Shareouts from ATScience 2026 in Vancouver

We gathered in Vancouver on March 27, 2026, for a full day exploration of AT Protocol for science, education, and open knowledge. The gathering brought together researchers, developers, builders and curious passers-by. ATScience was part of AtmosphereConf, the main global AT Protocol conference, which happened later that week on March 28-29.

Registration to ATScience was maxed out at 125 registrants, and the day was buzzing with energy, inspiration and exciting new projects, with new connections being sparked every which way.

We had talks, panels and facilitated discussions spanning a wide range of topics - data, AI, social media research, collective sensemaking systems, and new tools for researchers on Bluesky/atproto. Check out the talk recordings here:

Bridge building at ATScience

One of the strongest themes to emerge was bridge-building: between ATScience and the wider atproto developer community, the modular research movement, and broader questions about social media, epistemic environments, and the future of democracy.

We saw this play out in the cross-pollination between ATScience and the broader AtmosphereConf, with themes from Friday reverberating throughout the rest of the weekend:

ATScience <> Society

@kissane.myatproto.social mentioned ATScience multiple times in her wonderful AtmosphereConf keynote, as a community already demonstrating the promise of ATProto for building healthier information environments:

As the science community is amply demonstrating, we can develop features that cluster and amplify the knowledge people assemble...

However, Erin also emphasized that this work matters not just for science, but for society and our democracies more broadly:

... but if we only do this work for highly motivated specialists, we're missing the chance to bring that fire to everyone else.

During ATScience itself we had a whole track dedicated to collective sensemaking systems: @agjoyner.bsky.social presented ViewSift, a social app to reduce division. @simpsontw.bsky.social presented SkySquare, which uses social media data to provide a social context layer over existing content. @ronentk.me presented Semble as a knowledge network for researchers but also as a general tool for collectively mapping information.

ATScience <> Atmosphere

A meeting between @blaine.bsky.social (building Roundabout at @newpublic.org) and @aaronstevenwhite.io building @chive.pub ) sparked an ongoing collaboration around schema translation and category theory powered interoperability.

We also had some great followup conversations with @emily.space of Astrosky and @robin.berjon.com @ivansigal.eurosky.social at Modal Foundation/Eurosky that sparked a new initiative to set up a PDS and portal for researchers - stay tuned!

ATScience <> Research Institutions

@mathewlowry.eurosky.social's ATScience workshop explored the role of ATProto in supporting research institutions:

your institution no longer has to rely on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn to host conversations about its content. Instead, you can integrate your website directly into the social conversation on the ATmosphere, bringing the discourse back to where the content lives rather than scattering it across platforms you don't control

The workshop walked through this with three complementary contributions: @schlage.town (Leaflet.pub) on publishing via standard.site, @tylerjfisher.com (Sill) on collective listening via shared social graphs, and @wesleyfinck.org (Semble) on collective curation via Groups.

ATScience <> Open Science / Modular Research

Our keynote speakers were Rowan Cockett ( @row1.ca @curvenote.com , @continuous.foundation) and Matt Akamatsu ( @mattakamatsu.bsky.social University of Washington, @discoursegraphs.bsky.social). Watching their keynote is like looking into the future of science; they are both leading exciting new initiatives around open, continuous and modular publishing.

Matt Akamatsu on building the future of research labs with Discourse Graphs

Rowan hadn't previously encountered AT Protocol, but on connecting to the ecosystem he immediately saw the potential. He and his team went on to publish a blog post titled "Scientific Documents as First-Class Objects on AT Protocol," which observes that

The properties that make AT Protocol compelling for social networking are the same properties the research community has been asking for

Post-event survey

We were a bit late with our post-conference survey (note to selves for next time!), and so the response rate was relatively low - only 12% (15/125). Nonetheless, the responses still provide valuable qualitative signal and highlight some consistent themes:

Thanks Claude for the visualization help!

Notable comments:

Parting thoughts

Most ATScience projects are scrappy, under-resourced and volunteer led passion projects. One participant described a "common phenotype of assistant professors who are being entrepreneurial and need more time to build," and a refrain we heard throughout the event was: "if only I could quit my job and work on this full time." Even so, these projects already demonstrate the promise of ATScience. Imagine what the ecosystem could do with funding to match.

We’re tracking the potential of ATScience in this open Semble collection - feel free to contribute as well.

Thanks…

to the ATScience organizing team who spent 4 months going from 0 to full day conference, to @bmann.ca for instigating the idea and to the fantastic @atmosphereconf.org and @stream.place teams for their close support.

Thanks to @cosmik.network for event sponsorship and travel grants for speakers. Finally, thanks to all the speakers and participants who made this such a special day.

See you in the Atmosphere and hopefully also next year!

ATScience Organizing Team: @tgoerke.bsky.social @byarielm.fyi @ronentk.me @mathewlowry.eurosky.social