Updates

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 feedback@solidproject.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.

Hearing from all the presenters today proves that there is so much collaboration and contributions happening in Solid. Your work in Solid matters, and if you ever want to showcase your application or work, fill out the Solid World Presenter form today. Make sure you sign up for our last Solid World for the year, Solid World November. As we move into the holiday season, we want to give the community and our organizers time to rest and enjoy their families and friends. Our organizing team will use the rest to prepare for our annual kick-off for January 2022. So continue to build, contribute, and share on Solid. We’ll see you next month.

In Other News

• Solid Networking Event – Every last Friday of the month.
• Jackson Morgan will be hosting hosting a kickoff party for Interesting Chat on 8/18 at 9am PDT, 12pm EDT, and 6pm CEST and streaming it on Twtich
• Inrupt’s Developer Workshop: https://workshop.inrupt.com/home