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

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The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate announced that three startups, Transmute, mesur.io, and Neoflow, have successfully completed real-time tests based on standards for exchanging supply chain data with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.. The significance of this achievement extends beyond the borders of the United States as they have implemented technologies compliant with the Verifiable Credential Data Model (VCDM) of the World-Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Linked Data (JSON-LD), and Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) from the W3C.

This is excellent news for Startin’blox, which sees the U.S. Department of Homeland Security using the same data standards as the French startup, actively working on data interoperability. The use of the Verifiable Credential Data Model (VCDM) is a key element, as it enables the verification of data reliability. Linked Data in the JSON-LD format plays an essential role by providing an API format for data exchange. Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) are highlighted for authenticating users within a peer-to-peer ecosystem, an essential feature for data spaces where users can have their user account on the server that they trust.

It’s also a victory to see that Data Spaces are a global movement, extending well beyond the borders of the European Union. This trend resonates with similar initiatives, such as Beckn in India, and the work carried out by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). We are living in exciting times as the data interoperability market experiences significant growth, offering numerous opportunities for Startin’blox and offering always more Data Sharing opportunities for companies.

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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.

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The project’s final event was held during the Diesis Digital Day, where experts and professionals gathered to discuss the opportunity of data spaces for SSE. The event focused on exploring how data spaces can be leveraged to stimulate growth, innovation, and social impact in the SSE sector. Guests of the Diesis Digital Day included organizations such as CECOP-CICOPA, ALL DIGITAL, Tazebaez, Plastic Jumper, and Confcooperative Bergamo.Discussions centered on several key themes, including the transition to a green and digital economy, the 2023 Skills Year initiative, the results of the DSEtools project, and policy recommendations to promote the development of digital tools and data spaces for SSE. Participants explored the potential of data spaces to facilitate the interoperability and sharing of data between different SSE actors, ultimately promoting greater collaboration and innovation within the sector.

Startin’blox, in collaboration with Diesis, celebrated the successful completion of the Erasmus+ DSEtools project, which aimed to support and promote Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) in Europe by exploring the interconnections between SSE and data spaces. Throughout the project, participants raised awareness of the positive social impacts that social economy data spaces could have.

This project established the foundations for a long-term collaboration between Startin’blox and Diesis. Next steps include experimenting with a data space with social economy actors.  While the specific topic for this experimental data space is still to be defined, future of work was presented as a potential promising avenue for exploration and discussion.

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At Startin’blox, we are interested in interoperability not for its technical aspects but for the impact it has on organizations, on the autonomy of users, on the sovereignty of states and organizations, and on democracy. That’s why we co-signed an article in Le Monde.
In 2020, during discussions with Sharers&Workers, Cap Digital, #leplusimportant and other organizations, we considered that this is a major subject, eminently political, and that it must be dealt with in a political manner and not left to be dealt with by technicians alone on technical considerations.
We have therefore undertaken the writing of this tribune, in order to show that this subject affects actors from all levels of society: companies, communities, unions, associations, activists. We all have a collective interest in ensuring that the web functions smoothly, where data can circulate freely and not be monopolized by a few monopolies, and this is what we want to convince with this initiative.

Read the article

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Within the Startin’blox cooperative, we are confronted with many issues related to open source and the decentralization of our tools and organizations, and we want to think about it with peers. It is in this context that we are launching a series of learning sessions.

The principle is to always start from difficulties encountered in the field of the cooperative in order to produce exchanges, content and relevant and singular reflections.

These events will be either community or public, and we will try together to raise the state of the art on how to ensure the flourishing of Open Source projects.
The objectives

Find solutions to the internal problems of the cooperative related to the open source and decentralization logics of our organization.
Find contributors and partners
Make great contributions to the world of Open Source

For whom?

The answer is again in our cooperative experience.

Here’s who we think of when we run these sessions:

A person coming to train to join our teams
Internal producers who continue to train
Our clients to help them facilitate their tools
Our members so they can make informed choices for the cooperative
All the members of our ecosystem, because we share values and therefore the same problems.

When does it start?

Right now!

The first session was about co-funding solutions in open source

Making a single organization fund an open source development that benefits everyone may seem unfair. Sylvain founded Open Funding to address this issue. The Open Funding experience lives on in Startin’blox.

We have some thoughts on the financing of our components that we would like to confront to our ecosystem. We know that there is not only one answer but a diversity and we would like to share the feedback.

The valorisation of the first session is already online.

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Is there a topic you would like us to explore further together?

Sessions are coming up on community animation and on the profession of product owner animator.

To signal your interest or propose a session, tell us by filling out this form!

Participate in the sessions

Whether you are a producer within the cooperative, a customer, a user, a member of the cooperative, a friend of the cooperative or a stranger who feels close to our topics, feel welcome!

We look forward to seeing you there!

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The subject of co-financing in open source is a broad topic that concerns actors at all levels and often joins the issue of financing free software in general. The purpose of this first session was to meet between actors concerned/interested by this issue and to identify lines of interest to specify the next sessions.

The different means of co-financing identified

The existing

Fund The Code events (formerly “Hackadons”)

Since 2013, several evenings have been organized to allow participants to distribute sponsor money to open source projects. It’s a friendly event format that allows to meet maintainers of beautiful projects, a format that everyone can take advantage of.

Bastien Guerry gave us some feedback on this topic, which I’ll come back to in a future article!

Subsidies

Whether state or regional, there are many opportunities in public funding (stimulus plan, Innovation, Incubation …). There is money in digital but perhaps a difficulty to find it.

How to make these opportunities more visible? What are the constraints to access this financing system?

Could we imagine contributing collectively to a shared monitoring of these opportunities?

Other solutions that we have not yet explored

• Philanthropy funds, although the economic implications are questionable.
• State calls for tenders or calls for common ground.
• Individual and organizational membership in a project
• Pooling of IT budgets of different organizations with common needs
• Mutualized trainings on the development of free tools
• Referral of experts in free software
• Sponsorship from large companies

What remains to be imagined ?

The Quebec Free Software Fund

This is an initiative of Drave Développement, a non-profit organization that proposes to meet the digital needs of Quebec through the opening of data and the promotion of free software in order to achieve digital sovereignty.

Noting that the digital sector is very profitable and that solutions using free software are not very present in Quebec, Drave proposes that the community should have an economic lever to finance companies and projects that use free technologies and that contribute to the vitality of the ecosystem.

The Fond du Libre Québécois is an investment fund dedicated to the financing of free software solutions with competitive returns to investors that allows to federate the efforts of the Quebec government, companies that develop and/or exploit digital commons as well as the civil society. For example, this fund will be used to start the virtuous circle of mutualized tenders by freeing up the resources needed to carry out large and lucrative public mandates.

In order to ensure the ethics and success of the projects that will benefit from the fund, Drave is putting forward a series of structuring initiatives: lobbying activities to ensure that free software is considered favorably, visibility of commercialization opportunities for free solutions, promotion of structuring projects carried out in collaboration with several stakeholders, definition of criteria and evaluation grids for ethical digital investments.

The initiative is inspiring and should be shared widely to feed the international ideosphere on the issues of digital sovereignty, communities of librist entrepreneurs and their prosperity.

The open roadmap

An Open Roadmap is a concept (we talk about it here and the wikipedia page on the subject does not exist yet…). It is a roadmap for a tool that is built by its various users according to their needs, expectations, constraints and priorities. In fact, the evolutions of the tool can be financed by several stakeholders. As you can see, this is a complex system to set up.

What if we developed a tool to manage the complexity of the system?

At Startin’blox and Open Food Network, for example, this system is currently implemented through a spreadsheet and the animation is either asynchronous or done during open forums.

Open funding had thought about the spec of such a tool, we continue at Startin’blox but as Rachel Arnould says, making a tool is not the most complicated thing. The most complicated part is its adoption by the community. Before putting a tool on the table, you have to make sure that the community is ready to co-finance it and to spend time discussing the common specifications (a nice challenge in itself). There is a strong human investment to be made in fostering this mentality. A tool is helpful but will not facilitate the pooling of resources if potential customers and users do not agree among themselves or do not want to spend time on it.

Sometimes our community doesn’t have money, how do we do it?

In the case of software solutions for associations or training organizations, it can be complicated to imagine a common pot by the users. The free price is a possibility but our system is not made for this kind of logic and this can be a blocking complexity.

The Meta Platform

We could imagine a cross between Kisskissbank, and the Gitcoin platform dedicated to free software on which everyone could express needs, improvements whether it is users or developers. This idea is very similar to the Open Funding project and to many others in fact. In this respect, it should be noted that the main difficulty encountered by Open Funding to keep the system alive was its dependence on rare profiles that require ultra transversal skills. The famous “5-legged sheep” that Sylvain mentions in the bonus of this podcast.

There are interesting initiatives to explore in the DAO (decentralized autonomous organization), a concept that is very present in the blockchain world.

An internal currency for the free software ecosystem

Jean Parpaillon mentioned this idea. In the world of blockchain, we have seen startups betting on a common currency. The players who contribute to this system will be able to pay themselves either in cash or in tokens (the unit of the common currency). This creates an emulation because the agents have an interest in increasing the value they share. The system is thus more resilient because if one organization in the ecosystem goes under, the others have not lost everything.

Of course, this includes a lot of economic notions, but it is an interesting approach because sharing a value is an incentive to cooperation and mutual aid.

Does the free currency model look like this (no link between fiat currency (EUR, etc) and June, is this a problem?)

The closest model is probably the S.E.L. model, with the difference that the use is not limited geographically, but for a specific business (creation of software under free license).

Endowment funds

If financing a feature is easier in terms of communication and user satisfaction, it appears that it is the actor at the end of the chain who recovers all the value generated. Who finances the software stack? SSh, postgres, PHP?

The difficulty of thinking about crowdfunding for these projects could make the creation of an endowment fund for these shadow technologies relevant.

A subject to be explored…

Pooling developers within kittens?

What if instead of pooling money, we pool developers? Some actors sometimes need specific skills on specific subjects. Difficult to recruit internally or to find the right freelance. Open source developers could be full-time in structures like the CHATONS and made available according to modalities to be discussed by the different actors who need this resource. Thus we would capitalize on their experiences and make them available to a larger ecosystem that is united around values.

Transversal issues identified

Free projects from the shadows

If the crowdfunding solution can easily be envisaged to finance specific functionalities, it is difficult to set up for the more complex technical stack to finance.

Pierre Ozoux of IndieHostersr: “We host open source software and sometimes we feel a bit of a pirate because we don’t always pay back to these software but we don’t have a lot of money either..We contribute to them in other ways too, but it’s always hard to assess a fair reciprocity.”

Another problem he raises is the fact that it’s the last player, at the end of the value creation chain, that picks up all the slack…

Pierre Ozoux of Indieshoster: “We have already taken Nextcloud support. This represented half the resale price. We didn’t like the business relationship very much. It’s a bit frustrating. Over the 6 months, we asked one question, but outside of support, so it went unanswered. Also we wonder, in our stack, we use Nextcloud but in fact it’s PHP, there is also Redis, Postgres, ssh, and why finally we would give half of the value creation only to Nextcloud? There is already not much left for us, but then for the rest of the stack … That’s a problem. Basically, we don’t have the same values, and we don’t work with them anymore. And with onlyOffice, when we pay, the software is no longer free, so the issue is resolved.

The profile of the product owner animator

As I mentioned in the passage on the meta platform, there is a recurring problem in the free software world. The developers who develop free solutions are not necessarily product owners, project managers or community leaders.

However, to make a software solution live, they have to get money, make the solution known, listen to users’ expectations and feedback, prioritize the evolutions, keep the solution coherent.

Open funding offered support for developers to bring their software solutions to life. Today, Startin’blox is trying to draw the contours of a product owner’s job. In this context, we organize learning sessions on this subject. You can register via the form at the end of the article.

The cohabitation of commercial and voluntary community contribution

How to raise money without losing your community? Should we separate the free contribution part from the commercial part? Jean Parpillon gave us a feedback on the Mandriva company. The issue is so rich that it will be the subject of a dedicated article. If you also have experiences to share on this subject, you can share them in the form at the end of the article.

Sharing resources

• ng in Public : The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software par Nadia Eghbal
• L’appel à commun, système qui vise à dépasser l’approche limitante des appels à projets par Movilab avec une proposition de méthode de financement participatif dans le cadre de l’appel à commun de l’ADEME.
• Un joli focus sur le logiciel libre en Nouvelle Aquitaine
• Un compte commun sur Liberapay, une plateforme de dons récurrents axée sur le financement des communs numériques, pour financer les développeurs de Liberapay
• BCDevExchange, une plateforme de mise en relation entre vendeur et acheteur en Colombie britannique pour permettre au gouvernement de fournir de meilleur service numérique.
• Le guide d’animation des projets open sources
• Pour comprendre l’intervention de Pierre de IndieHosters, sur la répartition de la valeur encaissée sur les outils open source utilisé dans nos créations logicielles, une présentation du Fosdem 21 : Does open source need its own Priority of Constituencies? pär Tobie Langel, recommandé par Bastien Guerry.
• Gitcoin est une plateforme qui vous permet d’être payé pour travailler sur des logiciels open source.
• Le financement quadratique, méthode mathématique pour financer des communs de façon démcratique
• Transcendance, un outil porté par Place Libre pour l’émergence de modèles économiques d’intérêt général.
• Open Collective, une plateforme numérique Open Source qui permet à tous les citoyen·ne·s de créer un « collectif » en ligne pour répondre à une problématique sociale et/ou environnementale sur son territoire par la facilitation de collecte d’argent.
• Cobudget, une plateforme en version beta pour allouer des fonds de façon collaborative et transparente.

It’s up to you to sketch out the next steps!

Following this session, I tried to identify your various topics of interest and the themes to explore. On this basis, I am offering you a small consultation to help me identify the next topics for the learning sessions.

Also, we are giving a lot of space to spontaneous proposals and initiatives. The “Free Expression” field is there for that.

Thanks again to all participants! I count on you to make this learning session initiative work in your ecosystems in order to enrich these exchanges.

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Contextualization

Startin’blox wants to contribute to the emergence of the European instance of the Solid project. The first step is to be able to meet between the members. But it would be a shame not to leave a trace of these meetings. I have therefore decided to document them in small articles so that the whole community can benefit from them, hoping that this approach will inspire others and thus give more visibility to the European Solid ecosystem and our desire for cooperation.

Who is Digita?

Digital is a Belgian company that supports organizations in the Solid ecosystem. I met Lauro Vanderborght, founder of Digita,  who has been working for 3 years on this project with a particular focus on the financial aspects and business development.

The company is supported by 8 people and aims to provide support to organizations that would like to improve their personal data management by taking advantage of the opportunities opened by the Solid project. Digita wants to be a gateway for this exploration through its Customer Data Platform, Digita Connect..

Developing trust with all stakeholders

As the Solid project is still young, Solid expertise is still scarce within organizations. Digita wants to be a gateway to help organizations discover their use cases, take away their worry and help them to take part in the Solid ecosystem. In this perspective, Digita provides videos explaining the Solid project and guides its customers to build their proof of concept, or even build it with them.
They provide a platform, Digita Connect, to take their first steps in exploring the possibilities of Solid.

Digita aligns itself with the agnosticity of the Solid project by giving visibility on possible technical solutions without taking sides.

Transforming the constraints of RGPD into opportunities

With the advent of DPMR, organizations face a big challenge in terms of data management. There is a problem to be solved and Solid can provide relevant answers. So there is a big challenge to explore the legal aspect of this new data infrastructure management.

This is one of the projects that Digita has tackled by producing a first report that explores the legal aspect of data reuse with Solid. Their work is publicly accessible and the team is open to any proposal for collaboration on the subject. Thanks to them for this work that benefits the entire ecosystem!

Our ideas of collaboration

Digita brings a great added value to the European Solid ecosystem by exploring the legal aspects of the project and providing organizations bricks to understand the opportunities of Solid.

We could consider sharing its popularization bricks.
Also, as a gateway for organizations, Digita could also be very interested in having a better visibility on European actors.
In my dreams, I would like to have a portal of organizations specialized in the Solid project with their values, their reason of being, their strategy, their use case, their service, their technology and their future challenges. It would be a real gold mine to explore possible synergies.

And you ? What do you dream of ?

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How tomorrow, the web will be different : A day in the Solid world

This article presents the future of the web by describing one of my probable future days :  A day in the Solid world. I hope it helps you understand the changes that are coming, measure how significant they are, and why we are convinced at Startin’blox that we are changing the world by working on it. Let’s start!

7h52 – Game is on! A day in the Solid world !

I wake up in a pretty low tech fashion, as I usually do not set an alarm clock. The body just switches ON when it’s fully charged. I like to start my day by reading the news, to get a feel of what is happening on Earth and beyond.

For years I read BBC news via their mobile application but thank God that’s long gone by now. Don’t get me wrong, BBC news is a great source of information but now, all the news agencies are interoperable. There exist dozens of news reading applications, most of them open source and financed by the newspapers themselves.

The one I’m using allows me to filter out articles that have been crowd rated as fake news or biased. Editorialization is crowd sourced, and allows me to find the best articles in the world for every single topic, sometimes a Medium blog post by a researcher, sometimes a small opposition newspaper of the local country, often still, a well respected newspaper which have remained the best media to cover geopolitical topics which I enjoy following.
The comments section, also moderated by the community, is often a useful source of complementary information.

Each news producer can reach a broader audience than before, and therefore monetization issues of the online press is almost a topic of the past, you just have to be relevant to your audience and they reward you for it.

8h46 – Hey, it seems I’ll see my girlfriend soon

My girlfriend lives in Lyon, and I was planning on visiting her next weekend, so I posted it on my SOcial LInked Data (SOLID) profile online. In 24 hours, the 3 transport companies I gave access to that data made me 15 offers. The most practical for me was the train departing at 11am this Friday. It fitted well with my agenda, I love the train because it is calm, reliable, wifi is good and I’m not very good with smalltalk.

However I strongly hesitated with the electric car sharing offer with two climbers on Friday afternoon. Being able to control my data and who has access to it allowed the transport companies I trust to know I’m in love with climbing and a staunch ecologist. I must admit meeting cool climbers for outdoor sessions is always attractive, and an electric car feels almost as good as the train regarding my carbon footprint. I passed for this time though: I have work to do but the offer was more than tempting.

9h15 – Katia seems pretty excited

I meet my roommate Katia in the corridor, she is heading to work, a big smile on her face. She is delighted to tell me that tonight, she is meeting for the first time this handsome guy that the latest dating app in town recommended to her. The previous dating app she was using ended up bothering her because they were also using her data to display targeted ads between swipes and she got tired of it, so she revoked its access to her data. .
The guy she is meeting tonight seems to have it all for Katia: they both practice yoga, he speaks both French and Russian fluently, he uses alternative medicine, they listen to the same songs, like the same movies, practice bachata and both share a passion for art and design.

I think I’d be freaked out by so many things in common with someone. As a matter of fact, dating apps never really worked for me anyway. Let’s see if it does for Katia or if the perfect date she envisions right now only exists in her mind. I can’t wait to hear how it went tomorrow morning in the corridor. She has just left for now, and I’ll start my working day. I work from home today.

10h30 – I only did my duty, Sir…

A client of mine calls me to renew the web app hosting and maintenance contract we have together. We said we’d call each other to sift through the few hiccups that happened over the past twelve months and ensure the coming year would run more smoothly. I was a bit nervous but all in all though, she seems happy with the service.

She is working for Coopératives Europe, a european association fostering inter cooperations between European cooperatives. She concludes that, since they were able to interconnect their members more seamlessly online via Solid, commercial activity within the federation has increased by 27%, and trust towards the federation has greatly increased. Members know they are fully autonomous, each have their own applications, workflows and practices, and can still interact and eventually contract with the other members of the federation online.

12h30 – Data is power

Lunch time with Sylvain, my all time partner. He seems to have had yet another short night. The guy can’t sleep for 2 weeks now, but he doesn’t talk to me about it, and I don’t ask. I think he knows I’m here to help if it is really serious, below that he doesn’t even bother mentioning it. Hopefully the storm will pass.

We meet to discuss the positions of the company regarding the current reforms the government is planning regarding freelancers representation and pensions. For a few years now, economical actors’ opinions have been taken into account. Each company references the URL of its server and its public key on a private blockchain launched by the government to guarantee the identity of the voters.

For each consultation, companies can then publish their position on their own server. That allows their customers and shareholders to have a public list of the positions taken by the company, and the state can collect opinions and votes about a given proposal while leaving the political discussion closer to those affected by it. Such processes were enacted a few years after the yellow vest movement blocked the country for several months, revealing a widening rift between the ruling class and the rest of the population. People still complain now, but at least we can govern and move forward, the “Macron is an asshole” excuse doesn’t hold anymore, plus the guy isn’t even in power now… It is harder to be against a political decision when you know most companies and citizens backed it directly. The legitimacy of the decisions is stronger this way, people feel more listened to.

16h45 – Data is health as well

I’m calling Sophie to know what is up with her leg. She tore her hamstring while we were surfing together a few weeks ago, and she was seeing the doctor again yesterday for a final round of exams to figure out if she needs surgery or not. Unfortunately, it turns out she does. Her tendon is totally detached from her pelvis, and it needs to be attached again if she wishes to run again like a gazelle. 

As she stores all her medical data on her SOLID data safe online, doctors were able to assess she had a high chance to be allergic to the general anaesthesia shot she was about to be given, based on the fact that both her parents are. They’ll use an alternative product then, and Sophie won’t throw up while waking up… Not a great victory but… better still.

20h00 –Time to eat! 

I check on my food app. It is run by a company that indexes all the food options in Paris from restaurants, cantines, homemade, bakeries, supermarkets, food trucks. My criterias are simple: eating vege for less than 8€. It seems that tonight, the local school canteen has some extra eggplant lasagna they’re giving away almost for free, and I’m buying!

20h45  –  Time to unwind – it was A day in the Solid world

It’s been a long day, and it is time to chill in front of a good documentary. Because my friends let me access their public streaming history – without porn basically – I could pick between “Men of Rock” and “the Social Dilemma” based on their recommendations. I went for geology today, and it makes me want to climb what I’m seeing…

I hope you enjoyed this ride into the future of the web. We are fairly close to such a healthy relation with technology. Interoperability of data to retain control over it is a big part of the path. Want to react or share your own vision? Feel free to contact me: alex@startinblox.com.

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 Interoperability for inter-cooperation : The cooperative movement is embodied in its cooperative associations active around the world, at local, national, and international levels. Cooperative associations pursue two main functions: promoting the cooperative model (toward policy-makers and the general public), and stimulating innovation among their members (through the pooling and sharing of knowledge and resources).

Concerned to stimulate innovation and spread the cooperative model, cooperative associations conduct educational programs for entrepreneurs. Cooperatives Europe and the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) support their members to launch and consolidate such programs by stimulating the sharing of expertise and resources. Together with their members and stakeholders, they produce and share free open resources, consisting in methodologies and documents, for promoting and supporting cooperative entrepreneurship in their respective territories.

Yet, today’s web services have poorly contributed to make cooperative resources available to the general public. To communicate with their members and stakeholders, they rely on traditional solutions such as emailing and posting on websites. Sadly, this content remains marginalized by search engine’s algorithms, driven by profit-generation logics favouring large-scale commercial content over small-scale knowledge generation.

It is time for the cooperative movement to emancipate from technologies which fundamentally discriminate cooperative values and identities. Expecting Google to disseminate cooperative resources is a losing battle. Instead, cooperative associations shall establish a web infrastructure able to connect cooperative actors directly to their stakeholders — without relying on competitors. In other words, cooperation among cooperatives must be implemented on the web.

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