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 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 info@solidproject.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

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.

In Other News

Solid Implementations

  • As Ruben Verborgh mentioned in Solid World, the Community Solid Server is making great strides. Not yet production-ready, but you can follow along or contribute here.
  • Inrupt announced the Beta release of the Enterprise Solid Server, Dev Toolkit, and PodBrowser.
  • TrinPod is an industrial strength Pod provider with conceptual computing through Trinity AI Capable of handling a massive amount of data. Available next month. Sign up now for early access.
  • Walder is a content management system that can be driven by one or multiple Pods

Funding

Job Openings

This Month in Solid