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

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.

In finishing out this year and the last 2020 This Month in Solid newsletter, we are eager to continue growing and contributing in Solid and hope you are as well. So to keep the momentum, start testing out the CSS, the Inrupt Pod Spaces or any of the other great Solid applications. If you’re new to Solid, this is a great time to start building your own application/services and getting your feet wet. Want to watch the recording for this month’s Solid World? You can watch it here. As always, please send us (info@solidproject.org) suggestions or ideas for what you’d like to see highlighted in future Solid World events.

In Other News

Solid Implementations

Job Openings

  • Digita is hiring a Full Stack Developer and a Tech Leader. Email tom@digita.ai for more information.
  • Contact Inrupt careers
  • O Team is recruiting a ETL (Extract Transform Load) Engineer, a Linked Data Ontology Designer, and a JavaScript Developer. Email jobs@o.team for more information.

This Month in Solid