Solid Project

This Month in Solid 2021-10-14

Thu, 14 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Events

07 October 2021 – This month, Solid World October was an amazing continuation of September’s theme about versatility in Solid applications. As we enter the fall months, we see a lot of momentum, creativity, and innovation surrounding Solid and its community members. It’s an exciting time to join or be a part of the community. Tim reiterated this when kicking off the event in turn. This reminds us of just how far we’ve come.

The vitality of Solid is thriving and healthy, as we began to hear from our monthly speakers about their contributions. The first to exemplify this was Ruben Verborgh. Who at the time was standing under the Belgium flag. He was at a convention for the Government of Flanders working on giving every citizen a Solid Pod. Yes, you read that right, every citizen. But during the event, he gave a high-level overview on access control and consent, specifically explaining how we manage explicit information in our Solid Pods.

Next, we heard from Osmar Olivo, the VP of Product at Inrupt. He presented the big news that Inrupt is holding their first Developer Workshop. It’s focused on giving all new or enthusiast developers the opportunity and support to build using Solid. You also get a chance to win a cash prize. If you feel ready to sign up you can fill out the registration form here. In addition to this great announcement, soon, we will hear more about their upcoming 1.2 release, which is in line with Ruben’s talk about consent.

There were many updates from the Solid Team. Kyra Assaad, a team member, gave us a breakdown of all their action items. First was the SolidProject.org refresh. To improve the website experience for those visiting, they invite participants to schedule a time to run through the site with Marrelle. If you want to help, sign up here. In addition to the website refresh, they’re also cleaning up the Solid GitHub organization by archiving repos. Also, we are starting Implementer feedback sessions, it’s for those implementing Solid compliant server or client technologies. To reach out, contact solid+feedback@theodi.org. Her final update was that the Notification Panel is going to start meeting on the 2nd and 4th Thursday of every month. Their mission is to extend technical protocols and vocabularies to facilitate notification exchange in Solid. Learn more at github.com/solid/notifications-panel.

Tani Olhanoski was our first featured presenter for this month. Right now, Metaverse and AI content are hot topics of conversation. And Tani and her team see the value in Solid becoming a Metaverse. Solid could be a space like Ready Player One or the novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson that is decentralized, interoperable, and experiential. To take a step in this direction, her team has created Mysilio. It’s a shared Solid infrastructure, hosts pods, and is a no-code front-end builder. Mysilio helps creators to make their own custom social worlds. There’s an opportunity to sign-up for their waitlist. To reach out for questions or feedback, reach out to hello@mysilio.com.

Next was Enno Meijers from the National Library of the Netherlands. He’s working on a national Solid-based Collection Registration System to incorporate cultural heritage digitally. As we move to a digital space, improving how we assemble cultural artifacts is vital to hold onto history. Next, he explained how the infrastructure can be decentralized and why Solid created a solution for collecting data, Linked Data. We got the opportunity to see a demo of storing and viewing artifacts from images, descriptions/content, and how it links to other historical pieces. Lastly, he displayed the architecture of the registration system created with the help of Digita. You can view their documentation here and watch their introduction to the Solid CRS app.

Our final presenter was Maria Dimou and Jan Schill presenting their PoC Indico. Indico is an events application that stores comments and gathers information for registration from people’s Solid Pods. It’s an open-source event organization archival and collaboration with CERN, using it for over 850k events. She explained screenshots of how the flow of both registration and comments work. There are a few challenges Jan and Maria are working out to improve the user experience and get support from the CERN team. But in the short term, they have plans for their next steps.

This Month in Solid 2021-09-09

Thu, 09 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Events

02 September 2021 — As we close out the summer for many, we kick off the upcoming fall months with September’s Solid World. Solid members are making some of the most exciting and unique applications using Solid. This month we dived into learning all the contributions two developers are making with their applications.

Ruben Verborgh started the event by updating everyone about how Solid community members adopt the Community Solid Server. Great news: community members support the new server by sharing what they are working on and possible use cases they see. In addition to this, community members are even making new functionalities. For example, one of the community members created a way to generate modules, here’s the demo of how to do that. If you want to find a way to contribute, join the Community Solid Server gitter channel, share, create, or learn what others are doing.

Next, we had Oz Olivo, who gave a rundown on the Enterprise Solid Sever and Inrupt’s roadmap. For many of us, we are preparing to fill up the coming months with exciting work. Inrupt is no exclusion to this as they plan to get Solid to the forefront of mainstream initiatives. Hopefully, the projects driving this can share their development in a future Solid World. It’s a way for others outside of the community to see what we all see, the promise of Solid. Addedly they are working on getting their V1.2 release out of the door. The beta version will be available for testing next month, including their libraries. So be on the lookout for how you can assist in their beta.

We added a new section to the regular lineup, Solid Team updates. This month we heard from Justin Bingham on what the team is up to. Currently, they are performing user research for the SolidProject.org website. The goal is to adjust the site to be easily consumed and give newcomers and Solid community members the right resources to get involved and make a voice for themselves in the community. In parallel to this effort, the team plans on transitioning the existing Solid Project site to the Community Solid Server. If you would like to volunteer or share your thoughts about the website during the user testing phase, please email the team at solid+info@theodi.org.

To open up our two featured presenters for this Solid World was Jackson Morgan, who took us to a post-apocalyptic realm. After an alien invasion, who wouldn’t want to connect or meet new people using the Interesting.Chat app? It’s filled with different interesting and unique topics. It’s all about connecting you with someone else, someone new that is ready to have a conversation with you about anything. It was exciting to see this application working live and hearing Jackson and a new friend converse quickly about Solid. This experience was rewarding to see. Due to the pandemic, we’ve struggled to create human interactions over the last (almost) two years. Here’s a new way for people to talk and make connections about anything using Solid. Want to see the ins and outs of this application? Watch the recording of Solid World.

Our final speaker was Frank Smutniak, who showed us how Solid could help you create a healthy garden. With the help of different materials and using Solid Pods, we learned that you could measure moisture levels, report additional measurements and the pump’s status. All of this helps you to adjust how you plant and care for your garden. One of his next steps includes installing and hosting the application on the Community Solid Server. In the coming weeks, he plans to input the information from the presentation to a Github repo, so keep an eye out for that.

This Month in Solid 2021-08-12

Thu, 12 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

05 August 2021

If there were words to describe August’s Solid World, they were – growth, collaboration, and progress. It was time to look back at all the work we’ve done since the beginning of the year. It’s safe to say we made a lot of progress! Different community members gave us updates of their goals and the work they’ve completed so far.

Updates

Before the presentations kicked off, we got updates from Ruben Verborgh and Oz Olivo. Ruben had exceptional news to tell us. After a year of hard work, he has released Community Solid Server (CSS) 1.0! If you’re a developer looking for a companion server to help build your app, or a researcher exploring the frontier of Solid, try building on CSS.

As the CSS progresses, Oz reminded us that Inrupt’s Enterprise Solid Server is also on track, with the next major release slated for this fall. Also, Inrupt recently composed the Solid Application Compatibility Survey, and they are looking to hear feedback from any app developers. With that said, we luckily got to listen to assessments from our presenters.

Presentations

SolidProject Updates: Justin Bingham

Our first presenter was Justin Bingham, the CTO at Janeiro Digital and Solid Team Member. Over the last few months, the Solid Team assigned one of the team members as the project manager to help with the different projects and initiatives. Since the change, Justin leads us through the various tasks they were able to complete. First was migrating the Community Forum to Discourse.org. The second was changing the process of the Solid Application Listing by making it a more collaborative review and submission by having it on the Forum. Their latest work is on making substantial updates to the solidproject.org website. We all will be excited to see how the changes go!

Solid DEI Updates: Jeff Zucker

Next up, Jeff Zucker, one of the creators for the Solid Team and co-chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Team. During his presentation he explained how the web was created to be a welcoming and inclusive space, and how we’ve moved away from that. With Solid, we can bring diversity, inclusion, and equity back to the web. To help pave the way, a group of Solid members created the DEI Team to help advocate for underrepresented groups. If you would like to join, you can reach out to the DEI Team’s Gitter. If you want to watch the DEI Team meetings, you can watch them here.

Solid Community Survey: Kyra Assaad

In the same breath of diversity and community, next, we heard about the Solid Community Survey. Kyra Assaad, a Solid team member, co-chair for the DEI Team, and Product Designer at Inrupt, presented the stats from the survey. Before going into the numbers, she expressed how the DEI and Solid Teams wanted to learn about who’s here and better ways to understand how we can foster the community. And there was so much to learn. We got to know where our community members live, how they identify, their level of knowledge (from code to general education), and ways we can encourage engagement in Solid. She also shared some of the kind words community members think about Solid, like, “Solid is a precondition to the world I want me and my kids to live in.” To help that, the DEI Team’s goal is to take the information from the survey, brainstorm initiatives, and make recommendations for the community and to the Solid Team.

W3C Solid Community Group: Sarven Capadisli

Last but not least, we heard updates from Sarven Capadisli on the W3C Solid Community Group (W3C CG) status update. He mentioned how the work in the specifications, panels, and protocols aligns for society’s betterment and those using Solid for everyday use. If you want to see how each one is doing, check out the Solid Events pages to go over Sarven’s notes.

This Month in Solid 2021-07-08

Thu, 08 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Events

1 July 2021 — Solid World July — Academics were at the forefront of July’s Solid World. There were many exciting and collaborative pieces coming together this month — from hearing the winner of a Solid challenge to learning how students are innovating new versions of applications.

We missed Tim Berners-Lee, but we felt his well-wishes during the event. In addition, there’s some great news from Ruben Verborgh about the Community Solid Server. He told us how CSS 1.0 is on the right track for its release, and it’s currently in beta. Oz, the VP of Product at Inrupt, gave us an update that Inrupt’s Enterprise Solid Server will be releasing its next version later this year.

Our first presenter was Tonda Karola, a student at the Czech Technical University in Prague. He found Solid on his own and built an email-like application, Inbox. He walked us through the functionality of how his application works. Some of the unique features include Linked Data Notification as communication protocol and ActivityStreams as the format. It runs in a browser with no backend or database, which keeps the data between the user and their Solid pod. His next steps are pagination, more caching, and keeping saved messages.

Next was Dan Barclay, an intern at Inrupt, who gave us a demo of his messaging application called Cend. Cend is easy to use with features like creating different rooms, joining a room with its specific room id number, and making the room public or private. He broke down how the messaging service would work and what he used like solid-client-js, solid-UI-react, and Next JS. It is still in an experimental phase, but you can still try out the application.

Last but not least, Jose Labra, a professor from the University of Oviedo, and Marina Vidiago from Empathy (their partner for the challenge) presented their annual Solid challenge. This is their third year holding the challenge. Each challenge is about having students learn about Solid entirely on their own and creating a theme-specific application with features. This year’s theme was making a friend finder application. The students delivered 18 projects for the course, and three teams decided to participate in Solid Challenge, adding a promotional video. During the event, we announced the winning team was Radarin_en3b. One of the team members, Marcos Tobias Muñiz, spoke on behalf of the group, saying very kind remarks. Congratulations to the team!

This Month in Solid 2021-06-10

Thu, 10 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

3 June 2021 – Solid World June – Another Solid World in the books! We explored how Solid refashions data to be human-centric with the intersection of ideas like verifiable credentials, privacy-by-design, data reuse, and consent.

Solid World June kicked off with Tim Berners-Lee giving us updates about the last few weeks. One of the highlights was his in-person visit to the Flemish Government. Right now, the Flanders Government aims to give everyone in Flanders a Solid Pod. The people of Flanders (and those who follow the Solid community) feel a sense of excitement from seeing all the possibilities that Solid has to offer and the promise of seeing each other in person. He expressed his hopes that others in the community soon get the opportunity to collaborate and feel the vibrancy of our community in person.

Next, we heard from Ruben Verborgh who talked about verifiable credentials (VC). He broke this down for us by explaining how VC, as a W3C standard, could be used to provide consent for data reuse via a consent receipt in Solid Pods.

Oz Olivo, the VP of Product at Inrupt, was the final Solid roadmap update. He discussed the next steps Inrupt is planning for their version 1.2 release and some of the features fell in line with the theme of this month.

Our first presenter, Eliott Behar, focused on how privacy, Solid, and law converge better. He explained how Solid not only meets the standards of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) but exceeds them. Eliott went over the six lawful bases that the GDPR describes. The final three bases: data retention, data subject rights, and third-party processors, will thrive in Solid. The challenge is what will be the design for it to work in real-life scenarios effectively?

Tom Haegemans from Digita presented data sharing, reuse patterns, and conclusive findings of best practices while operating on Solid. Tom gave the use case of banks and governments who can potentially reuse and move data around. It’s important to realize different parts of our life coincide, like healthcare, banking, and legal documents. When using Solid, we see a new way of accessing this data by having continuous access to different parties. Digita looked at the forming patterns revealed when discovering how to reuse the data and who’s involved in each user’s journey. In the end, we saw that there’s a pattern framework we can use when thinking about legal considerations.

Last but not least, Greg Golding and Anton Wiklund, from the Swedish Public Employment Service showed us how consent could work using Solid. Their Proof of Concept (PoC) was about a job seeker granting and revoking access to their application to a prospective employer. The work happening around compliance, consent, data reuse, privacy, and law shows promise for the web being a place where individuals have true control over their data and information.

This Month in Solid 2021-05-06

Thu, 06 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

6 May 2021 – This month during Solid World, we got to see links between different implementations and applications built using Solid. Each month our community not only grows in size but in solidarity. We heard from three presenters about advanced application features and the server technology that makes them possible.

We kicked off this month’s event with Tim Berners-Lee. He expressed excitement about building an ecosystem that creates opportunities for UX/UI designers, application testers, and others to join our community. He also asked for volunteers to work on the Solid Operating System (OS), if individuals had time. If you are interested, you can visit the Github repository or send a message to the Solid OS Gitter channel.

Next, we got an update from Ruben Verborgh for the Community Solid Server (CSS). He mentioned a hot topic in the community right now, verifiable credentials (VC). Putting down the framework for VC, Ruben went into more detail about how it’s the perfect match to Solid.

After the roadmap updates were the presentations. First, Jackson Morgan from OTeam gave a festive presentation about his new chat application, Liqid Chat. During the event, Jackson opened the app for a hands-on demo by allowing the Solid World attendees to chat during the presentation. By the end of the event, full conversation and gifs were shared without any issues throughout his presentation. In addition, Jackson shared two repos to check out the back end of the application, one for the client and the other on the API.

Next, Christian Buggedei presented Darcy’s two prototypes, the former IBEX and the newest Shepherd. The latest version of the social application helps to onboard those new to the Solid community or ecosystem. It helps from creating a WebID (or account) on Solid to setting up a private feed. Even though they have built a stable application, they are looking for help. Thinking about helping? Click here to get involved with their work.

Lastly, we heard from Aaron Coburn and Jack Lawson from Inrupt, who gave us an update about a Solid feature that helps applications like Jackson’s and Christian’s projects update their users in real-time. This new feature, Notifications, was recently released as part of the version 1.1 launch. We also got to see a demo of just how the notifications function and how fast they are.

This Month in Solid 2021-04-08

Thu, 08 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Events

1 April 2021 — It’s always fantastic to hear how contributors are improving Solid, its ecosystem, and the community. During Solid World April, we heard from a few server developers about their work with Solid. Before hearing from our presenters, we kicked off the event, getting a high-level overview from Tim Berners-Lee.

Tim commemorated the Web’s 32nd birthday by reflecting on building a better web. He emphasized that Solid is at the forefront of improving the web. Lastly, he shouted out three Community Spotlights, Angelo Veltens, Alain Bourgeois, and Sharon Stratsianis, for their contributions to the Solid community.

Next, we heard a quick update and demo from Ruben Vergborgh regarding the Community Solid Server (CSS). Continuous updates on the CSS are building toward the V1.0 release.

Osmar (Oz) Olivo, the VP of Product at Inrupt, gave Solid World attendees a preview of some release news that will be coming later this month, focused on security. He also mentioned the Swedish Government’s work with Solid, and encouraged users of Inrupt’s products, to fill out their product survey.

Our first guest presenter was Graph Metrix. Kai Gilb and Frederick Gilbert presented their work on Solid. It focused on building a conceptual AI, an ontology, and support of a one-world data model. With these three concepts in mind, they showcased TrinPod, where all your information can live. We saw just how in-depth their work could be with a flow chart and the layers of files, folders, and other information that one person can have. Their targeted use cases center around construction, productivity applications, logistics, and property. It showed versatility and a solution for real-world pain points by leveraging Solid. If you would like to create your own TrinPod, you can sign up for a free account and start using their suite of applications.

Following Graphmetrix was the PDS Interop group (made up of four developers) working with Nextcloud. Yvo Brevoort talked about their journey on Solid by building a Solid Test Suite. It helped them learn about the ecosystem and build a foundation for different servers to be interoperable. They also have two server-related projects, the PHP Solid Server and the Nextcloud Solid Server. They are moving into the next steps in their venture and are looking for help. With that said, if you’re interested, reach out to Yvo Brevoort.

Our final presenter was Antonio Rodríguez Santiesteban from Spoter.ME. He explained how they are building a Solid Pod Provider that is scalable, resilient and has open microservices architecture. The demo showcased how to access your Pod and add files and other information to it. With the Pod provider up and running, they invite users, application developers, and application providers to test it out; if you would like to, reach out to them at info@spoter.me.

This Month in Solid 2021-03-11

Thu, 11 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Events

04 March 2021 — It was exciting to see the great turnout at March’s Solid World. We continue to grow in the Solid community as reflected in Solid World’s highest attendance ever. During the event, we got to touch on a lot of great ideas related to the growing market of interoperability.

Tim Berners-Lee kicked off the event with shout-outs to last month’s Community Spotlights: Virginia Balseiro for building Women of Solid and Digita for their introduction videos as well as their contributions in discovering and reporting bugs.

Next, Ruben Verborgh gave updates and a demo of the Community Solid Server (CSS). Recently, CSS’s version 0.8 was released with 1.0 on the horizon. He also created a chat from his pod, where attendees were able to engage with during the event.

For Inrupt’s update, Osmar Olivo, VP of Product, gave us a sneak peek that Enterprise Solid Server (ESS) version 1.1 will be released in early spring. He also reminded us to try out and give feedback for Pod Spaces.

Next were our two guest presenters for Solid World. We heard from Dmitri Zagidulin and Liam Broza from LifeScope, who let us know about their work with Solid. They are working on creating a “companion intelligence” by using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to create a digital memory of yourself, one that builds up a more accurate, personalized, and improved experience on the web. They will be using Solid to help with decentralizing their data storage and authorization. You can access their slides here.

Last but not least, we heard from Dick van Gelder from Creafree. He discussed the importance of us coming together as a collective to support and protect intellectual property. Working with existing laws, we can use Solid to build a space for people to create and share their creations. The ability to gather and use all your data with different applications is just a start. You can access his slides here.

This Month in Solid 2021-02-04

Thu, 04 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Events

4 February 2021 - Here’s the update from Solid World. We started the month off by hearing the ins and outs of applications using Solid as their backend. Last Thursday, we got to learn from presenters how to use applications in different facets.

We got to understand the excitement that this brings to our community by Tim Berners-Lee. The community is growing. New individuals are building a way for themselves, and we see their creations developing into some great applications. As we continue to grow, we need to keep up the momentum by supporting our builders and our community members. We saw a significant increase in activity this month due to recent press attention. Tim was recently featured in New York Times and spoke at the Reuters Next conference. Like we said in January’s Solid World, our foundation is there. Now it’s time to develop.

Ruben Verborgh shared a helpful resource he created for the Community Solid Server, its recipes for interoperability. Osmar Olivo, VP of Product for Inrupt, let us know there is now Node.js support for Inrupt’s Solid Client Libraries. If you want to hear or see it in detail, you can watch the recording of Solid World here.

Three presenters gave us an idea of just what it’s like to create a Solid application. Our first presenter Noel DeMartin gave us a demo of Media Kraken. Noel showcased the different ways you can log into and store the media/entertainment data in the application and on your computer. One of the significant aspects of the presentation was when Noel opened the door for other applications to interoperate with Media Kraken. One thing that makes Solid unique is creating interoperability between all servers, clients, and applications. Noel’s presentation reminds us of how possible it is. He is also a great point of reference when starting. If you’re new, check out his journal.

Next, Jasmine Leonard presented PodExplorer. Jasmine is new to the Solid community, joining in late 2020. While learning how to get engaged with Solid she built her application. When using the app, you can access data from your pod, upload, delete and view various files. During the presentation, Jasmine shared a few resources that helped build the PodExplorer—mentioning places like the Solid Forum, Solid Website, and GitHub Repos. In the future, Jasmine expects to add additional functionality to PodExplorer, such as: bulk actions, managing the access of data, and finding files in your pod.

Finally, Hindia Mohammed from Ekseli gave us a business to business (B2B) view of applications. Hindia, the CTO of Ekseli, presented Projectware. The project management application provides two interfaces: the Delivery and Sales Portals. In addition to presenting Projectware, Hindia shared the ways Ekseli engages in the Solid Community. Contributions in various facets are essential for the Solid ecosystem to thrive.

This Month in Solid 2021-01-07

Thu, 07 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hello and welcome to another edition of This Month in Solid!

Solid is a set of open specifications, built on existing open standards, that describes how to build applications so that users can conveniently switch between data storage providers and application providers and take the data generated along.

This is a monthly summary of Solid progress.

Want something mentioned? Contact the Solid team at solid+info@theodi.org. This Month in Solid is openly developed on GitHub. If you find any errors in this month’s issue, please submit a pull request.

Updates

Events

7 January 2021 - Welcome to the This Month in Solid newsletter! This month was all about reflecting on 2020 and what to expect for the Solid Community in the New Year. We experienced so much growth in various ways from seeing our community numbers go up, to watching servers be released, to learning what developers are doing. As we plan for this year it’s important to see what work needs to be done.

During January’s Solid World Tim Berners-Lee presented on the high-level overview of Solid. Specifications were the first point made. It was great to hear how much progress the W3C Solid Community Group has made, many thanks to them. We also learned about the numerous servers that are becoming available to developers and organizations. We now have the Community Solid Server (CSS) and Inrupt’s Enterprise Solid Server (ESS), as well as a few others in progress. If we continue on the path we are on now we will get to a place where all applications will truly be interoperable with multiple backend softwares.

There are also some updates to the Solid Operating System (or the SolidOS) roadmap to check out. In closing Tim reminded us of the goal of Solid, its community and the ecosystem. It is to build a healthy foundation for Solid so that developers or others who follow can quickly jump into building the type of value they’re interested in. The good news, we are seeing the foundation of that forming.

Next we heard from Ruben Verborgh, who used the Community Solid Server to demonstrate how his smart lights could be controlled via his Pod. You can see the code behind the demo here. We also heard from Osmar (Oz) Olivo about Inrupt’s Enterprise Solid Server, reflections on their growth and what they are working toward this year. Last, but very much so not least, we heard from Sarven Capadisli, who spoke about the specification updates on behalf of the W3C Solid Community Group. He demonstrated all the growth they have made to build our current foundation. He also mentioned that the panels for discussing the specs are open to anyone.

This Month in Solid 2020-12-03

Thu, 03 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Solid is a set of open specifications, built on existing open standards, that describes how to build applications in such a way that users can conveniently switch between data storage providers and application providers and take the data generated along.

This is a monthly summary of Solid progress.

Want something mentioned? Contact the Solid Manager at solid+info@theodi.org. This Month in Solid is openly developed on GitHub. If you find any errors in this month’s issue please submit a pull request.

Updates

Events

3 December 2020 - Welcome to This Month in Solid. As 2020 draws to an end, we take the time to reflect and appreciate the growth and promise Solid offers, especially during Solid World. This month we heard about the flexibility and user experience of Solid data and understanding the different ways app developers interact with and ultimately unlock the power of personal data in Solid.

Learning of the different ways we can interact in the Solid ecosystem empowers us to get started. This month we got to hear from some active contributors in Solid about how you can enrich, connect, or transform services with Solid data.

Fred Lebeau, one of the Co-Founders of Data Village, reminded us about the value of having a user-centric view of data. Organizations gain insight with data and can provide better services. But recently, many individuals are getting concerned about what happens to their data. Luckily, Data Village wants to help give the controls back to the user while proving organizations can get value from data, rather than raw (or persona) data. They currently have five markets working on use cases: health, mobility, finance, media, and HR. It’s great seeing how much can be improved when we have a different view.

The next speaker was Jan Schill from CERN, who was telling us about the CERN-Solid investigation. He informed us of their possible Proof of Concept (PoC) for Solid with Indico. It is an open-source tool used within CERN for event organization, archival, and collaboration. For the project to be successful, he is currently reviewing the Solid specifications and implementations. You can access his slides, the Indico GitHub, and Indico Webpage.

The final presenter that we heard from was Wouter Janssens, one of the Co-Founders and CEO of Digita. Wouter showcased the user interface of their data browser, Inox. He informed us of the ease you could have to access your data in your pod. You use information from your various vaults for your banking, governmental or personal needs in one space. It was thrilling to see the engagement from participants when they were learning how Inox works.

This Month in Solid 2020-11-05

Thu, 05 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This is a monthly summary of Solid progress.

Updates

Events

05 November 2020 – This month in Solid, we had a lot of movement in the community and got to hear about some of those activities in detail during November’s Solid World. Our theme for the month was to learn how Solid is delivered at a national scale, focusing on Belgium. But first, we heard a few updates from around the ecosystem.

Recently, there was a change in the Solid Community Pod server. During Solid World, Tim Berners-Lee confirmed that the service is back up and running at solidcommunity.net. There are a few members in the Solid community to thank for helping with this: Justin Bingham, Jackson Morgan, Jeff Zucker, Alain Bourgeois, Eric Prud’hommeaux, and Michiel de Jong.

As usual, Ruben Verborgh shared a progress update on the Community Solid Server, focusing on impressive new database flexibility. The recording for the full demo is on the Solid World Vimeo account. And Osmar (Oz) Olivo gave a preview of big news about Inrupt’s roadmap for bringing Solid to developers and organizations. You can keep up with the latest on Inrupt’s blog.

Following a major announcement last month from the Minister President of Flanders about the government’s embrace of Solid, both of our guest presenters came from that region.

Our first presenter for November’s Solid World was Frédéric Hennequin, who is the Solution Architecture for My Citizen Profile and the Webplatform program of Information Agency of Flanders. We got to see a demo video of how your pod (or profile) would work, from logging into your account, gathering banking information, and using autofill from various accounts on the vlandeer.be website. Learning of the versatility of how much can be done with Solid was very exciting to see, and Flanders has plans to add even more.

Our final presenter was Pieter Heyvaert, the Development Lead and Developer Advocate at Ghent University - IDLab, imec. He discussed the creation of a job application service for those with dyslexia or dyscalculia. The frontend is easy to use and understand by giving the user various ways to upload or input their information and resume by audio, video, or text in addition to a reader option. Lastly, he explained why they are using Solid on the backend, and how data flows are architected.

This Month in Solid 2020-10-01

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This is a monthly summary of Solid progress.

Updates

Events

1 October 2020 - This month at Solid World we heard from a pair of guest presenters diving into the practicalities of building sophisticated, scalable Solid apps and services.

Justin Bingham, founder and CTO of Janeiro Digital, presented their work with the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom. We learned how the NHS aims to improve patients’ access to their complete personal medical records, and their ability to share additional data with their doctors between their appointments to improve their overall health. With Solid, Janeiro Digital has built a solution that gives patients the control to access, share, and manage their medical information with various services there to help them.

Justin and Josh Collins, Janeiro Digital’s VP of Technology, highlighted how the company’s XFORM Health technology made it possible to integrate existing data silos into Solid Pods in a standardized, interoperable format. They also demonstrated the functional and intuitive patient-focused user interface they were able to build on top of this Pod data.

We also heard from one of Inrupt’s engineering leads, Jack Lawson, about their React SDK V2. To begin, he went over the three major components that make up the React SDK — authentication, visualization, and data syncing. Next, he discussed how the open source toolkit is meant to make it easy for developers to build Solid applications, avoiding stress over tedious details, offering a smooth implementation, and providing the opportunity to leverage Inrupt’s best practices and coding standards. Unfortunately, we ran out of time to see the demo, but plan to see in the near future!

This Month in Solid 2020-09-03

Thu, 03 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This is a monthly summary of Solid progress.

Updates

Events

Solid World is an opportunity to meet people who are interested in or currently working with Solid.

This month’s agenda was jam-packed with surprise previews and big names.

Ruben Verborgh, professor of Semantic Web technology at Ghent University, gave us the first demo of the Community Solid Server his team has been building alongside community contributors. CSS is not yet ready for use or to develop apps against, but you can see the architecture and progress to date on GitHub here.

Max Leonard and Hannes Ricklefs from the BBC’s R&D team shared the work they’ve been doing to improve content recommendations while respecting user privacy, all based on data in Solid Pods. They explained how Solid helps deliver on core pieces of BBC’s royal charter, and how the user-centric approach to data opens the door to all kinds of new services for their licensees.

Charlotte Sadd from NatWest Group showed a demonstration of how Solid Pods can put the bank at the center of its customers “life moments”, providing a single, trusted place to — for example — change their name or register a business. She shared the banks thoughts on how Solid can help it on its core mission to “champion the potential of people, families and businesses.”

Jackson Morgan, founder of O Team, gave a tour of ShapeRepo and how it supports the company’s mission that “All data should be interoperable.” Finally, Alex Bourlier, founder of Startin’blox, introduced us to Hubl, an open-source collaboration tool for freelancers, built on Solid.

If you missed Solid World you can watch the recording here. The next Solid World will happen on the 1st October 2020. Follow along here as we finalize the agenda, which will highlight Solid-based projects from several industries and research areas.

28th September 2020 - “Solid - Citizens in control of their own data— A virtual event in which the Prime Minister of Flanders explains why the Flemish government is investigating the concept with great interest to improve its services. Information Flanders, Imec and Ghent University are organizing a theme afternoon about Solid in which they propose Flemish initiatives in the fields of culture and media, mobility and GovTech.

This Month in Solid 2020-08-06

Thu, 06 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This is a monthly summary of Solid progress.

Updates

Events

Solid World is an opportunity to meet people who are interested in or currently working on Solid. If you missed Solid World you can watch the recording here.The next Solid World will happen on the 3rd September 2020.

This Month in Solid 2020-07-02

Thu, 02 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This is a monthly summary of Solid progress.

Updates

Events

Solid World is an opportunity to meet people who are interested in or currently working on Solid.

If you missed Solid World you can watch the recording here.

This month, Solid Manager Mitzi László gave an overview of Solid as well as a mid-year recap. This was followed by a presentation by Sarven Capadisli on behalf of the Editors to give an overview of the specification progress this month. Two early companies to work on Solid introduced themselves and gave a quick update on what they are currently working on. Kelly O’Brien from Inrupt spoke about the UK COVID project with Open University and Kingsley Idehen introduced OpenLink.

The next Solid World will happen on the 6th August 2020. If you have any content requests or would like to present at the next Solid world email solid+info@theodi.org.

Articles and Talks mentioning Solid

2020-06-24 BBC Rethink Tim Berners-Lee: Rethinking Digital Access

This Month in Solid 2020-06-04

Thu, 04 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This is a monthly summary of Solid progress.

Updates

Events

Solid World is an opportunity to meet people who are interested in or currently working on Solid.

This month the theme of Solid World was geolocation and Sharon Stratsianis kicked off with a talk on the benefits of Geolocation on Solid. The capstone project of her Masters of Information Technology and Distributed Computing at Melbourne University was on Semantic Web and Location Privacy.

Associate Professor Jose Emilio Labra Gayo directs the Web Semantics Reseach Group (WESO) at the Univesity of Oviedo. He explained how he taught approximately one hundred second year bachelor of engineering students how to build Solid apps and explained the course assignments the students were given.

In the third talk, Ángel Maldonado, founder and CEO of Empathy.co, introduced Empathy’s vision for decentralised commerce, as a platform that serves the consumers and not the brands, one that tracks, locates and profiles the store at the service of the consumer as well as the ongoing with work the University of Oviedo. Empathy serves brands such as Inditex, Kroger or Carrefour to connect with their consumers, humanly through Search, Navigation and UI Componentry.

Following the three talks there was the prize ceremony. You can watch the videos and see the code of the entries for the Solid Geolocation challenge.

A big congratulations to Pablo Cañal Suárez, Gema Pozas Rico, Guillermo de Leiva Martinez, Javier Pontón González, Sonia García Lavandera, Tania Mato Martínez, and Sara García Rodriguez from teams en3b1 and es3c for winning the 2020 Solid Geolocation Challenge!

See the en3b1 app, video, source code, technical documentation, and presentation.

You can also see the es3c app, video, source code, technical documentation, and presentation.

If you missed Solid World you can watch the recording here.

The next Solid World will happen on the 6th July 2020. If you have any content requests or would like to present at the next Solid world email solid+info@theodi.org.

Articles and Talks mentioning Solid

Data privacy, trust, and smart city services by Jeff Zucker
Open University Solid initiative
CHANGEMAKERS: Davi Ottenheimer on Data Ethics and How to Save the Web by Andrew Sears at All Tech is Human
Low-code development platform Generative Objects : the journey to open source by Walter Almeida

This Month in Solid 2020-05-07

Thu, 07 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This is a monthly summary of Solid progress.

Updates

Events

Solid World is an opportunity to meet people who are interested in or currently working on Solid.

A big thank you to Christian Buggedei, Walter Almeida, Glen Simister, Manoharan Ramachandran, and Michiel de Jong for presenting at Solid World May last Thursday.

In the first talk, Christian Buggedei presented Darcy, a social network that knows nothing about you. Of note, Darcy recently won a Mozilla grant. You can find the Darcy source code here. Christian Buggedei is a founder and technology expert.

In the second talk, Walter Almeida presented GO for modeling and generating Solid apps quickly with minimum code. He demonstrated the GO connector between Pod and SPARQL endpoints using a location tracking Solid app that leverages DBpedia as a data source for countries and places. You can find the Go location app source code on GitHub.

In the third talk, Manoharan Ramachandran presented the Solid app built by Open University’s blockchain team, looking into how to support immunity passports as mentioned by the UK government daily briefings. The Solid app facilitates the instant verification of tamper-proof test results whilst preserving privacy.

In the fourth talk, Glen Simister presented the DVO Profile Manager, a public profile (or resume), which anyone can create for free, and update. DVO Profile Manager works in conjunction with the DVO Toolbar, a browser extension which allows people to like, dislike, and comment on any URL. You can find the DVO Profile Manager source code on GitHub.

In the fifth talk, Michiel de Jong presented his latest experiment, SNAP on Solid, explaining how Solid inboxes can be used as the messaging layer for Network Ledger Technology. Check out the SNAP source code on GitHub.

If you missed Solid World you can watch the recording on Vimeo.

The next Solid World will happen soon on the 4th June 2020. If you have any content requests or would like to present at the next Solid world email m.laszlo@inrupt.com.

Articles mentioning Solid

2020-05-06 What Happens When You Get Sick Right Now?
2020-04-29 New App for COVID-19 Combines Blockchain With Web Inventor’s Privacy Tech
2020-04-15 COVID-19 Antibody Test Certification: There’s an app for that
2020-04-14 Scale, distribution, and occupying Mars: COVID-19 is a catalyst

In Other News

Solid Implementations

External Grants

There are EU initiatives DAPSI and NGI Pointer that could be suitable for Solid app projects.

If you know of more grants that could be interesting for the Solid community submit a pull request to let others know about it via the next edition.

Job Openings

Digita is hiring a Full Stack Developer and a Linked Data Principal. Email tom@digita.ai for more information.
Inrupt is hiring a Technical Writer. Email jobs@inrupt.com for more information.

This Month in Solid 2020-04-09

Thu, 09 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This is a monthly summary of Solid progress.

Updates

Events

Solid World is an opportunity to meet people who are interested in or currently working on Solid.

A big thank you to Travis Vachon, David Faveris, and Astrid Gamoneda for presenting at the first Solid World last Thursday.

In the first talk, Travis Vachon from the USA presented a Solid app called Concept. Concept is a Google Docs equivalent that allows users to control their data. Travis built the concept with the aim to allow grassroots campaigns to organise themselves. Patch and WebSockets allowed for rudimentary collaborative editing, and now Travis wants to focus on embedding calendars and spreadsheets.

In the second talk, David Faveris from France presented a Solid app called Solidarity. Solidarity is a chat app built using the Shighl library, which fills the gap between the Solidarity UI and Solid Pods. David worked closely with designer Julian Cole who has been working with Shighl to allow for easy installation and minimal dependencies while working with linked data.

In the third talk, Astrid Gamoneda Arrunada from Spain presented a Solid app called OhMyPod! developed by Empathy. OhMyPod! has a file management system with the ability to add friends with personal profiles. OhMyPod! is built using Inrupt React Generator, LDflex library and solid-file-client library. Astrid also looked at rdflib, which she found powerful but complicated and somewhat slow.

If you missed Solid World you can watch the recording here.

The next Solid World will happen soon on the 7th May 2020. If you have any content requests or would like to present at the next Solid world email mitzil@inrupt.com.

This Week in Solid 2020-04-01

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This is a monthly summary of Solid progress.

Updates

Events

Solid Events are open gatherings for anyone interested in Solid; run and organised by people like you. While these events used to happen in person in cities around the world, Solid Events are moving online for the foreseeable future in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Solid World is an opportunity to meet people who are working on or interested in working on Solid.

Read more about Solid World April which is happening this Thursday 2nd at 1600 CEST.

If you have any questions for the presenters pop them in this thread.