The Solid community is made up entirely of volunteers. This has been an advantage in that each and every community member is incredibly passionate about Solid and committed to its success. It has also been a disadvantage in that there has been a lack of organisational stewardship that has made it difficult to always be effective and accomplish our goals.

In order to address this, the Solid team has discussed whether we can get governance of the Solid community to be funded or taken over by an entity that is already funded and staffed to properly support it.

In response to this the Open Data Institute (ODI) will take responsibility for the organisation of the Solid Community. They are appropriately positioned, funded and aligned with the values of Solid to serve as the governing body for the Solid community - their long standing mission has been to build a world where data creates value while being stewarded ethically and safely.

Our hope that in providing an organisational ‘home’ for Solid, there will be an additional layer of support for you - the community - from practical support, to boosting the visibility of our mission.

Please note a Zoom link will be emailed to all bookers.

Speakers

Elena Simperl, Director of Research, ODI

Elena Simperl is the ODI’s Director of Research and a Professor of Computer Science at King’s College London. She is also a Fellow of the British Computer Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a senior member of the Society for the Study of AI and Simulation of Behaviour, and a Hans Fischer Senior Fellow.

Elena’s research is in human-centric AI, exploring socio-technical questions around the management, use, and governance of data in AI applications. According to AMiner, she is in the top 100 most influential scholars in knowledge engineering of the last decade. She also features in the Women in AI 2000 ranking.

In her 15-year career, she has led 14 national and international research projects, contributing to another 26. She leads the ODI’s programme of research on data-centric AI, which studies and designs the socio-technical data infrastructure of AI models and applications. Elena chaired several conferences in artificial intelligence, social computing, and data innovation. She is the president of the Semantic Web Science Association.

Elena is passionate about ensuring that AI technologies and applications allow everyone to take advantage of their opportunities, whether that is by making AI more participatory by design, investing in novel AI literacy interventions, or paying more attention to the stewardship and governance of data in AI.

Jesse Wright, Solid Lead, ODI

Jesse Wright is a passionate advocate for a Web that empowers individuals by giving them control over their own data. With a commitment to open-source and community-driven technology, Jesse has contributed significantly to the development and deployment of Solid.

Jesse’s work on Solid spans several years, encompassing both volunteer and professional contributions to the project. He has developed and maintained a variety of libraries essential to the Semantic Web and Solid ecosystems, including eye-js, shaclcjs, N3.js, LDflex, and Comunica. Professionally, Jesse’s industry experience includes deploying Solid Pods for Indigenous health use cases at the Software Innovation Institute, as well as building foundational Solid infrastructure at Inrupt.

As an academic, Jesse is a DPhil researcher at the University of Oxford’s EWADA group, led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt. His research revolves around designing architectures that enable decentralized agents to autonomously negotiate and make decisions, thereby establishing a logical framework for Solid. Through his academic work, Jesse has contributed to numerous W3C standards.

ODI and Solid: Building a future where data works for everyone