Communicating is a basic human need, and today some kind of
computer-mediated communication is a requirement for most people,
especially those in this room.

With *everything* that is happening, it's now more important than ever
that these means of communication aren't controlled by entities that
can't be trusted, whether because they can stop providing the service at
any given time or worse because they are going to abuse it in order to
extract more profit.

If only there was a well established chat system based on some standard
developed by multiple entities, with all of the features one expects
from a chat system but federated so that one can choose between many
different and independent providers, or even self-hosting.

But wait, it does exist!

I'm not talking about IRC, I'm talking about XMPP!

1999