Scope of the Solid Team

[jaxoncreed]

There’s been a lot of discussion around what the scope and responsibilities of the Solid Team are. In the meeting on April 19th, members of the Solid team will meet to decide what the scope is.

The point of this exercise is to define what is in the jurisdiction of the Solid team. Based on this we can begin efforts to find resources for and complete the items we determine are in our jurisdiction.

To prepare for the meeting, we can use this thread to propose potential areas of responsibility for the team, as well as other ideas.

I’ll list some I’ve heard below, and I'll include actions that the Solid team currently does as well as actions that we might do. Feel free to add comments of your own. If there is a specific proposal you want to put forward mark it with a “Proposal:” header.

[jaxoncreed]

Proposal: Seek grant funding for the Solid Team

The Solid Team will potentially be taking on projects that might require compensation. Having funds available will help Solid team members complete their jobs.

A high potential funding source is NL-Net (https://nlnet.nl/). They have funded many Solid projects in the past and the kinds of projects the Solid Team would pursue are in line with their goal to "contribute to an open information society."

Open Action Items:

• Solid Team will vote on whether or not to pursue this activity
• Who will write the grant an apply? (Jackson volunteers, but others could do it if they want)

[jaxoncreed]

Proposal: Maintain Solid Systems (Administrators)

The Solid team has administrative access to the following systems:

• Solid Forum
• SolidCommunity.net servers
• DNS for
  • Solidproject.org
  • Solidcommunity.net
• Netlify
• Sendgrid

It is the task of a Solid administrator to maintain these services. Currently, the core maintainer is Solid Team member, David Bowen.

Open Action Items:

• Solid Team will vote on whether or not to pursue this activity
• Should any budget be given for this task?

[jaxoncreed]

Proposal: Maintain SolidCommunity.net (Administrators)

SolidCommunity.net offers a free service to let users try out Solid. Currently, it is maintained by Solid Team member, Alain Bourgeois.

Open Action Items:

• Solid Team will vote on whether or not to pursue this activity
• Should any budget be given for this task?

[jaxoncreed]

Proposal: Make SolidProject.org RDF focused (Creators)

Full explanation here:solid/solidproject.org#783

To summarize, SolidProject.org currently uses Jekyl and Github. We want to create an RDF-based site so that we're dogfooding our own technology. Perhaps the best change would be creating one, RDF-based source of truth for information like Solid Team members, and apps listed on the apps page. We would also want to establish a technical process for people to propose new information to pages and for the Solid team to review it.

Jeff has created a demo here: https://jeff-zucker.solidcommunity.net/sp4/

Note: this change would not affect the hosting of the Solid Specification on github, unless spec members wanted it to.

Open Action Items:

• Solid Team will vote on whether or not to pursue this activity
• Should any budget be given for this task?
• Who will lead this task?

[jaxoncreed]

Proposal: Send a Monthly Newsletter

The this week in Solid newsletter keeps the community informed about what's happening in Solid. Currently, the newsletter is sent by Solid Team member, Kelly O'Brien.

Open Action Items:

• Solid Team will vote on whether or not to pursue this activity
• Should any budget be given for this task?

[jaxoncreed]

Proposal: Organize Solid World

Solid World keeps people informed about Solid through a monthly webinar. Currently, Solid World is lead by Solid Team member, Kelly O'Brien.

Open Action Items:

• Solid Team will vote on whether or not to pursue this activity
• Should any budget be given for this task?

[jaxoncreed]

Proposal: Organize or Fascilitate the organization of In-Person Solid Meetups

The Solid Team could take a more active role in setting up meetups or helping people on the ground set up meetups. It could provide educational resources and promotional support.

Open Action Items:

• Solid Team will vote on whether or not to pursue this activity
• Should any budget be given for this task?
• Who will lead this task?

[jaxoncreed]

Proposal: Upgrade SolidCommunity.net to CSS

SolidCommunity.net currently runs on NSS and upgrading it to CSS would bring it in line with modern standards. However, because of differences in the way authentication data is stored, work must be done to either transform the data, or build an integration for CSS to understand the old authentication data.

Open Action Items:

• Solid Team will vote on whether or not to pursue this activity
• Should any budget be given for this task?
• Who will lead this task?

[jaxoncreed]

Proposal: Update/Create a better experience for newcomer Developers

The necomer experience for Solid is not where we want to be. We could create detailed, easy to follow documentation in the vein of w3 schools.

Open Action Items:

• Solid Team will vote on whether or not to pursue this activity
• Should any budget be given for this task?
• Who will lead this task?

[jeff-zucker]

Proposal : develop stronger diversity outreach

Encourage diversity and inclusion by pairing with projects that are providing social benefit and which include marginalized people in key roles. Provide the projects with networking and mentoring assistance. Provide paid internships for marginalized people to participate in these projects and or in core projects which directly benefit the Solid community. Create hackathons that work on these projects. Create ongoing online meetings and symposia to network socially relevant projects using Solid.

This proposal could benefit from funds for internships, methoring, holding/promoting hackathons/meetings/symposia, hiring of professional experts in diversity to advise us on reaching out to specific communities.

[oolivo]

Proposal: Content Pass on SolidProject.org

Have the content creators take a pass on cleaning up the content of SolidProject.org. We've been kicking this can down the road for a while now and it might be valuable to have a number of the creators take a spike and propose high level changes for the group to vote and agree on and then just make the changes. We've been in analysis paralysis here for too long.

[csarven]

Proposal: solidproject.org on CSS (Administrators)

Ensure that solidproject.org is hosted from a Solid server. Evergreen issue: solid/solidproject.org#248 . Why? Because!

We should be running our main web site on solid. We can coordinate with the solid project pod..

[csarven]

Proposal: third-party social media accounts

Social media accounts provided by third-party services, e.g., Twitter (or other status updates), Vimeo.

• Should the Solid Team be controlling such accounts?
• Decide whether the Solid Team (continues to) agrees with the Terms of Service on a per service basis.
• Where would proposals for information to be communicated be made?
• Clarify when communication is intended to relay or speak on behalf of entities.
• Ensure consent to relay or speak on behalf of entities is in public record prior to communicating.
• Who communicates from the Solid Team? Can it be automated, e.g., PR merge -> use API to send out a status message.

[timbl]

There is a problem with the way this has been phrased.

There is a confusion between scope as" jurisdiction" and scope as things the team will spend their own effort on directly. The team has a high level to ensure the wellbeing and functioning of the whole movement. So the "jurisdiction" in a sense is very wide indeed. The set of things it may have to worry about is anything solid. But almost everything has to be delegated. So things like Solid World, meetups, hackathons should happen and should be in the cause of the project, and the team should keep an eye on them but the team can't be expected to micromanage the program of each event.

[timbl]

Proposal: Use the solid project pod on to run the project.

We can use Solid Org thsolidproject.solidcommunity.net
also as a Project which does as much of its work as possible actually in Solid. (including this poll for example)