About Me

I currently work as project and community manager for KDE e.V in the KDE Eco digital sustainability initiative. Prior to this I completed a PhD in linguistics at the Universität Potsdam, Germany, where my research interests were experimental and theoretical approaches to meaning in context (semantics and pragmatics). Since 2020 I have been working exclusively on projects related to Free Software and digitization. I have given presentations at various events, including FOSDEM, Chaos Communication Congress, SFSCon, Grazer Linuxtage, and many more. I appeared in the 2021 Arte documentary Disappear: Cover Your Online Tracks from director Marc Meillassoux, which explores information and operations security in various contexts. For a couple of years I taught the course "Deconstructing – And Reconstructing – The Digital Self" at the Universität der Künste Berlin. Since 2013 I have volunteered with various groups seeking to rethink our digital society, including Slow Tech Berlin (STB), CryptoParty Berlin, and Berlin Freedombox User Group. I am a card-carrying member of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) and I support Forum InformatikerInnen für Frieden und gesellschaftliche Verantwortung (FIfF). In my free time I collaborate with the Mobilize Berlin community promoting Fediverse-based event-management services in the Berlin club scene.

My current career with Free Software does not provide many opportunities for professional overlap with my former career in linguistics, but one such opportunity came up when a question of hyphenation arose. Read my thoughts on the question "Is 'Open Source' ever hyphenated?" at the Open Source Initiative blog.

Contact & Social Media

KDE Eco Project & Community Manager (KDE e.V.)

"Opt Green"

From April 2024 to March 2026 I will be working as project and community manager for KDE e.V in the German Environment Agency-funded project "Opt Green" . The project brings what KDE Eco has been doing for sustainable software directly to end users. A particular target group for the project are eco-consumers, those whose consumer behavior is driven by principles related to the environment. Through online and offline campaigns as well as installation workshops, the Opt Green project will demonstrate the power of Free Software to keep devices in use over the entire lifespan of the hardware.

If you would like to be in touch regarding the Opt Green project, write me at joseph [at] kde.org.

"Blauer Engel For FOSS"

From July 2021 to March 2023 I worked as project and community manager for KDE e.V in the German Environment Agency-funded project "Blauer Engel for FOSS". The goals of the project were to make the criteria for Blauer Engel eco-certification for software known in the Free & Open Source Software community, and to promote resource efficiency in software design. The project was featured in the article "Blauer Engel für Software" in the German newspaper taz.

I gave a presentation on measuring the energy consumption of software and eco-certification at the rC3 2021:

Past presentations from this project can be found here.

Teaching: The Digital Self

"Deconstructing – And Reconstructing – The Digital Self" (UdK Berlin, Germany)

In Winter-Semester 2021-2022 and Winter-Semester 2020-2021 I taught the course "Deconstructing – And Reconstructing – The Digital Self" at the Universität der Künste Berlin. The word self can be defined as "consciousness of one's own identity". In the internet age, one's digital self often remains an abstract and unconscious aspect of life. The goal of the course is to make the unconscious conscious – to critically deconstruct the digital self with the goal of reconstructing it as one wants. The course schedule for Winter-Semester 2020-2021 can be found here.

For courses taught on language and linguistics, click here.

Mobilize Berlin

Together with a small community of hackers, event organizers, and party-goers, I am doing outreach for Fediverse-based event management services in the Berlin club scene. The goal is to provide a non-commercial, autonomous free space for clubs and organizers to promote their events in the spirit of the Reclaim Club Culture movement.

☞ Holen wir uns unsere Veranstaltungen zurück! (2021-06-18, Görlitzer Park, Germany)

Holen wir uns unsere Veranstaltungen zurück!
On 18 June 2021 I gave a speech at the "Holen wir uns unsere Veranstaltungen zurück!" rally organized as part of the Mobilize Berlin launch event. The text of the speech can be found here: Pictures of the event were posted to Mastodon by @Disappear_Doc@mastodon.social [archived 2021-06-29].

☞ 37th Chaos Communication Congress (2020-12-29, Open Infrastructure Orbit, Germany)

In December 2020, Miha, Max, and I gave a talk at the "remote Chaos Experience" (rC3) on Fediverse-based event management services. The event was recorded as part of an Arte documentary by Marc Meillassoux entitled Disappear: Cover Your Online Tracks, which deals with online self-defense and Free Software.

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