weird, interesting things.
0:18:41 So if you're, if you're like that, please submit a talk and, yeah, I
0:18:46 think there's like whatever, you've been working on in regards to like
0:18:50 traditional local-first in the sense of like the previous conferences, we would
0:18:54 love to hear from you, but also around the UX challenges, of, local-first.
0:19:00 I think we're still just scratching the surface of like trying to
0:19:04 understand that, trying to like deal with the implications of that.
0:19:09 I think we're allowing ourselves to dream a little bit bigger or a little
0:19:13 bit more nichey with software now.
0:19:16 And now that might require like new user experience paradigms and like,
0:19:22 particularly also when it comes to extending collaboration just beyond
0:19:27 people, but also like collaborating with like other agents, is another
0:19:33 aspect that I think squarely fits into the realm of local-first as it's
0:19:38 another like kind of trust boundary.
0:19:40 You wanna understand what has happened.
0:19:43 Do you want to collaborate?
0:19:44 Do you wanna like detach, be by yourself?
0:19:47 Do you want to like revoke authentication, authorization, et cetera.
0:19:52 Maybe real time collaborate.
0:19:54 I think there's a lot here, whether you want to look at us for the AI lens or
0:19:59 not, but I think that area is like super underexplored and if you've been exploring
0:20:03 that, we'd love to hear from you.
0:20:06 Yeah.
0:20:06 The UX challenges for me as part of the.
0:20:09 I don't wanna say quite say fun part, but sort of it is because it's a chance
0:20:13 to rethink those computing primitives.
0:20:15 Right?
0:20:16 And the files example is a good one to me, where files and the Unix
0:20:19 methodology and everything as a tool and pipes and redirects was really kind
0:20:25 of a first love for me in many ways.
0:20:27 In computing, especially creative com, you know, computing that's
0:20:30 designed for creating things.
0:20:32 And then, you know, mobile basically abstracted files away.
0:20:36 And that's kind of a win for most of the consumer use cases.
0:20:39 but actually is kind of disempowering for creative work that you wanna do.
0:20:43 And now again, the files are, somehow having a moment again.
0:20:46 But now we live in this world of things like real-time collaboration, version
0:20:50 control pull requests, yeah, live collaboration, async collaboration, and
0:20:54 thinking about how all those people pieces fit together or how you can use those
0:20:58 building blocks for the particular piece of software you happen to be building.
0:21:01 That is very interesting to me.
0:21:04 Legal Frameworks and Data Ownership
0:21:04 So another one is legal frameworks.
0:21:07 So we are working with, like, we're building those systems, maybe just
0:21:11 for us, maybe for others, but, like we're not building this in a vacuum.
0:21:15 Sure, I can build some software that might just run like locally
0:21:19 on my, phone or on my computer.
0:21:22 Or like on like a little shared server in my home.
0:21:25 But in that regard, no one cares.
0:21:28 But like once I put it a little bit more out there for the world to see and to use,
0:21:33 or possibly that it's like still meant to be used for a smaller group, but it's
0:21:37 still accessible for others, possibly.
0:21:40 So you need to think about the implications.
0:21:42 You need to possibly lock it down.
0:21:43 You need to constrain it, you need to set expectations.
0:21:47 And one like way of setting expectations or being constrained is through like
0:21:53 our legal system, whatever legislation we're falling into, like Germany, where
0:21:58 we're doing this conference in like.
0:22:00 Very particular set of legal constraints, also like European constraints, et cetera.
0:22:06 But we're not building this in a vacuum.
0:22:08 We need to like fit into the constraints, realities of the real world.
0:22:13 One big question is like, where does data live?
0:22:16 But also of like, other questions?
0:22:18 Well, like what sort of rights do I as a user of software have?
0:22:22 Like, GDPR is certainly something that really changed, the ecosystem
0:22:27 quite a bit for better or for worse?
0:22:30 I think actually one, funny aspect of GDPR, like maybe one intended or
0:22:35 unintended consequence that I'm quite excited about is that GDPR has had a
0:22:40 massive impact on data compatibility.
0:22:43 Where you can now go to like pretty much every service and
0:22:47 through the right to be forgotten.
0:22:49 Like you can still export your data, but that exported data now actually
0:22:53 gives you all the data for that service.
0:22:56 So you can now like go to LinkedIn.
0:22:57 It's like, hey, like give me all my data or like, go to x.com, give me all
0:23:02 my data, and like now you can export that and like build tools with it.
0:23:08 So I think that's like one interesting ways of like how a legal framework
0:23:12 has unlocked data compatibility, even though that like, and not in
0:23:17 a very rigorous way, but at least something better than nothing.
0:23:20 And so that just like as one anecdote of like.
0:23:23 How something has changed and unlocked new opportunities.
0:23:27 And I think there will be a lot more like that.
0:23:30 Like good developments, bad developments.
0:23:33 Another real world analogy might be if you're going to Linear and you
0:23:37 create a team, you need to set like, Hey, where should the data be stored?
0:23:41 Do you want to have it stored in the US?
0:23:42 You don't wanna have it stored in EU.
0:23:44 Like, that's another way to like really model that.
0:23:47 And I think that's just like, scratching the surface of how
0:23:51 we need to bake those realities into the software we're building.
0:23:55 And, I think there, this is an area that that's really worthwhile thinking through
0:24:01 and be hopefully inspired by, new ideas.
0:24:06 Yeah.
0:24:06 I'm weirdly interested in the legal frameworks area and I hope we get
0:24:09 some good submissions on that.
0:24:11 I think it is natural for people in the tech world to dismiss or
0:24:15 downplay that aspect of things.
0:24:17 Especially maybe if you come from the Silicon Valley, American
0:24:21 Maverick laws just get in my way.
0:24:23 I'm gonna ignore them perspective.
0:24:25 but yeah, we're, we're both here in Europe.
0:24:27 I, two, two things that come to mind for me on that, that are
0:24:30 interesting and of this moment.
0:24:32 One is, yeah, you mentioned GDPR and much maligned in some ways.
0:24:37 You know, the cookie banner thing is an unfortunate consequence of
0:24:42 how that all played out, but it also has provided real front guidelines
0:24:46 for handling of person identifying information that I think genuinely has
0:24:51 made the internet a safer place, right?
0:24:54 It's full of threat and attacks and that's only getting worse
0:24:58 now that, that stuff can all be superpowered with language models.
0:25:01 But, you know, when I was working on an AI powered browser called Dia
0:25:05 last year, it was actually genuinely helpful to us to basically go and ask
0:25:10 the question, what is GDPR recommended?
0:25:12 And it basically comes down to, okay, we wanna be able to train on user data
0:25:17 that's incredibly valuable to our users in the same way that, you know, Google's
0:25:21 magic results and auto complete works so well because they're training it on
0:25:25 what other people are searching for.
0:25:26 And that's how it can seem to kind of read your mind.
0:25:28 That's the same thing is true with, Cursor and the auto complete.
0:25:31 So there's huge value in training on user data, even though there's, you know, but,
0:25:35 but there's obviously some, things you need to be really cautious about there.
0:25:38 And GDPR gives actually really good guidance.
0:25:41 It basically says if you strip all information that can tie
0:25:45 it back to a particular user.
0:25:46 Certainly anything personally identifiable, like a name or an email,
0:25:49 but also you're decoupling it from the user ID at the moment of collection
0:25:53 and anonymizing there and you throw it away within 30 days, you're all good.
0:25:57 That's a very simple framework and actually we could do a lot with that.
0:26:00 We could really, go pretty far with training our own,
0:26:04 models with data in that frame.
0:26:06 And it was actually nice to have that, not just from a legal
0:26:08 perspective, but from just a best practices guidance perspective.
0:26:12 so GDPR has been a mixed bag in some ways, but has also I
0:26:16 think provided genuine value.
0:26:18 The other thing I would throw out that is also probably kind of
0:26:20 from the Europe perspective that's top of mind now is sovereignty.
0:26:24 Basically data sovereignty and software sovereignty.
0:26:27 And I think a lot of the European Union as a whole, but also individual countries
0:26:31 are thinking about how to decouple themselves a little bit from US providers.
0:26:35 And I think we can put aside, or we don't wanna make a political conference
0:26:39 or be too tied to whatever current event happens to be in the news at the moment.
0:26:43 But I think in general, this is a good perspective for nations to have
0:26:47 and it is just a scaled up version of local-first data ownership.
0:26:51 It is just a version of the same reason I say it's good for me to have control
0:26:55 over my data and have the ability to make choices about it, not only in
0:26:59 the short term, but in the long term.
0:27:00 Where do I back it up?
0:27:01 Can I delete it, can I duplicate it, et cetera.
0:27:04 There's a version of that for nations.
0:27:06 And I think that's a little bit what, Europe is grappling with right now.
0:27:09 And I think totally separate from anything happened in the current moment.
0:27:13 That's a good thing to think about.
0:27:15 That's a long-term thing that helps create greater agency and autonomy
0:27:19 and security for your nation, just as it does for an individual.
0:27:23 And I think there's also really like a window of opportunity, around that, where
0:27:27 like, whether, what do you wanna call, like, big players like Monopoly or not?
0:27:32 that aside, I think there are now real cases of precedent where I think certain
0:27:37 German states, for example, have made the switch away from Microsoft to like
0:27:42 some, open source software, et cetera.
0:27:44 And like, I think that sets a, like me as someone who has like, very good
0:27:50 feelings towards open source and wants to see open source software succeed,
0:27:54 I think there's new momentum here.
0:27:56 And I think local-first can really also through that perspective,
0:27:59 play a more mainstream role.
0:28:02 Since like you don't just, yes, you can have like your open source react
0:28:05 components, but that does make like fully functional software where you
0:28:09 can replace other software with it.
0:28:10 Yeah.
0:28:10 Like you need to think about data and if you're making that painful
0:28:14 switch from one software stack, that might even like include all the way
0:28:18 to the operating system, you probably like experience a lot of pain there.
0:28:23 And ideally, you now choose a foundation that gives you more
0:28:27 optionality in the future when you might want to do another switch.
0:28:31 And this is where things like, data compatibility, et cetera,
0:28:35 all like play into this.
0:28:37 And where ideally, like legal frameworks set a good foundation and like encourage
0:28:43 things like data compatibility, et cetera, but in a thoughtful way where it does
0:28:49 not, introduce so much overhead and like bureaucracy that it grinds down like the
0:28:55 velocity of like hurricane ship software.
0:28:57 And I think this is like the best of all worlds that
0:29:00 local-first wants to empower that.
0:29:03 Where if you build with like those local-first data layers.
0:29:06 The data layer takes care of that for you, and you can focus on the software.
0:29:11 So I think this is all like a very rich area, to talk about and I think that
0:29:15 what's makes it really interesting is to hear it through the lens of like one
0:29:20 particular story, whether it is like a company having made that switch, whether
0:29:26 you've built software and like you've made your software more compatible and
0:29:30 interoperable in some way, or, yeah, there's like all of those stories that
0:29:36 I've heard over the years and I think those deserve a broader, audience.
0:29:40 And so if you have something to share in that regard, please definitely take
0:29:44 the step and like, submit it to the CFP.
0:29:46 That's a great point.
0:29:47 It almost makes me wanna make data portability or something to that regard.
0:29:52 a top level topic.
0:29:53 But I think this comes back to the principle in local-first,
0:29:56 which we call the Long Now.
0:29:57 Which is, yeah, once you've been around for a while, you
0:30:00 can see the gray in my beard.
0:30:01 I've been working with computers for many decades now, and I've
0:30:05 seen many products come and go.
0:30:06 Software platforms come and go.
0:30:08 But being able to preserve that data for a variety of reasons.
0:30:11 'cause it's important for your company.
0:30:13 'cause it's important for you personally.
0:30:14 There's emotional meaning and saving your old family photos or the, master thesis
0:30:18 he wrote in university or whatever.
0:30:20 And then of course it is natural that especially the startup industry,
0:30:24 which skews young and people are building products and moving fast
0:30:26 and thinking about tomorrow and next quarter and not 10 years from now.
0:30:30 That's, that's fine.
0:30:31 and well and good, but maybe that is a role.
0:30:34 Governments can play a little bit, but it's also a role that, yeah, maybe our
0:30:37 community can play, which is encourage people to think a little bit about that
0:30:41 long term, both as users, what's going to make my data be a little safer, give me
0:30:46 that long term optionality, as you said.
0:30:48 but also product makers to think in terms of like, okay, may maybe
0:30:52 my product won't be hero, will have changed a lot in five or 10 years.
0:30:55 Am I empowering my users, to take their data and go to where they need
0:30:59 to go when the time comes for that?
0:31:01 And I think it's just like a wonderful way to think about the world a bit more, like
0:31:05 positive sum, where I think we've, like in some areas of software, we've already
0:31:10 figured us out, like in a pretty good way when we have like languages and like
0:31:14 ideally like typed languages, et cetera.
0:31:16 Like you have an API that you can compatible with and then
0:31:19 you can like reuse modules.
0:31:21 We even got that all the way to like UI, et cetera.
0:31:25 But for data, this is where we're struggling still the most.
0:31:27 And I think this is like one of the core themes around local-first where
0:31:32 there has been tremendous progress to, to make, progress in that regard.
0:31:36 And in that theme of like user agency, et cetera, personal software,
0:31:40 I think this will play an even bigger role, where we are gonna
0:31:44 have like more software than ever.
0:31:46 Whether it's like we've built this ourselves, whether it's agents
0:31:48 have built it, and then those things can, can talk to each other.
0:31:53 But I think it's also like changing in an interesting way where the
0:31:56 contract between that does not have to be like absolutely perfect anymore.
0:32:01 But like now AI can also like, shoulder a bit of that burden of like talking
0:32:07 to each other, where now we can like get away with having fuzzy software.
0:32:11 Where it has like CSV over here and like a JSON API over there, and the
0:32:16 agent can like very easily either ad hoc one-off, like convert something or
0:32:21 create a script that talks to each other.
0:32:23 So I think we're like, we're getting closer and closer having like some
0:32:28 bridges and ideally over time we'll get to like really having very reliable
0:32:33 bridges that just, in our minds when we hear a story like over there and
0:32:38 like we write it down over there, like we are a bridge and just works.
0:32:42 And ideally software can be like that in the future.
0:32:45 I like that a lot and I like that point that software is becoming
0:32:49 cheaper to make, so therefore it will be more ephemeral, more throwaway.
0:32:53 You'll be more likely to make something that's purpose-built for
0:32:56 a, a shorter period of time, whether it's an internal tool at a company
0:32:59 or a personal app or something.
0:33:01 Something like that.
0:33:02 And in the past we've really relied, or to date you could say we've
0:33:05 really relied on, my Gmail is still readable 20 years ago because Gmail
0:33:10 still exists and is well maintained.
0:33:12 but instead, maybe if we have a system that is more based on, well, I can
0:33:16 use an email tool that's a little bit bespoke and gets stops being relevant
0:33:21 or stops being maintained two years from now, and it's no big deal because
0:33:24 getting my email out or whatever data came from that tool and into the next
0:33:28 thing that I'm going to use is pretty straightforward to do from through some
0:33:32 combination of export data portability.
0:33:34 But also, as you said, that importing and ingesting data and making data
0:33:38 coherent with the help of AI is easier.
0:33:41 So I like that idea of a lot.
0:33:43 This, the software is kind of ephemeral and fits the need you have in the exact
0:33:47 moment, and then you can move on from it.
0:33:49 The data is something that has a longer lifespan.
0:33:52 It can move with you from, product to product.
0:33:56 Exactly.
0:33:57 Great.
0:33:57 So this was local-first maturity, and we've already teased a little
0:34:01 bit of like some adjacent topics, but the, the other, big pillars here,
0:34:05 as Elene put it, is like the new territories and the larger ecosystem.
0:34:10 So maybe if we spend a bit of time on the new territories where we have like,
0:34:14 designing for agency, then around like AI, local and open weight models, and
0:34:23 Designing for Agency
0:34:23 Maybe starting with the first one, design for agency.
0:34:26 What should people think about here?
0:34:27 Yeah.
0:34:28 For me, this would come to the topic of, I like computers as a tool for thought,
0:34:34 a way to augment, thinking, a way to make humans more creative, more capable,
0:34:39 able to accomplish our goals better.
0:34:41 I sometimes think, especially as consumer products have have come to
0:34:45 dominate, for example, just sort of usage and revenue in the computing world.
0:34:49 There ends up being this weird race to the bottom of, hey,
0:34:52 the computer will think for me.
0:34:54 that's what we like about AI.
0:34:55 Good.
0:34:55 I don't need to think anymore.
0:34:56 The computer can do it for me.
0:34:57 And that to me is a very sad perspective.
0:35:01 And rather I would think, wanna think that, AI or other capabilities
0:35:05 that we continue to develop as, we continue to explore the computing
0:35:08 space are things that help us do more and better the things we enjoy
0:35:14 doing, being creative and thinking.
0:35:16 and so I think the design for agency topic is the idea of, okay.
0:35:20 So if you're doing something with language models, with computer vision,
0:35:24 with agents, whatever it is, what can be part of your design, in the sense of how
0:35:30 your product works, that really engages and creates more agency and more deeper
0:35:36 understanding from your users, right?
0:35:38 The negative scenario or the people often quote is that Star Trek
0:35:41 next generation episode, right?
0:35:43 Where people have this, these omniscient computers that do everything and
0:35:46 then they lose all the capability to understand not only just how to
0:35:50 fix the machines, but just really how the world around them works.
0:35:53 And then when those computers start to fail, they're suddenly
0:35:55 like helpless children.
0:35:57 And I think for me, good computing tools of all sorts, and that includes everything
0:36:02 to do with AI and language models deepens our understanding of the world, deepens
0:36:06 our understanding of the technology by freeing us from some of the fussy details
0:36:10 of where exactly does the semicolon go, and allowing me to spend more time on the
0:36:15 mental models and the frameworks and the principles and how things fit together and
0:36:20 how we use those to accomplish our goals.
0:36:23 Yeah.
0:36:24 And I think this is, I mean, for, for me, AI has been like one of the biggest
0:36:29 unlocks to like just learn new things.
0:36:32 I've gotten into so many new areas, like I've gotten deeper on like
0:36:36 some hardware related things.
0:36:38 I've gotten deeper on understanding how wifi works,
0:36:41 like band channels, et et cetera.
0:36:43 Like gave me a deeper and a broader understanding of the world, like
0:36:48 I have been on an accelerated pace of, learning and understanding.
0:36:52 and I think that's like the positive sum, version of that or like the
0:36:56 flip side or the other, scenario, of an like the utopia maybe of that
0:37:02 Star Trek, anecdote you shared.
0:37:05 So, one other much more concrete topic that I think has been, a very
0:37:10 new one that's come, about over the last few years as, like off the
0:37:15 shelf models became available at all.
0:37:18 And now we also have like, open weight models and they're even small enough
0:37:23 that you can run them on your own device, whether it's on a very beefy, desktop
0:37:29 grade machine or whether it's like, scaled down models that might even work in the
0:37:34 browser, that might even work on like a phone or other much lower end devices.
0:37:40 I think that opens a whole new category of software and use cases, et cetera, whether
0:37:47 it is, like that you built a little system that relies on like detecting
0:37:52 certain shapes to do a certain thing.
0:37:54 Maybe you're building, like maybe you have chicken at home and you wanna like
0:37:58 automate a little gate that like, opens when a chicken walks through or whether
0:38:03 you have like some other use cases.
0:38:05 But this is you ideally wanna do that like reliably, locally, efficiently, et cetera.
0:38:10 And there's so many, like we can, we can just like dream so much bigger now
0:38:14 of like what we can build in a way that does not rely on like Anthropic currently
0:38:20 not having an outage and us like paying whatever, a lot of money each time.
0:38:25 We are like using a bit of like API quota and, I think this is
0:38:29 gonna be like right now, this is.
0:38:31 Probably similar to the early days of like computers being room
0:38:35 sized, and not very capable yet.
0:38:38 And I think that's just gonna, like at some point our little like devices like
0:38:42 this, will be able to do like really, really impressive, inference capabilities.
0:38:48 And I think this is like, now is the time to start thinking about
0:38:52 that and start already embracing that in all sorts of different
0:38:56 scenarios, form factors, et cetera.
0:38:59 So I think this area could be about like if you're building
0:39:02 infrastructure, building tool, like maybe you're the company behind some
0:39:06 of those open models and you wanna show people what's already possible.
0:39:10 I think that's really great.
0:39:12 if you are building applications, systems, et cetera, that already
0:39:16 use, open models, local models.
0:39:19 that is like a story we'd love to hear.
0:39:21 We had last year, Thomas from Google already share, some earlier versions
0:39:26 of like how you can run, Gemini Nano in Chrome and showed some really cool demos.
0:39:32 And all of this has come a really long way and, I think across all sorts of
0:39:37 different devices, platforms, et cetera.
0:39:40 So if you're doing cool things in that regard, please definitely apply to speak.
0:39:45 Yeah, I think so much attention is on the frontier models and the
0:39:49 sort of one giant chat bot that can do everything, multimodal models,
0:39:53 ChatGPT, and Claude and so forth.
0:39:55 And those are of course impressive and very useful and there's a lot to that.
0:40:00 But I really have, opened up to the value of things like
0:40:02 lightweight classifier models.
0:40:05 Yeah, embeddings, including, there's plenty of text embedding, models that
0:40:08 you can just run in a Python server with PyTorch that are great, really
0:40:12 almost as good as basically as good as what you can get in the big providers.
0:40:16 Things like computer vision and OCR have actually been good for a pretty long time.
0:40:20 I think in some ways, you know, maybe myself, I almost feel a little,
0:40:23 surprised, you know, something about the AI hype, you know, around chatbots
0:40:28 and large language models then caused me to take a closer look at a lot of
0:40:31 these other ML technologies that have been getting good for a long time.
0:40:35 A lot of the text embedding stuff and semantic search and things like
0:40:38 that have been, you know, really had their breakthroughs 10 years ago.
0:40:42 Computer vision has also been very good for a long time.
0:40:44 We know that because captures keep getting harder and harder.
0:40:47 And you can do a lot with these, in those very specialized cases, like what you
0:40:51 were describing with, yeah, whether it's a robot in your house or, something like
0:40:54 that, but also software where you can have the model run on each keystroke, right?
0:40:58 You can do all kinds of things.
0:41:00 They're very different versus needing to wait several seconds for
0:41:04 a heavy inference to come back from the big language model provider.
0:41:07 And just broadly, the story of computing is one of taking these
0:41:11 computing things that are originally are heavy and slow and as you said,
0:41:15 require a room size computer and making them smaller and cheaper and faster.
0:41:19 And that just opens up all kinds of new use cases.
0:41:22 And there's really great open models out there from Quinn
0:41:24 to Llama to many, many others.
0:41:26 And yeah, I think if you're working either on open weight models, or open
0:41:30 models of any kind or the libraries behind it, like Transformer.js or
0:41:34 PyTorch or something like that, we'd love to hear a talk from you.
0:41:37 AI Assistance for Local First
0:41:37 Awesome.
0:41:38 So the next topic in the new territories, area is AI assistance for local-first.
0:41:45 This is, I guess more around like the application of those new materials
0:41:50 to those new building blocks we got.
0:41:52 And I think that can be really, like wide ranging, can be going in
0:41:56 all sorts of different directions.
0:41:58 Like, and I think the exciting part is actually the stuff that we can't
0:42:01 even, like, think about right now, but that maybe some of you are,
0:42:05 actively exploring and have built like surprising things on top of this.
0:42:10 But just some things that came, to mind for me as I've been like,
0:42:14 experimenting myself or thinking this through, like just to, generate ideas.
0:42:19 How can AI address like some of those open problems in the local-first
0:42:24 space or like some challenges that are so like kind of hard to crack
0:42:29 and if we're allowing ourselves.
0:42:31 To go beyond the realm of like deterministic, traditional software.
0:42:36 And like, we're using those fuzzy materials a bit more.
0:42:39 And like we're thinking of like, hey, if we're actually, embedding
0:42:42 them into our local software stack, what becomes possible through this?
0:42:47 So like, just one way, for example is let's say you're building a power tool and
0:42:52 like you have a very, very sophisticated set of like system settings, et cetera.
0:42:57 Like for me, for example, the Apple system settings come to mind and
0:43:01 they're really like, I don't think they're the pinnacle of modern software.
0:43:05 And, I always need to use search.
0:43:07 And like five different things come up and then it's like the 15th one
0:43:11 that I was actually looking for.
0:43:13 And like, it's just like very painful.
0:43:16 Now where we are so spoiled by like using things like ChatGPT et cetera,
0:43:22 like it really feels like worlds a part of like how good something could be.
0:43:27 So why not use something like a, ChatGPT chat interface to interact with your
0:43:34 own app that like, you can, instead of have to click the clock settings,
0:43:39 like why not allow your entire app to begin configurable through AI models.
0:43:45 And so to make that actually happen now you need to bring in like that
0:43:49 fuzzy LM piece into your software.
0:43:52 But like exploring that, like figuring out best practices, figuring out
0:43:56 like how can you actually, constrain that, that you don't, give the, users
0:44:01 so much, power that they can like accidentally tear apart the app and
0:44:06 it's no longer functional, et cetera.
0:44:08 I think there's a lot to be explored there.
0:44:11 So just as one area.
0:44:13 Another one is to give even more power to the user or build systems in a way
0:44:18 that wasn't really feasible before.
0:44:20 We talked about the data interoperability before data exports, et cetera.
0:44:25 Now we can actually build like fuzzy bridges between different
0:44:29 software that were never meant to be talking to each other.
0:44:32 Whether it's like in real time or whether it's just like making
0:44:36 sort of, export interfaces a little bit more ergonomic to use.
0:44:41 And now you could imagine whatever, like using your, local supermarket
0:44:46 that might have like a certain, online shopping, like not even API,
0:44:51 but just like a maybe connecting that with your own home build to-do app.
0:44:57 And, there is not really like the end all be all integration API, yet
0:45:02 you can make those things happen now.
0:45:03 So this is just like one of many, many ideas where hopefully you all have
0:45:08 been exploring some interesting use cases that we'd love to hear about.
0:45:16 AI Assistance for Local-First
0:45:16 Yeah, using these new technologies to make the world more local-first,
0:45:21 especially maybe parts that have been resistant to that.
0:45:23 I think breaking down data silos is one of the biggest ones that's been such a long
0:45:27 running topic at you could switch with projects like Cambria, but almost always
0:45:31 it involves kind of a convince everyone to build their software on a completely
0:45:36 different stack, which sort of Yeah.
0:45:40 Is very much an uphill battle.
0:45:41 Right.
0:45:42 And as you point out, there's a great agency in our personal lives.
0:45:45 I've experienced this already with, yeah, being able to pull out, I don't know.
0:45:49 You know, there's some website that has a list of things and I want
0:45:52 to put that into a spreadsheet, but it doesn't offer a CSV export.
0:45:56 Okay.
0:45:56 I basically could do that with a screenshot or a PDF and let the language
0:45:59 model do the hard work of, you know, turning it into something coherent.
0:46:04 Similar idea there is just downloading.
0:46:06 I like to download my transactions from my bank account on a quarterly basis, so I
0:46:10 have a record of that that's separate from whatever clunky interface the bank has.
0:46:15 But inevitably, if you have a couple of accounts and then they're all in slightly
0:46:19 different formats and trying to like bring them all together into any kind
0:46:22 of unified ledger is nearly impossible.
0:46:24 It's just not worth the bother for an individual or whatever.
0:46:28 But actually now with language model, it's pretty easy to do an ad hoc thing where I
0:46:32 can go do the download effort myself once a quarter, but then pull that all into a
0:46:36 spreadsheet with a normalized data set.
0:46:39 That feels very empowering for me.
0:46:40 It's like, okay, now I have all my transactions in a place that I control
0:46:44 in a format that I want that isn't dependent on, you know, my bank letting
0:46:48 me, you know, I go to login to download something and it tells me, oh, sorry,
0:46:52 we only support transactions, you know, back six months or whatever thing, right?
0:46:57 Very disempowering user experience that instead it's something that data
0:47:02 that feels like it belongs to me, my banking and transaction data, and I
0:47:06 have it in a place and a format that I can control for the long term.
0:47:10 Exactly.
0:47:11 it's just so cool to see like how far people take, like how much they embrace
0:47:16 the new forms of like, agencies that they, I guess they, they've been always like
0:47:20 longing for, but now, like it becomes feasible to, like really go for it.
0:47:25 And I think it's so, also so liberating that you can build software for
0:47:29 yourself unburdened by like making it enterprise grade, et cetera.
0:47:34 And so you can like, you know, I need to hold it this way and it's
0:47:38 gonna work, otherwise it falls apart.
0:47:39 But that's fine.
0:47:40 And I think that's like the, beauty of like building tools for yourself
0:47:45 and like local-first gives us the glue that they actually can bear like
0:47:49 real weight and like work together.
0:47:52 So that is the new territories, which I think is very related to the larger
0:47:58 ecosystem where we have, a set of like other, very interesting topics.
0:48:02 So like some of them we've teased before, but just to run through like on a high
0:48:06 level and then we can go into them like again, we have like self-sovereign
0:48:10 identity, we have social media and data ownership, encrypted messaging,
0:48:15 game development with local-first and malleable software in the age of LLMs.
0:48:19 So maybe starting with the self-sovereign identity, what
0:48:23 should people think about here?
0:48:25 Which sort of stories might we be interested in having at the conference?
0:48:30 Yeah.
0:48:31 Well in general, this category of the larger ecosystem is one I'm excited
0:48:34 about because I think there are so many adjacent communities that are
0:48:37 interested in, yeah, for example, things like freedom, you know, the open source
0:48:41 community, obviously the Linux world.
0:48:44 The Open Web and open standards, as well as things like the end-to-end encryption,
0:48:48 kind of privacy, nerds out there.
0:48:51 You know, there's, that's not exactly what local-first is
0:48:53 about, but it's very adjacent.
0:48:55 There's a lot of shared technologies and things, and this is an invitation
0:48:58 for folks in those communities.
0:48:59 And I'm even sending out some emails and so forth to folks to try to invite them in
0:49:04 to say, look, let's see where we overlap.
0:49:06 Let's, find the edges there.
0:49:08 yeah.
0:49:09 The identity topic though, this is a big one for me.
0:49:11 It's something I've been fussing about my whole career.
0:49:14 I have whole, article about it in my making computers better
0:49:17 essay, from a few years ago.
0:49:19 But it basically boils down to, I think the way we identify ourselves to
0:49:22 computers is kind of an embarrassment, usernames and passwords, identity theft.
0:49:27 Now you've got, I don't know, magic login links and login with Google
0:49:30 passkeys and whatever, and it's just endlessly confusing for most
0:49:35 users and even for power users.
0:49:38 Yeah, the amount of time in my day, I end up spite typing in two factor
0:49:41 codes and digging magic links out of emails and just trying to convince
0:49:44 the computer that I am who I say I am.
0:49:47 And I know why it's that way.
0:49:48 Of course, as a professional that's worked in this field and particularly
0:49:51 in the security, space, on and off, over the course of my career.
0:49:54 But it really is a shame to me.
0:49:57 And then in the meantime, you have this more and more control and
0:50:00 more and more ownership over our identities that go to the companies.
0:50:04 And basically it's been a kind of a good deal to say like, look, I'll
0:50:07 just let Google manage my identity and then I can click the login with Google
0:50:10 button everywhere, because it is such a hard problem and I can just kind
0:50:14 of outsource that to them, sort of.
0:50:17 But there, it's kind of like a little bit of a deal with the devil there
0:50:19 comes with a lot of trade offs.
0:50:21 and local-first is a chance to, rethink that, reinvent that.
0:50:25 and of course there are also a lot of adjacent communities.
0:50:27 Things like Open ID for example.
0:50:29 We'll talk a little bit more about, app proto and ActivityPub in a moment.
0:50:33 But they have their own concepts of identity and how you give people ownership
0:50:36 over your online handle, in a way that's sort of secure and safe, but doesn't
0:50:40 put the user in the position of needing to manage a bunch of cryptography keys,
0:50:44 which they're inevitably going to lose.
0:50:46 so I think anyone working on anything in this space, whether it feels
0:50:50 local-firsty or not, if you're working with passkeys, if you're working
0:50:52 with, any kind of identity system, yeah, we'd love to hear from you.
0:50:56 Yeah, I think this is a highly.
0:50:59 unsolved area.
0:51:00 I wouldn't say under explored.
0:51:02 I think, people are really exploring it.
0:51:04 It's a hard problem in really interesting ways.
0:51:06 It is a hard problem and I think we've, we've also come a long way already.
0:51:11 Like for example, like if you're depending on, which pact with the
0:51:14 devil you've made, you can already have a slightly more convenient life.
0:51:18 So me being, in pact with the Apple ecosystem, I am very thankful for things
0:51:24 like Touch Id, et cetera, that are then like nicely working together with things
0:51:29 like 1Password, Passkeys, et cetera.
0:51:31 and like being able to understand how those things work and like thinking
0:51:36 through the implications, et cetera.
0:51:38 Like let's me be for, for this point in time, in a relative sweet
0:51:41 spot between, like living a secure life, but also having convenience.
0:51:46 But there's still like great levels of like lock in, et cetera.
0:51:50 And I think this is also like all of that aside, like we're now also,
0:51:55 having this like phase shift in regards to software where we are no
0:51:58 longer the only ones who are doing things on our behalf, with computers.
0:52:03 Like if we're, now whatever, like maybe ordering, like some food or
0:52:08 we're doing some other things, maybe we're, like scheduling something on,
0:52:13 the calendar or whatever it might be.
0:52:16 It's no longer just us, but there's like another thing that needs
0:52:20 identity and even more fine grains.
0:52:22 And I think one aspect here as well is like if you're going from beyond
0:52:26 authentication to authorization, so far we have like, all off scopes, et cetera,
0:52:32 but like it's very all or nothing.
0:52:34 And it's all like, okay, you, now get access forever.
0:52:38 But maybe for like those agentic use cases, you might want to think about it
0:52:43 like, okay, you get to do this like one time, or you get to do this like for five
0:52:48 minutes, or you get to do this like only for this email address or for this scope.
0:52:52 So I think we want to make this like much more fine-grained, but in a way
0:52:57 where you like, it's, it's frankly like going through like the permission
0:53:02 granting on like a Google OAuth flow is already overwhelming for most people.
0:53:07 And now making this even more fine granular
0:53:09 Yeah,
0:53:09 I think is like really
0:53:11 tough challenge.
0:53:11 Thinking of a
0:53:11 giant
0:53:12 array of check
0:53:12 check
0:53:12 boxes on the GitHub, token generation and there's a reason for it.
0:53:16 But then yes, again, that trade off of, convenience and security is ever present.
0:53:22 I think it's that intersection of like user experience
0:53:26 design and also cryptography.
0:53:28 Like how do you make it actually secure?
0:53:30 and I think that to, come together in the best of both worlds.
0:53:35 I think that is like a area that's like highly deserving of like
0:53:39 more resources, more investment, more smart people working on it.
0:53:43 So if you're working on that, we'd love to hear from you.
0:53:46 ideally where you cover quite a bit of that intersection.
0:53:50 I think this is probably not the best, conference to share
0:53:53 like your new breakthrough of like some cryptographic nuance.
0:53:57 But I think where we can like bring those two things together where you can also
0:54:01 with the focus of like, or one aspect can be the solve sovereign, aspect.
0:54:06 I think it doesn't have to be a prerequisite, but I think if
0:54:09 something points in that direction.
0:54:12 And also I think another, tricky part here is like that we need to kind of
0:54:18 create a bridge from like today, where people are like, defacto using things
0:54:24 like login with Google, et cetera, because it strikes A, acceptable balance
0:54:29 of like convenience and security.
0:54:31 And if there's like a much to esoteric, version out there that doesn't have a
0:54:36 credible path to becoming mainstream, I think that also is something that
0:54:40 needs to be taken into consideration.
0:54:42 So this is a very nuanced topic and I think as one of
0:54:46 the harder nuts to crack here.
0:54:48 but if you're working on that, we'd love to hear from you.
0:54:51 And I think with that it is like a natural transition to, things like
0:54:56 BlueSky ATproto where we talk about, social media and data ownership.
0:55:01 So you've already mentioned initially.
0:55:04 That Martin Kleppmann is affiliated with the ATproto ecosystem, and I think that's
0:55:10 just like one example for a broader, set of design challenges and like goals
0:55:16 that I think is like nicely adjacent or partially overlapping with local-first.
0:55:24 Self-Sovereign Identity and Data Ownership
0:55:24 Yeah, for sure.
0:55:25 I think social media and data ownership is so interesting because social
0:55:28 media is the classic centralization and the classic opaque appliance
0:55:34 with a mysterious algorithm that you can't and don't know how it works.
0:55:38 And in general, I would say we could, obviously could, and indeed I have
0:55:44 in the past done whole podcasts on social media and the both the
0:55:47 positive and negatives that that has.
0:55:48 Impacts that has had on society and us as individuals, but narrowing in
0:55:53 a little more on this kind of, yeah, user empowerment around, and data
0:55:57 ownership in our computing lives.
0:56:00 It is the nature of the classics like an Instagram or a Facebook or even a
0:56:04 Twitter back in its heyday that, you know, it, it is a very centralized
0:56:07 closed, you have little ownership.
0:56:09 You can just participate in this stream of, content.
0:56:13 and now we have this new crop of, creations.
0:56:17 I think Mastodon and ActivityPub was, kind of early out the gate,
0:56:21 but now there's some really good energy around, BlueSky and ATproto.
0:56:24 Actually, I think even as right as we record this, the ATmosphere
0:56:27 Conferences is happening.
0:56:29 which yeah, just a lot of good energy in there and it's
0:56:33 a different set of problems.
0:56:34 I think the classic local-first app is something more like Linear
0:56:39 or Notion or Figma, which is a document editor, heavy creative work.
0:56:43 You're collaborating with a small team.
0:56:45 You really care a lot about the output of that data.
0:56:48 Social media where it's sort of global town square, little fragments of
0:56:51 data, everyone gets merged into a big stream is on the surface, a completely
0:56:56 different, both technical and kind of design or user experience, challenge.
0:57:01 But at the same time, when you look at what ActivityPub and ATproto have
0:57:04 been grappling with, including things like personal data servers and how
0:57:07 you have ownership over your identity, how you make your handle portable,
0:57:10 but still kind of globally unique and especially verifiable, trustable, right?
0:57:14 not easy to impersonate that you're the New York Times or a
0:57:17 politician or something like that.
0:57:19 So there's some really interesting technical and design work that has
0:57:22 been done in both of those communities.
0:57:24 I think we already have, some folks lined up to speak on some aspects of those.
0:57:28 But I think there's, that's such a rich area that if you're working on something
0:57:31 in this space with either one of those communities or otherwise in the kind
0:57:35 of broader, how do we make social media something more empowering for users,
0:57:40 yeah, we'd love to hear that, we'd love to see a, talk submission from you.
0:57:43 Yeah.
0:57:43 In particular also like using those protocols, those ideas to go beyond
0:57:49 social media where you can basically like to, draw that bridge to the
0:57:53 previous, like, identity question.
0:57:55 Like right now I think this is, we we're blind to it at this point, that
0:57:58 when there's new software, like, okay, of course I need to create an account.
0:58:03 And like, depending on, which sort of patterns you use, maybe
0:58:07 you automatically like, look for that sign in with Google button.
0:58:11 Or if it's a developer oriented thing, like sign in with, GitHub, I'm more in
0:58:15 the camp of like, where I always try to like just, create a standalone account
0:58:19 just in case, something were to happen.
0:58:22 but does it have to be this way?
0:58:24 Are there other ways and like, and not just for.
0:58:29 social media use cases, but for something that spans a much, wider range of
0:58:34 scenarios, whether that is like something, I don't know, like maybe there's something
0:58:39 in between where it's something in between Figma, Linear and, and social
0:58:44 media, whether it's like a, smaller scale community that you are part of where
0:58:49 you do some very interesting things.
0:58:51 Maybe a community for a school that you volunteer in, or you have a much
0:58:57 richer set of different, kinds of media you deal with, whether it's documents,
0:59:02 whether it's chats, whether it's like some, posts, some forum like things.
0:59:07 Then you also have like things like identity.
0:59:09 And I think this is just like an example for thinking about
0:59:12 this a little bit more broadly.
0:59:14 So if you're using, some of those technologies or exploring that.
0:59:19 And see how we can bridge those worlds.
0:59:21 we'd love to hear from you and, going from one, one, tricky technical,
0:59:26 nuanced topic to another one.
0:59:28 Another like evergreen in local-first and beyond is like
0:59:33 encryption and encrypted messaging.
0:59:36 So, I think highly related to the areas that we talked about before.
0:59:41 And I think is another, aspect of software.
0:59:44 I think for a lot of software, kinda like still an optional part because it's hard,
0:59:49 but ideally over time it becomes just like a no-brainer to have to have encryption,
0:59:54 for your, data, for your applications.
0:59:57 It is, I think also dependent on the kind of like app you're working with.
1:00:02 So for example, if you're working in the finance space or the
1:00:05 healthcare space, I think it's much more, table stakes already.
1:00:09 And then there are other areas where it's much less common.
1:00:13 but ideally this is a quality that does not, quadruple the effort it takes
1:00:18 to build the app, but it's some just something, a data library, for example,
1:00:23 like Automerge takes care of for you.
1:00:26 And so yeah, those are like some preliminary thoughts
1:00:29 on this topic from, my end.
1:00:31 But yeah, curious to hear yours, Adam.
1:00:33 I mean, end to end encryption is first of all just such a powerful technology.
1:00:39 You know, I think wars have been one with, it is one frame you could use yet remains
1:00:45 hard to put into practice in a way that is approachable for users because, you
1:00:49 might think of it, everything boils down to a key management problem, but managing
1:00:53 keys is really difficult and incredibly abstract, even for very power users.
1:00:58 And certainly for a more mainstream computer user.
1:01:02 Yet you see all these places where encryption, when it has been brought to
1:01:05 bear effectively in the computing world, it is a complete game changer, I think
1:01:08 of like SSH for connecting to servers versus Telnet, which came before it.
1:01:13 I think of HTTPS for website encryption has, I think, literally brought trillions
1:01:17 about dollars of value into the economy through enabling things like e-commerce
1:01:21 and online, stock brokerages and so on.
1:01:25 Something like password managers and how they can provide a secure, setup,
1:01:30 based on their, encryption arrangement.
1:01:32 And then more recently you've got, for example, encrypted messaging like Signal.
1:01:36 And I think when we find ways to bring those to bear in a way that
1:01:41 is approachable for end users, it can just unlock so much value.
1:01:45 But it remains the case that there are a lot of areas where we haven't really
1:01:49 effectively brought it to bear fully.
1:01:51 And yeah, if you're working on any of these, whether it's something
1:01:55 relatively well established like encrypted messaging or something a
1:01:58 little more, on the cutting edge.
1:01:59 Like last year we heard a, an amazing talk from Brooklyn Zelenka about
1:02:03 Keyhive, which is a kind of adding an identity encryption layer to Automerge.
1:02:08 This just remains an area that is very hard, but I think again, just has the
1:02:15 Game Development and Local-First
1:02:15 Awesome.
1:02:16 so another adjacent topic, a little bit more lighthearted, and yet probably one
1:02:21 of the most, OG adopters of local-first, and they've always built software
1:02:27 this way, which is game development.
1:02:30 I think most games, particularly in the era of like internet not
1:02:37 being as ubiquitous as it is today, have like, out of necessity.
1:02:42 They needed to be local-first.
1:02:44 So you can play single player campaigns or whatever, but also like
1:02:49 in that gold, era you had, a lot of games also having multiplayer modes.
1:02:54 And this is where you had like LAN parties, et cetera.
1:02:56 And like, software was just like built in a different way where like internet
1:03:01 a lot of games, even didn't like support it or like was one, feature
1:03:05 that was added a little bit later.
1:03:07 And it's just like a.
1:03:09 I think an interesting case study for how like a different parallel universe evolved
1:03:15 and like did very complex data management with a lot of like similar challenges
1:03:19 where you needed to have like, reactivity you needed to be like, very efficient.
1:03:23 You needed to like care about persistence.
1:03:27 so I think there's like a lot of parallel universe lessons learned
1:03:30 that maybe never really, fully percolated into the web ecosystem.
1:03:35 Probably sometimes for, the worst.
1:03:37 I think I always feel, I can learn a lot from the game ecosystem overall, as
1:03:44 a lot of like lessons have been already much, earlier been learned there.
1:03:48 And I think now it's like that, that is still true today.
1:03:52 And video games have always been like the, one of the most demanding use cases
1:03:57 and where like latency really matters, where like all of those things, matter.
1:04:02 And, I think it's just about time that we bridge the world from game
1:04:07 development to the local-first ecosystem.
1:04:10 So if you're, doing things in the game development space and you have
1:04:15 some interesting stories to share about how your game has always
1:04:19 been local-first, then, please definitely consider submitting a talk.
1:04:23 So that, that's kind of my, my perspective on it.
1:04:26 But I think you have even more nuanced takes on this, Adam.
1:04:29 Well, yeah.
1:04:30 I don't know about nuance, but it's definitely close to my heart.
1:04:32 I actually began my career in video games.
1:04:34 I probably like a lot of little kids, I basically got inspired to
1:04:38 learn to program, to make games.
1:04:40 And, began my career there.
1:04:41 I worked for four or five years in the game industry, including on
1:04:44 PlayStation 2 games and Dreamcast games.
1:04:46 And that was kind of the era then.
1:04:48 And it's an incredible world of technology that's very separate from the productivity
1:04:53 software, web operating system, thing where you're just drawing 60 frames or
1:04:58 120 frames per second on a blank canvas.
1:05:02 The APIs to the underlying system are just a very, very different thing
1:05:06 than perhaps what we're used to, in some ways easier to work with, in some
1:05:08 ways harder, but yeah, the performance and being able to use it wherever.
1:05:14 even certainly in the age before internet connection was ubiquitous,
1:05:17 but even nowadays, yeah, you expect if you have a game on your device, that
1:05:21 you should be able to play it on the plane and not be worried about whether
1:05:23 you have internet in that moment.
1:05:25 Even think something like, you know, even once you start to add some
1:05:27 internet connectivity, Hey, I wanna post my high score to a global thing,
1:05:31 but you don't expect the game will just stop working the moment that the
1:05:34 high score API is not available, so.
1:05:37 And then you have so much going on in the world of these different engines like
1:05:41 Unreal and Unity and Gadot engine slash game development tools and yeah, I just
1:05:47 feel like there's, maybe a lot these communities can learn from each other
1:05:51 and yeah, if you're someone in that, tough space, we'd like to hear from you.
1:05:54 Yeah, I think there are just so many amazing stories waiting to be heard in
1:05:59 the local-first ecosystem, whether it's someone who like struggled to scale
1:06:04 World of Warcraft, to like massively multiplayer scenarios where I mean,
1:06:09 it's already hard to build multiplayer.
1:06:12 like systems for 10 users, but now, like, think about this, like in the, tens of
1:06:17 thousands of users, in like, in much harsher, real time scenarios, et cetera.
1:06:22 So, or whether you're building like, more modern games that, they're currently
1:06:27 like scaling things even further.
1:06:29 so yeah, we'd love to hear from you.
1:06:31 if you think this is interesting for the local-first community and as the
1:06:35 last topic, in the list, we, we probably like the, kinda like the key topic that
1:06:41 is the, center for us this year is like malleable software in the age of LLMs or.
1:06:47 malleable software like at all.
1:06:49 But then also in the age of LLMs, that's new.
1:06:52 That was not really like the, we got like the early glimpses of that last
1:06:56 year, but at last year's conference, but I think it was still so early, I don't
1:07:00 think like Claude Code was released yet.
1:07:03 ChatGPT was out there, of course, but I think it was not yet at a
1:07:07 point where it like really clicked for everyone that this is real and
1:07:12 not just like a niche use case.
1:07:14 And I think now it's like, already so ubiquitously available that we can
1:07:19 make this a part of our application.
1:07:22 And I think there's like really one of the broadest topics here, almost like a
1:07:25 catchall for a lot of, different, talks that could fit into the conference.
1:07:30 the anchoring point here is like, uh, what we've talked about before with
1:07:34 like Maggie's, closing keynote from 2024 was it, with like barefoot developers.
1:07:42 And I think this can, cast a really wide net.
1:07:46 And, what are your thoughts on, this topic?
1:07:49 Yeah, we'll probably first just defining malleable software.
1:07:51 For those not familiar, this is the idea that software systems are ones
1:07:56 that could be modified by their users as we're using it or to adapt to our needs.
1:08:01 and of course, Ink & Switch has a, I dunno, 8,000 word essay up on the website
1:08:06 if you search for malleable software, that can dive into detail on that.
1:08:10 But, you know, how does language model assisted coding it seems to enable so
1:08:14 much the ability to create new software and especially for people who are on the,
1:08:18 not necessarily professional software developers, even if they're technical and
1:08:22 good at thinking about software systems.
1:08:24 But when you think of the classic, let's call it vibe coded app, it's
1:08:29 let me make a one-off website that I can post, but that's very different
1:08:32 from being able to modify the tools that I'm relying on in my daily life.
1:08:37 My text editor, my email client, my web browser, et cetera.
1:08:41 so I think on one hand, language model coding should, in theory,
1:08:45 really open up some major new possibilities for malleable software.
1:08:51 On the other hand, I think we have some of the same old problems we have always had
1:08:53 around data siloing around kind of closed ecosystems, closed appliance heavily.
1:09:00 You know, the control, the locus of control lies completely with the software
1:09:04 vendors and very little with the users.
1:09:07 and how has this world evolved or what new possibilities are opened by the
1:09:11 existence of language model assisted coding or other AI things or other things
1:09:16 that have changed in the technology world since we last convened in 2025?
1:09:21 Malleable Software in the Age of LLMs
1:09:21 Yeah, I think this is, I mean, this topic in itself has been sort of like a core
1:09:26 pillar for this year's conference, and I think we've like added quite a lot other
1:09:31 ones just because, it felt like the right moment to, to broaden the net a bit.
1:09:37 But I think here, like malleable software, this was, a theme that I
1:09:41 mean, is is one of the key tracks of, the Ink & Switch, family.
1:09:45 But I think now with AI models, et cetera, it's really something
1:09:50 that's becoming mainstream.
1:09:51 And where before I think it was like very something that developers
1:09:56 maybe had romantic thoughts about.
1:09:58 Like, oh yeah, this was like, also on my list of side projects I wanted to build.
1:10:03 And now you can actually build it for yourself.
1:10:06 Or maybe you built software for like someone in your family, or it's
1:10:10 just like a, almost as an act of kindness of like supporting someone
1:10:14 like this is through your abilities.
1:10:16 And now it becomes so easy.
1:10:19 I think now that will lead to so much, creation of, new software that will also
1:10:25 have like interesting new consequences.
1:10:28 whether it's that we need to wrestle with, the quality of the software,
1:10:31 or the interoperability of it.
1:10:33 And also like, yeah, how much control do we give to, users?
1:10:37 How much control, do we, like where do we draw the line between,
1:10:42 a developer building the software versus a user using the software?
1:10:47 Like a lot of power tools are very customizable.
1:10:50 But now I think that line gets more and more blurry.
1:10:53 We'd love to hear from people who have been wrestling with, those
1:10:57 blurry lines and trying out different ideas and sharing your learnings.
1:11:02 What sort of software you've been building as a barefoot developer.
1:11:05 Yeah.
1:11:06 I think this is, quite the portfolio of, different themes and
1:11:10 different topics that we're gonna have for, this year's conference.
1:11:15 That's right.
1:11:15 We maybe even run the risk of being too scattershot or too wide
1:11:19 ranging, but in some ways I'd rather.
1:11:21 take the risk of having too many ideas, too many interesting,
1:11:24 intellectual, avenues to pursue, then get stuck in a rut.
1:11:28 And now seems like a great time to do it with the changes happening, in the
1:11:32 technology world, but in general because of the foundation of success we've had
1:11:36 in the event to date and the community we've built around, that just seems
1:11:40 like the perfect time to, broaden and bring new people in and fresh ideas.
1:11:44 And like all of that is not to say that we ran out of ideas with like the,
1:11:49 traditional way how we did the Local-First Conference, the last two years before.
1:11:54 But I think what it's always been all about for me and for I'm sure for you as
1:11:58 well is like the people who actually come and like the conversations we're having.
1:12:03 And it is like no one in that ecosystem has been there only because they
1:12:08 only care about the data sync engine.
1:12:10 It's always been in service of like some broader vision and like some specific
1:12:16 use case that really like, had real impact and real meaning for their life.
1:12:22 And like I think all of those different themes we now talked
1:12:24 about is like one manifestation, one direction of that and local-first.
1:12:30 It's like the foundation of that.
1:12:31 It's kinda like what brings us all together.
1:12:34 And I think what all of those people who have attended and have contributed to
1:12:37 the conferences have, in common is that they have a very, deep understanding of
1:12:42 the, technical world and of the world more broadly, but, also a broad interest
1:12:47 and, are always keen to be inspired to think a little bit different about,
1:12:53 like be beyond their current horizon.
1:12:56 And I think this is, what we, try to, also, facilitate through the conference
1:13:01 where those, different talks are hopefully little points of inspiration that can
1:13:06 lead to further exploration by everyone who's attending and paying interest.
1:13:11 Well said.
1:13:13 Well, I think we hammered in the, you know, submit a talk call to action.
1:13:16 we'll say it one more time.
1:13:17 The CFPs open till I think, end of April.
1:13:20 So you have a little bit of time, but not too much time.
1:13:23 But also if, even if you don't wanna give a talk, buy a ticket,
1:13:26 just come listen to all the ideas.
1:13:28 we got sponsorship booths available as well.
1:13:31 If, the folks at the, an event like this are interesting to, talk
1:13:35 to for your, for your company.
1:13:37 So we'd love to have you come participate in any of those three forms.
1:13:42 Outro
1:13:42 Awesome.
1:13:42 Well, Adam, thanks so much for talking this story together.
1:13:46 I feel like this is also already Yeah.
1:13:49 Given me so much excitement for, what we're gonna hear, at the conference
1:13:54 and like in a way where we still don't fully know which stories we'll hear,
1:13:58 but we'll know about the broad topics.
1:14:01 So that've got me very excited already and I can't wait for, the conference and
1:14:07 to meet a lot of familiar and new faces.
1:14:10 Same here.
1:14:11 I'm excited for the new themes.
1:14:12 I'm excited to see old friends, and I'm excited to enjoy beautiful,
1:14:16 beautiful Berlin in the summertime.
1:14:21 All righty.
1:14:21 Thanks so much.
1:14:22 Take care.
1:14:23 Bye.
1:14:23 Bye.