Matrix Conference 2025 Highlights

2 weeks ago 1

The Matrix Conference 2025 was a huge success; the energy and enthusiasm was just incredible!

We were delighted to be the anchor sponsor - thanks to The Matrix Foundation and everyone else that organised the conference, those who presented, the others sponsors and of course all those who attended!

The overriding vibe of the conference was one of incredible momentum - with so many governments presenting on their Matrix-based initiatives, there was a genuine realisation that Matrix is the future of government and inter-governmental communications.

The discussion between sessions, and in the evenings, had a consistent theme. Governments want communications that are:

1. Digitally sovereign - meaning end-user organisations have complete autonomy over their technology stack. Crucially, that means no vendor lock-in. That so many competing vendors sponsored and attended The Matrix Conference underlines the health of the Matrix ecosystem.

2. Interoperable - to both enable digital sovereignty and ensure that separate organisations can easily communicate with each other. The interoperability delivered by the Matrix open standard is absolutely crucial in enabling large-scale federated communications between multiple organisations.

3. Resilient - a decentralised communications network provides a far more robust communications architecture than a centralised network, which is paramount for government communications (as we write this blog post, Signal, Slack, Zoom and others are down due to their centralised design and a dependency on AWS).

4. Secure - end-to-end encryption is, of course, fundamental and viewed as ‘table stakes.’

An open standard based on open source software, Matrix delivers the digital sovereignty, interoperability, resilience and security that governments need to transform the way they communicate; both within their own nation and across borders. These are the key benefits driving Matrix adoption.

The Matrix Conference on-demand

All the presentations given at The Matrix Conference are available here. Each and every presentation is well worth watching.

The Matrix State of the Union

Matthew Hodgson gives an excellent overview of the entire Matrix universe.

For those interested in government and public sector adoption of Matrix, don’t miss Amandine Le Pape’s How Matrix is becoming the communication standard for the public sector.

Element's keynote

Neil Johnson’s talk includes a power-packed review of Element’s work over the last 12 months (and some sneak previews).

In particular, look out for

ESS Community

being installed in under a minute - and then, when the time is right, it being a seamless live-upgrade to

ESS Pro

! The idea here is that ESS Community can be used, free of charge, for casual use (up to about 100 users) and also act as a way for organisations to run small scale evaluations. Those evaluations can then be easily upgraded to ESS Pro for increased scalability, performance, enterprise features and SLA-backed support.

Element product presentations

ESS - Element’s distribution for Matrix deployments, from Patrick Maier, gives more detail on Element Server Suite; covering ESS Community, ESS Pro and ESS for TI-Messenger. For those that want to get into the nitty-gritty, take a look at Gael Goinvic’s Getting Started with ESS Community workshop.

Element Pro, our new app developed specifically for the workplace, created a huge buzz - particularly in-app colour theming, and the ability to now create a whitelabelled mobile app without the expense of maintaining a fork. Catch all the details from Andreas Sisask in his session; Element X and Pro. We’d also recommend the Element X Web presentation and the session on Element Call.

The real stars of the show!

The best proof points, of course, are the deployments and initiatives that are already underway. The conference was packed with presentations from governments and public sector organisations, who are the real stars of the show!

Do take a look at the outstanding work being done across governments, NGOs and public sector organisations.

Trialing Matrix within the European Commission for resilient and sovereign communications, Nicolas Dubois, European Commission
Matrix French gov deployment: opening a private federation securely, Mathieu Velten, Direction Interministérielle du Numérique (DINUM)
Consolidating Germany’s administrative communication: Towards a joint Matrix-based architecture, Dominik Braun, Federal IT-Cooperation (FITKO)
Sweden’s Public Sector in Transition from Anna Engström and Kenneth Edwall, Försäkringskassan
Luxchat(4gov), Patrick Weber, the Luxembourg government
Medical Care over Matrix with Delay during a Simulated Moonwalk, Jan-Lukas Furmanek (FAU Erlangen; University Hospital Erlangen) and Aileen Rabsahl (European Space Agency)
Matrix’s role in the German Healthcare System, Marie Ruddeck, Gematik
Nationwide Rollout of Matrix-Based Instant Messaging (TI-M) for 74 Million Statutorily Insured Citizens, Jan Kohnert, Gematik
Secure communication leveraging the Matrix protocol for UNICC and its partners, Tima Soni, United Nations International Computing Centre (UNICC)
Supporting TF-X with Matrix: best practices and pitfalls, Jeroen Franssen, NATO ACT
The German BundesMessenger, Kai A. Hiller, BWI
No Desk Is an Island: Enabling Cross-Border Workspace Communication, Alexander Smolianitski, ZenDiS

European governments are rightly determined to control their own digital destiny, and are embracing Matrix as the foundation for real time communications.

Seeing the European Commission, France, FITKO, Germany, the German healthcare system, Luxembourg, NATO, Sweden, United Nations, ZenDiS and the European Space Agency all presenting on their Matrix deployments was just mindblowing!

Knowing how many other governments were also in attendance, soaking up insights and tips for their forthcoming Matrix projects, makes us really excited for a Matrix-based future that transforms cross-border collaboration and helps support a united, digitally sovereign Europe.

👋 See you all next year!