Events

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.

Each month we dive into new and valuable conversations about how Solid is bettering not only the web, but your world. As our world and community begin to reopen, we see our lives differently. Technology and data will never be the same, and Solid is changing it for the better. To continue this conversation, join us on the Solid Forum. Want to participate in these conversations and present at a future Solid World? Fill out the Solid World speaker form. Lastly, the Solid Team can address any questions, comments, or concerns at info@solidproject.org.

Solid Community Survey

The first ever Solid Community Survey is live! The survey is designed to learn about the makeup of the community and discover ways to strengthen the community. Make sure to participate to have your voice heard.

Survey Link https://research.typeform.com/to/e9dsorQz

The survey will be open until Friday, June 25, 4:00pm Eastern Time.

In Other News

Community Spotlight

  • Alain Bourgeois, for his continued efforts in maintaining the codebase of Node Solid Server, helping develop the Solid Operating System, SolidOS — also keeping the solidcommunity.net server running and up to date.

  • Marrelle Bailey for her work in the community — like helping us set up a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team. And stepping up to help our community be more engaged and encouraged overall.

This Month in Solid