Introduction

We had the pleasure of interviewing Sébastien Trottier, founder of Locavora.org, a platform that revolutionizes the online sale of local products.

1. Background: 

Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you came to start Locavora.org?
What were the first challenges ?

Sebastien Trottier (ST): I have a degree in Computer Engineering and I worked for about 15 years in telecommunication systems engineering before getting involved in a local food hub as a volunteer and later as a director.

I took charge of the transactional website used by the food hub to sell online and I developed it further. I understood that local food hubs starting up were lacking in knowledge in the online sales space and in logistics in general.  

I’ve launched an organization to offer a turnkey solution to food hubs that would allow a quick launch of an online offering of local producers for a region. I’ve named it Locavora.

2. Platform Overview: 

Can you describe Locavora.org and its main features? 

ST: Locavora is a Platform-as-a-Service to quickly launch a local online marketplace of regional producers through a food hub handling the deliveries. Retail customers are the main targets but it can be used by commercial buyers also.

It is based on recurring ordering windows where the orders of the customers are bundled together and transmitted to the producers at the end of the period. The producers handle their product catalog and order directly through the platform.

Producers features: Product Catalog – inventory service – orders – customer communications

Food Hub features: Management of ordering windows – pick-up locations – deliveries – orders – membership management – promotions – loyalty programs

What impact has Locavora.org had on local producers and consumers since its launch? 

ST: About a dozen food hubs used the Locavora platform to quickly launch a local online sale channel for their producers. Consumers are given access to local food production, with a single pick-up location (or delivery method), while keeping a direct link to the producers.

Producer groups were able to quickly reach customers with online sales with pickup locations during the sanitary restrictions of COVID-19 using the Locavora service.

Interoperability & Integration

3. Interoperability Goals: 

Why is interoperability with other platforms like lachevreetlechou.ca and duterroiralarmoire.com important for Locavora?

ST: We strive to have the various food hubs exchange with each other, especially those who share producers so that the producers only have to manage their product catalog and inventory on a single system, allowing them to concentrate on their core activities.

Also, consumers will have access to more products since the offering from many hubs will be combined.

How can interoperability benefit you?

ST: Locavora is a non profit with the goal of making local food production more accessible 

How can interoperability benefit local food hubs?

ST: By giving access to more producers and more customers

Can it boost revenue?

ST: Yes, by providing access to more products to more customers

4. Beckn Protocol: 

How do you see the Beckn protocol helping Locavora achieve its interoperability goals?

ST: Yes, it provides an open network architecture with clear roles that separate customer acquisition from producer acquisition. Also, the exchange protocol is well defined, with reference implementation provided and it is already deployed on a large scale in India.

5. Solid Protocol Integration: 

Do you see any potential in integrating the Solid protocol with Beckn for Locavora?

ST: We’re planning to use the taxonomies defined by the Data Food Consortium to define the product type and facets of the products and If there are other areas of product definition not well covered by Beckn, we’ll use Solid as much as possible yes.

6. Technical Hurdles: 

What technical challenges do you foresee in implementing these interoperability solutions?

ST: Beckn involves many nodes with complex interactions – there is still much to learn and a multitude of things that can go wrong when everything is put together.

How can they be resolved ?

ST: Planning carefully, defining clear milestones, crafting automated testing, getting help fro skilled people.

The post Interview with Sébastien Trottier appeared first on Startin'blox.

Startin’Blox is a co-founding member and a technical expert of the TAMIS project – Audiovisual Traceability of distributed Secured Metadata. The European film and media industry faces significant challenges related to data management. Data loss, information incompatibility between companies, and copyright management issues impede the efficiency and competitiveness of this dynamic sector.

What is TAMIS?

TAMIS is a project spearheaded by CST, of which Startin’blox is a co-founder and leading technical solution provider, along with other key members like France TV, Newen Studios, ISAN, Procirep and CST. 

Which problem is it trying to address?

The aim of TAMIS is to respond to the data sharing issues raised in the film industry. It is implementing data interoperability solutions to address several concrete use cases in the film industry, namely:

1. The under usage of movie assets, such as subtitles, 3D models, or entire movies
2. The difficulty to identify the copyright owner of a given asset, i.e. a subtitle
3. The constant wheel reinvention by recreating subtitles, 3D models or scenary catalogs that were already created by another actor of the ecosystem, but in a way that is not discoverable
4. The overall data loss along the production line of a movie, preventing for instance to automatically list the musics played in the movie

What’s the envisioned solution? 

Solutions that data interoperability can bring to the movie industry’s pain points created interest and awareness around the TAMIS initiative. Asset owners can expect to grow their revenue by increasing the sales of their assets, while buyers will save the cost and hassle to recreate these assets. 

To maximize assets usage, assets need to be easily and intuitively found. When a broadcaster is looking for a subtitle, she should find it instantly, and she should have a simple and trustful way to contract with its copyright owner. The digital twins of these assets, or the metadata describing these assets, must be expressed in a way that is consistent and findable in order to foster their reusability.

What’s Startin’blox’s role in the project?

Startin’Blox plays an essential role in transforming TAMIS’ vision into deployed solutions in the movie industry.

Data Interoperability

One first step is to define a common Data format. Ontologies such as EBUCore already exist to align the different data formats. As semantic web experts, we’ll ensure that existing ontologies are put to use, and that the different data driven use-cases expressed above are covered by a common format any newcomer can easily align herself with. Having an industry-wide data format will facilitate asset discovery and copyright owner identification.

Open Source commodities 

The creation of open-source components and connectors facilitates interoperability among various digital solutions within the film industry ecosystem. Data converters, connectors and interface components are among the commodities we’ll produce to help the different members of TAMIS to align their digital twins with the common vocabulary, find and share assets with the rest of the movie ecosystem and easily build applications, e.g. a decentralized subtitle finder.

Creating Interoperable Applications

Startin’blox will leverage the produced digital commodities and develop interoperable applications for the different members of TAMIS to avoid reinventing the wheel and avoid re-developing a 3D model that already exists, or increase the monetization of a scenery catalog.

Startin’Blox plays a crucial role within the TAMIS initiative, aimed at addressing data management issues, information incompatibility, and copyright management in the European film industry.

TAMIS is defining common data formats, developing open-source components, and creating interoperable applications.If you have a data sharing or a data interoperability challenge, if you are in the process of creating a data space, or if you simply want to learn more, reach out to us. We’ll be happy to hear about your initiative and to share our expertise. You can contact us at alex@startinblox.com

The post The TAMIS project appeared first on Startin'blox.

Introduction and partners:

“A SOLID start for communities” : This blog post introduces a collaboration between the WIMMICS research team and the company Startin’blox about searching and querying data in a SOLID ecosystem. With SOLID, data can be distributed over multiple storages (PODs) accross multiple servers. In such a scenario, finding a piece of information becomes complex and might lead to excessive response time or resource consumption. Our work will be to study how we can reduce limiting factors to improve the performances.

WIMMICS is a joint research team between Inria, the Université Côte d’Azur and the CNRS (I3S). Its researchers are interested in the representation and processing of knowledge graphs, particularly on the Web.

Startin’blox is a company developing an innovative and ethical technology based on open standards to create federated applications based on linked data and web components. This French company has developed a SOLID compliant server built on top of a Django architecture and also provides a Web-Component based Javascript framework to ease the applications development.

The collaboration also involves the Mycelium and the Data Food Consortium projects. Both are working to make the short supply chain more efficient. These projects want to empower short supply chain actors on a digital level giving them the ability to build a whole suite of tools they control. Solid is a great choice as it can give back users the control over their data and applications through interoperability based on open standards.

Detailed project :

The objective of this collaboration is the design and evaluation of methods for search, indexing and discovery of services and datasets within the Solid ecosystem.  The Solid project, for SOcial LInked Data, launched in 2015 by Tim Berners-Lee and incubated at the W3C, proposes the specification of a new web application architecture allowing a complete decoupling between data storage and business applications. Thus, the massive deployment of applications respecting Solid standards would make it possible to re-establish decentralisation on the web and give users the possibility of keeping control of their data, in storages called PODs.  At present, the project consists of a set of ten or so more or less advanced specifications and there is a very active community working on several implementations. However, some fields are not yet covered, such as the querying of these distributed data.

Our aim is to design and evaluate methods for searching and querying distributed data in a Solid ecosystem.  The ability to perform advanced searches on large volumes of data with acceptable performance is one of the foundations of information flow and the construction of social applications.  We are investigating possible solutions to build on top of the Solid architecture capabilities for service discovery and path-finding and access to distributed datasets, by standardising the search and filtering capabilities of PODs. We are considering SPARQL traversal or decentralised query approaches to design a pilot architecture that also meets the performance challenges, for example via cache or index systems. This would allow us to support the diffusion of the Solid ecosystem on a web scale and demonstrate the deployment of real applications based on Solid.

Existing tools and first development

Solid rely on two complementary protocols that both address interoperability for web applications: the client-to-server standard and a client-to-client standard. The first one defines a set of universal rules and acts as a frame for the second which focuses on domain specific concerns. Search and discovery of data might be part of one or another protocol or both.

When we think about searching and discovering data the first idea that arises is indexing. An index is like the contact application on our phone. Using this app, it is very easy to find the number of the person we want to call given its name. Without this kind of index, we would have to find the number by browsing every number in our phone until we find the good one. While this is a very long and tiring process for an human, a machine would be faster but it would still take too long for large amount of data, like a huge public directory for instance. Indexing is a solution to make searching and discovering much faster.

Currently the only way of doing indexing in Solid is through the client-to-client standards. There is no indexing rules defined in the scope of the Solid client-to-server standard. One of the reason might be that the way of indexing things can be very specific and complex. Indeed, think of one application that wants to index real estate ads using complex criteria and calculations. Indexing in the client-to-server area would require a universal solution able to express the wide variety of indexing possibilities and provide a mechanism to the applications to let them know how to use the different indexes that have been created.

The TypeIndex project is the only active proposal for indexing data, whatever their nature. It only allows, at this time, to index data by their type. With TypeIndex you can tell for instance where some of your contacts or some of your movies can be found on your storage. The proposal lets us provide a public type index that everybody can use and a private type index for restricted access use only (owner or granted agents).

Such are the starting points we intend to evaluate and extend in this collaboration with the goal of supporting traversal query processing of Solid ecosystems.

Authors: Maxime Lecoq-Gaillard, Pierre-Antoine Champin, Benoît Alessandroni, Fabien Gandon.

The post “A SOLID start for communities”: A Startin’blox – Inria collaboration for search, indexing and discovery in Solid ecosystems appeared first on Startin'blox.

“Leading data spaces: the example of T-Systems” – In a quest to gain a comprehensive understanding of data spaces, their main players, and their future trajectory, our team has been actively engaging with key actors in the dataspace ecosystem. As part of this endeavor, our COO Louis recently conducted a captivating interview with Nina Popanton.In this third post (see “What is a dataspace?” and “What is the Green Data Hub?”) we explore the role of T-Systems in the dataspace landscape and its approach to facilitating data spaces. Our guest provides insights into T-Systems’ involvement in the Catena-X dataspace ecosystem and their efforts to expand globally while maintaining European values.

Louis Cousin: What is the relation between T-Systems and data spaces?

Nina Popanton: T-Systems is one of the subsidiaries of Deutsche Telekom, a leading telecom operator in Germany. They offer a range of services and products, including the Data Intelligence Hub and its products. During my work in Austria, we collaborated with software providers and intermediaries to enable companies to participate in the data space ecosystem. The Data Intelligence Hub, which provides – among many other products – a connector based on the Eclipse Data Space (EDC) components, is a highly innovative solution that can be customized for both small and large companies. T-Systems play a crucial role in entering and governing within the dataspace landscape, making it easy to participate for companies of all sizes, from SMEs to middle-sized and large companies. Access to dataspaces is essential for all players in the value chain  to be able to derive outcomes – like services and applications – from the activity in data ecosystems.

LC: So in practice, what does T-Systems do?

NP: T-Systems is one of the main technology providers for Catena-X, the first collaborative, open data ecosystem for the automotive industry. Additionally, T-Systems offers its wide ranging products on the platform of Catena’s operating company, Cofinity-X. However, our focus is not limited to Germany and Europe alone. The Data Intelligence Hub is collaborating with international companies to involve players from the U.S. or Chinese value chain in the dataspace ecosystem while upholding European values from initiatives such as Gaia-X and IDSA.

LC: So T-Systems is building its value proposition for dataspaces. Where are they in terms of already having a marketable product, or is it still in the development phase?

NP: The Data Intelligence Hub has fully advanced products (Connect, LivingLab, Digital.ID, Motion Data) that can be bought and used by companies. Clients can for example acquire the Data Intelligence Hub Connect product to enter the dataspace ecosystem or the LivingLab to build their business applications in a sandbox environment. With Digital.ID as one of the first implementations of the Gaia-X Digital Clearing House (GXDCH), T-Systems provides a one-stop shop for anyone seeking to be part of this ecosystem.

LC : Thank you, Nina. I wish you all the best in your future endeavors with T-Systems and the development of dataspaces.

NP : Thank you so much for having me!

Want to know more about T-Systems and data spaces? See the documentation about its Data Intelligence Hub, DIH Advisory accelerator packages, DIH Connect Products, DIH Digital ID features.

The post “Leading data spaces: the example of T-Systems” appeared first on Startin'blox.

In a quest to gain a comprehensive understanding of data spaces, their main players, and their future trajectory, our team has been actively engaging with key actors in the data space ecosystem. As part of this endeavor, our COO Louis, recently conducted a captivating interview with Nina Popanton. This post marks the first installment in a series of three, offering an insightful introduction to the broader landscape of data spaces in Europe. By delving into general reflections on the topic, the interview lays the groundwork for deeper exploration and sheds light on the evolving nature of data spaces in the region.

Louis Cousin: Can you tell us who you are and what you do with data spaces?

Nina Popanton: For a few years I am deeply involved in the data ecosystem in Europe, until recently I have been team lead of the Data Intelligence Initiative (DIO) in Austria and have developed and co-created use cases for data spaces with our network. In terms of my academic background, I’m a development researcher, which is why I approach things from a macroeconomic perspective. Just recently, I have started my new chapter as business developer for the Telekom Data Intelligence Hub (T-Systems International).

LC: You’ve been working in this ecosystem for a few years now..?

NP: I entered this ecosystem about three years ago, coming from a completely different profession. I used to consult stock exchange-listed companies and the real estate sector in their public positioning and communications. Anyways, I think that helped me to dive into the topic – I believe, specifically such companies will play a significant role in data-driven innovation.

LC: How would you describe a data space? 

NP: To me, data spaces represent a federated data exchange network where companies can share data along various supply chains and value chains. What’s important to me is that we’ve discovered a new way of sharing data, not just one-to-one, but one-to-many or even many-to-many. That’s the significant innovation surrounding dataspaces.

LC: Why are data spaces important?

NP: I believe the significance lies in the fact that many inefficiencies that existed before can now be a thing of the past. Take supply chains, for example : in industries like manufacturing, we can now have visibility and control not only over the first and second tiers, but up to six, seven or even more tiers. This allows to identify and address quality issues from the very beginning, rather than just realizing after receiving the final product. Thus, the economy becomes more efficient, quality-focused, and agile.

LC: What types of industries are involved in this ecosystem?  

NP: That’s a great question with multiple aspects. Initially, like many innovations, data spaces emerged from research. However, what’s exciting about dataspaces is that it benefits not just one industry, but every sector of our economy that deals with data – which is literally every sector. Data has become a central resource across industries, whether it is manufacturing, energy, mobility, and many more. Data is omnipresent.

LC: Are data spaces meant only for businesses?

NP: While businesses naturally benefit from dataspaces by reducing inefficiencies, it is not limited to them. Governments, public bodies, and other stakeholders can also reap the rewards. It is crucial for economic players to collaborate with political players to support in shaping related regulations that allow us to fully exploit the potential of data spaces.

LC: Thank you, Nina, for your insights and for sharing your experience in the data space ecosystem. It’s been really informative and interesting to hear about your work. 

NP : Thank you so much for having me.

The post “What is a Data space?” appeared first on Startin'blox.

Can you tell us about your role within Startin’blox and how it relates to your participation in the Gaia-X Tech-X Hackathon event?

As the CTO of Startin’blox, I am responsible for managing the technical team, the innovation and projects technical roadmaps, and monitoring tech news and progress in international standards: It thus felt important for me to participate inthis event. I participated in one Hackaton team, and we won the first prize!

Can you tell us about the main innovation trends that emerged from the Tech-x event organized by Gaia-X?

In my opinion, it particularly confirmed the importance of three standards for the DataSpace movement:

• RDF and Linked Data in general, as a standard for data structure, enabling a data-exchange protocol level interoperability
• DIDs (decentralized identifiers) to avoid the need for a single point of truth regarding the identity of stakeholders in any dataspaces but still being able to validate everybody identity, hence enabling a trust framework
• Verifiable Credentials, as a standard mechanism to actually validate the origin and the credibility of exchanged credentials/identities, enforcing the trust on a technical level

What were the most interesting discoveries you made during the event in terms of potential partners to form consortiums or become service providers for existing consortiums?

On that one I am going to agree with Alex, when he states that the Ffrench entrepreneurs present there were our best encounters. We had interesting discussions with Arnaud from Cleyrop and Quentin from CleverCloud. CleverCloud being a cloud/hosting french provider having better support of some edge technologies than our current hosting provider, I can see some opportunities to work with them in the future on specific projects.

I also met different services providers teams like Vereign and Smartsense which could be helpful in supporting the integration of DIDs/VC standards in our stack when we start the project.

You mentioned the possibility of integrating DID and Verifiable Credentials standards into our tech stack. Did you have the opportunity to explore these topics further during the event?

I was primarily interested in understanding those two standards more in depth on a technical point of view and that goal was reached. Regarding the actual integration in our stacks, I acquired a better idea together with some how-to. plan to document what I learnt to exploit it when we decide to invest on this topic.

Did you make any interesting discoveries or meet anyone who could lead to future collaborations in the Solid technology field or other domains?

Not directly, but this event reinforced our conviction that the concrete applications that users will need to execute on the shared datasets are out of scope of the GAIA-X specifications for now: this is the part where the Solid standards in general could shine. So it may still be a bit early but we are sure that the collaborations will emerge from our will to bring applications as first-class citizens to the data-space ecosystem.

What are the next objectives for the tech team in terms of evolving our framework after this event? What insights did you gain from the event to improve our service offering?

We are still lacking some investment capacities so those topics are not short-term yet, but we definitely need to at least specify or start working on integrating native support for DIDs and VC to the framework, on both the client and server side. 

We also need to build a convincing demonstration where applications are easily deployed and run on top of the data-exchange capabilities already provided by the current state of the GAIA-X standards.

The post GAIA-X HACKATHON #6 – Benoît’s Interview appeared first on Startin'blox.

Louis, Our COO, is a globetrotter who loves to rideshare. He’s used ridesharing apps all across Europe and North America, and he’s convinced that it’s the most rational way to improve our mobility and use our resources more efficiently. But there’s one big problem: these apps are dumb. They require users to manually input trip information, and drivers are bombarded with micro-decisions while navigating to their destination. In this post, Louis shares his thoughts on why interoperability is key to unlocking the full potential of ridesharing, and how it could improve his life as he travels from one city to another.

As someone who rideshares frequently, I believe that it’s the most rational thing to do to improve our mobility and use our resources more efficiently. It just doesn’t make sense to drive alone in my car with four empty seats when there are millions of other cars doing the same thing. I’ve used ridesharing apps all across Europe and North America, from Portugal to the Czech Republic, and from Vancouver to Halifax, and even down to Oaxaca. While the convenience of these apps is great, they’re still quite dumb.

The biggest pain point with these apps is that they require users to manually input trip information, including where they’re going, when they’re leaving, and where they’re willing to stop. As a driver, I’m constantly bombarded with micro-decisions, like accepting or rejecting new ride requests, and navigating to places I’ve never been before. It’s a stressful and frustrating experience that could be improved by making these apps smart and interoperable.

To unlock the full potential of ridesharing, we need to make these apps smart and interoperable. As a driver, I should only need to input basic information about my trip, like my departure time, destination, and available spots, and the app should take care of the rest. It should notify potential riders and suggest convenient meeting spots, leaving me free to focus on driving and enjoying the ride. By doing so, we can reduce the number of single-occupancy cars on the road, cut down on traffic congestion, and provide an affordable and accessible transportation option for people without access to private vehicles.

In conclusion, ridesharing is a fantastic way to improve our mobility and use our resources more efficiently, but we need to make these apps smarter and more user-friendly. Interoperability is key to unlocking the full potential of ridesharing and creating a seamless, stress-free experience for riders and drivers alike.

The post How Interoperability Could Revolutionize Ride-sharing appeared first on Startin'blox.

Can you tell us about your role within Startin’blox and how it relates to your participation in the Gaia-X Tech-X Hackathon event?

Being here at TechX allows me to seek research partners for tender applications and explore EU projects related to data spaces, as the European Commission is investing in this area. Additionally, I’m looking for potential clients among funded data spaces where we can build applications. Lastly, I’m always on the lookout for potential investors and networking opportunities. While there are no investors present at this event, there i’s a chance for introductions through other funded projects and startups. I’m keeping an eye out for such opportunities, although it may not be necessary to discuss them publicly.

According to me Ithe most relevant service provider that we met here at the event regarding a potential collaboration is called  Cleyrop. Its strategic director, Arnold Muller was here. We had meaningful discussions. 

We also discussed with i2Cat, the Eclipse Foundation, iShare and Exaion. Follow up is on going, it is a bit too soon to tell if the projects we’re discussing together materialize or not.

Any other interesting encounters ?

We had interesting discussions with  I2cat. A Research Center which works on the App Store of IDSA – maybe the soon to be App Store for data spaces. We see strong connections among their initiatives and Startin’blox’s vision. We have looked at what they do and vice versa. We have presented to each other our vision and advances. A next step is to apply for public funding to finance our R&D efforts We are exploring promising avenues.

How did your participation in the event allowed Startin’blox to become known among dataspace actors?

Overall, our participation contributes to our reputation in the ecosystem, as establishing personal connections is crucial in the business world. Companies are composed of individuals, and personal interactions leave a lasting impression. By participating in events like this, we ensure our names are known within the ecosystem.

This event allowsed us to be visible to all ecosystem players, learn new things, and discover valuable funding, event, and partnership opportunities. It’s important not to underestimate the significance of in-person participation and the knowledge gained from such events, as online interactions alone cannot capture everything and we would miss out on a lot.

I had the opportunity to meet in person with people I knew by name, such as the Eclipse Foundation, known for producing widely-used software in the ecosystem. They are an open-source foundation, and since we also develop open-source software, there’s a natural alignment. The Eclipse Foundation is one of the largest in the world, if not the largest. During our discussions, it came to light that they are connected to a potential investor. 

The Eclipse Foundation, may assist us in building that connection. They understand our goals and have provided relevant suggestions to enhance our chances with potential investors. 

Thus, the people we meet can provide immediate assistance or keep us in mind for future collaborations or projects that align with our discussions.

What insights did you gain from the event to improve Startin’blox’s service offering?

On the commercial side, we have definitely acquired valuable knowledge and identified opportunities we were previously unaware of. This newfound understanding will make us more relevant in our market approach, including knowing what resonates with potential clients and using the right language. Additionally, through networking, we have discovered project opportunities that may materialize in the coming months.

The post GAIA-X HACKATHON #6 – Alex’s Interview appeared first on Startin'blox.

Hello Antoine, how about introducing yourself first?

Hello ! My name is Antoine, I’m 23 years old and I’m a project manager at ESS France since October, on “La République de l’ESS” -The Republic of the SSE.

My role is to take care of this project in almost all the fields. In particular, I followed up on the construction of our participatory platform with Startin’blox, I feed it with content, I do a little communication and I also work with the animation collective which is the project’s management body. Apart from the platform, I also participate in developing “La République de l’ESS” in other ways: organizing conferences, interviews, creating related sites…

We have also opened a second website, on the occasion of Black Friday: www.vivresansamazon.org. We wanted to position ourselves on the subject of consumption on large online sales platforms and so we created this site which highlights the solutions that the SSE can offer to develop a more responsible consumption.

Can you explain to us what ESS is? And “La République de l’ESS”?

The SSE is the Social and Solidarity Economy, that is to say all the structures that function and act with a solidarity and/or social utility object. It includes a lot of things, whether in terms of structures (associations, cooperatives, mutual societies, foundations…) or sectors of activity (all are represented in the SSE). All this represents 2.4 million employees, which is more than 10% of the total number of salaried jobs in France.

We can therefore see the ESS as a mosaic of structures of all sizes and in all sectors of the economy. This great diversity is a strength but also a weakness: myself at the beginning I had difficulty to understand what was the ESS concretely when it gathers big mutual societies present everywhere in France but also the local recycling. It was also difficult to bring such different actors around the same table, even though they all share the same values: social solidarity, a fairer society, a more equitable economy…

The Republic of SSE is precisely a project to gather all these people around the same objective: to build and address a common message showing that the social and solidarity economy can apply its methods and values to the whole society and make it more just and sustainable. This is what our participative platform is for, because we believe that all the actors involved in the SSE have ideas to make our society progress.

The other objective of “La République de l’ESS” is precisely to succeed in bringing back all this world (structures, networks but also the individuals who compose them) around this common project and to reinforce the capacity of SSE to “make movement”, beyond the differences of activity, territory and structures.

Why did you choose Startin’blox?

The choice of Startin’blox was motivated by several things. First of all, Startin’blox is a cooperative, and therefore a structure of the social and solidarity economy. It is important for us to know that the tool of “La République de l’ESS” is itself “made in ESS”, it gives more sincerity and authenticity to our will to gather around a project that wants to show that ESS can be a project of society.

Then, the development approach of Startin’blox was also important to us: to have an open source platform, with a control and a protection of the data and a will to limit the energy consumption related to their storage… All these are values that we share and that we want to put forward.

Finally, we wanted to have an efficient tool but also very scalable, because our project will evolve over time and Startin’blox offers us this possibility.

Do you have a last message for our readers?

Go to www.vivresansamazon.org ! It’s a good way to find solutions to make purchases while reducing your impact on the environment and supporting forms of production that are much more useful to society than the big online sales platforms. And I’ve even found gift ideas for Christmas in the stores we share on the site.

Otherwise, if you are interested in ESS, you can always join us on the platform www.larepubliqueess.org, you have to create an account but it is open to everyone and it talks about all subjects. You can submit your ideas or simply follow the debates and discover the events that we organize or that we relay.

The post The Republic of the SSE appeared first on Startin'blox.

Can you go back to the origins of the web and its standards?

We are at the end of the 1980s and Tim Berners-Lee is an engineer at Cern, at a time when all researchers use computers but data exchange is quite complex. He is a data specialist who is well aware that there are data everywhere but that they are very difficult to access. He then has a rather vague idea, that of a world wide web, a global web of information. He mentions it in a funding request, on the margin of which his boss, Mike Sendall, says “vague but exciting”.
What Tim Bernard-Lee invents is technically not very extraordinary: he makes a language of tags a little simplified so that it is easy to adopt and a rather basic protocol so that a software can access documents. But what it does above all is to formalize the URL, i.e. the fact that a given document has a universal address, and hypertext, the fact that texts can contain a link to other documents. This is what creates the world wide web: it is the fact that documents can be referenced to each other, based on open standards. This openness of the standards allowed the web to impose itself in the early 1990’s compared to other alternatives, now completely forgotten. The World Wide Web quickly took hold in the world of researchers, for whom it was a common documentary space.
And quite quickly the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) was created, which was responsible for these new standards. In particular, it standardized the computer languages HTML and CSS.

We sometimes hear about the semantic web, or web of data, which would be the continuation of the world wide web of the 1990s. What is it about?

Tim Berners-Lee continued to work on the standardization of data and this work gave birth to the semantic web. It is based on a standardization of data representation. All data is described in the form of a triplet: subject, predicate, object. These subjects, predicates and certain objects have the particularity of being referenced by an identifier which is a universal URL. It allows to represent in a unique and universal way an information. So we have a data space where the data has a universal value, independently of who stores it. The web becomes a huge database.
The key standard is RDF (Resource Description Framework). Released in 2004, it allows to describe all web data. But it is not enough to use a universal identifier. It does not solve the question of how to authenticate on a server, how to structure data within a server or how to make requests. So there are dozens of standards that have been published since 2004 by the W3C. All this family of standards is grouped under the name Solid, which allows the implementation of a decentralized web, where users have control over their data, and where applications can access the data wherever they are to get all the value.

Startin’blox technology is based on the SOLID set of standards. Can you tell us a few words about it?

The work of the W3C resulted in 2016 in Solid. From the moment we agree to structure data in compliance with these standards, we see the web differently: on the one hand we have data storage spaces, on the other hand applications that can access them. Any web application can access any data on any server. SOLID is about data structure, data storage, data authentication… Its magic is to consider all these elements to make data accessible by any application.
We have therefore developed a technology that makes it very easy to build applications that respect these standards. An application can therefore connect to the data of all partners who use the same data representation.
Startin’blox makes it very easy to build applications that can access all the data in a data space, promoting collaboration between partners, without requiring a “platform” intermediary to centralize the ecosystem.

The post Startin’blox interviewed Sylvain Le Bon appeared first on Startin'blox.