Social Internet Unconference

The Social Internet Unconference (SIU) is an online Open Space event for people building a more humane, interoperable social internet: open protocols, community governance, deliberation, sustainable funding, and the relationships that let this work continue.

The event is being developed by CIBC with collaborators from adjacent communities. It is not owned by any one participating organization or software application.

Current Status

As of 2026-08-13:

• The public agenda is live at app.harmonica.chat/p/social-internet-unconference.
• The organizer-controlled SIU Bluesky profile is live at @unconference.bsky.social (did:plc:mzvqnxye3oejamuwmfl4qvou).
• Anyone can use the topic-proposal conversation without joining a community or signing in with Bluesky.
• The Unconference project type, public record, and bidirectional unconference-brain/ round-trip are deployed (V1).
• Facilitated multi-topic proposal formation and review are deployed and the complete two-topic lifecycle is validated (V2).
• Bluesky publication and follower-qualified proposal support are deployed (V3 / Atmospheric Groups AV1): four approved topics publish from the SIU DID, qualifying support counts are live, and republication returns unchanged. Avails event-scoped availability (AV2) and V4-V8 have not started.
• The event date, scale, synchronous lobby, main-event room stack, and distribution channel remain open.

The cross-repository delivery state is tracked in issue #16.

Event Shape

SIU uses Open Space Technology rather than a keynote-and-tracks conference model. Participants help form the agenda and can move between sessions.

The current design direction, reinforced by advisor Kaliya Young, is to:

• develop one compelling calling question or theme;
• write an invitation that makes clear who should be in the room and why;
• let session topics emerge from participants; and
• avoid calling topic groupings tracks, which creates conventional conference expectations.

The calling question and invitation are not yet settled. See issue #3 and issue #5.

Participation

• Browse: the public agenda is open.
• Propose: anyone can complete an AI-facilitated topic conversation, with a maximum of three topics per conversation.
• Support: follow the SIU Bluesky profile and like a proposal post. Only likes from DIDs with an active event-participant relationship count; unfollows, blocks, and organizer exclusions revoke qualification.
• Availability (planned): event participants will be able to publish reusable SIU-scoped availability through Avails.
• Invitation, attendance, and transcript access: these are separate, explicitly granted relationships. Following SIU does not create standing community membership or organizer authority.

A Stack, Not A Platform

No single application owns the unconference:

• unconference-brain/ in this repository is canonical for public-safe topic and session meaning.
• Harmonica facilitates proposals, review, public agenda display, and later reflection; it is one contributor to the record, not its owner.
• Community Admin coordinates the SIU event identity, Bluesky publication, support qualification, scheduling, and bounded application permissions.
• Bluesky / AT Protocol provides the event's public identity and the planned follow-and-like participation surface.
• Avails will hold participant-controlled standing availability and select compatible times.
• Jitsi/JaaS, Excalidraw, Google Calendar, My Community, and SIU-controlled artifact infrastructure have bounded session and distribution roles in later slices.
• Streamplace remains a candidate public broadcast/discovery layer. It is not the room, lobby, attendance source, or private artifact store.

The selected identity pilot uses the organizer-controlled SIU Bluesky DID did:plc:mzvqnxye3oejamuwmfl4qvou (unconference.bsky.social) with event-scoped relationships. This is a practical bridge toward a portable group object, not a claim that SIU already implements a complete Verifiable Trust Community or platform-independent group protocol.

Portability Test

Project Weave's work on groups as first-class protocol objects sharpens SIU's interoperability test. Connecting several APIs is not enough. The behavioral question is:

Can SIU replace an application while retaining its identity, relationships, agenda, approved public record, and collective knowledge?

The launch bridge does not yet prove that. The Atmospheric Groups pilot tracks a non-blocking, post-launch exit test and an independent consumer of the public group record in issue #17.

Repository Map

• unconference-brain/ - canonical public-safe topics and, later, session records.
• docs/plans/unconference-platform-shaping.md - selected cross-system shape and decisions.
• docs/plans/unconference-platform-slices.md - V1-V8 implementation sequence.
• docs/plans/atmospheric-groups-pilot-shaping.md - event-DID and scoped-relationship shape.
• docs/plans/atmospheric-groups-pilot-slices.md - AV1-AV3 identity slices.
• docs/research/2026-08-13-kaliya-young-advisor-input.md - advisor input, Project Weave comparison, and resulting design implications.
• docs/research/2026-08-13-qiqo-walkthrough-brief.md - decision-focused guide for Kaliya's online Open Space walkthrough.

Open Decisions

• Calling question and invitation: #3, #5
• Date, duration, scale, and online Open Space layout: #6
• Co-organizing capacity: #7
• Post-event continuity: #9
• Main-event broadcast path: #2
• Atmospheric Groups portability pilot: #17

Privacy Boundary

This public repository contains only public-safe coordination data. Do not commit voter identities, availability details, attendee lists, private proposal responses, full transcripts, stream keys, app passwords, or bearer tokens.