Self-hosted Video Conferencing System

Overview

For Mensa in Deutschland e.V. I built and now operate a video conferencing platform of our own. It runs entirely on the association’s own infrastructure, so no conversation data leaves to third parties. Several hundred members use the system every week. I deliberately do not collect exact figures, since individual conference joins are not logged.

Features

Conferences with an integrated whiteboard

Alongside audio and video, a built-in whiteboard lets participants sketch and work on content together without switching to a separate tool.

Member access

Only signed-in members can open a conference. The people they invite do not need to be members themselves, so the system also works for talking with external guests.

Responsibilities

Authentication

Sign-in runs through Keycloak, tying member access into the existing identity management, which keeps it centrally controlled.

Data-minimal operation

The system stores as little as possible and logs no individual conference joins, so participation stays private by design.

Stack

Jitsi as the conferencing platform, running in Docker containers on a dedicated Linux server, Keycloak for authentication, Nginx as the reverse proxy, and Let’s Encrypt for encryption.