JMAP (RFC 8620, 8261, &c.) is a new protocol meant to replace IMAP, CalDAV, CardDAV, and to handle more kinds of data in the future. It keeps the most important technical properties of those protocols, but ditches many things that hold back improvements and hamper developers. It's built on commonly understood and implemented standards, which makes it easy to get up and running and easy to benefit from modern systems like push notifications. It's built as a syncing protocol, providing easy sync features in a data agnostic way.

JMAP is still young, but there are multiple implementations of both client and server. The most notable install of JMAP is at Fastmail, where it's the primary interface to all customer data.

This talk will cover what JMAP looks like, the principles under which it operates, and how to get started working with it. We will discuss the likely next steps in JMAP's rollout and how Fastmail uses JMAP internally for its own datatypes.