Solid Symposium 2023

How personal knowledge graphs could revolutionize our lives

Imagine all the information relevant to our lives available on a fingertip. Not data splattered among apps, siloed into proprietary interfaces, but knowledge serving us in our daily tasks and challenges. In this session we are exploring how a digital future using personal knowledge graphs to our benefit could look like.

Starting with a quite technical introduction on how we see Solid as it is today, we will then build on that foundation to talk about what Solid can do for you. We will show how we use Solid and SolidOS already today to organize the things relevant to our life and work. What is possible today? What pieces are still missing to revolutionize our lives? What may the future of Solid-based solutions hold for you? We are curious about the experiences and expectations of the session participants and look forward to a interesting discussion session.

Program

14:00 - 14:35	A Vision for personal knowledge graphs
14:45 - 15:20	An oversimplified introduction to Solid Pods
15:30 - 16:00	Coffee break
16:00 - 16:45	An insider's view on SolidOS
16:55 - 17:15	Verifiable Personal Knowledge Graphs?
17:15 - Open end	Open Discussion

Detailed program

A Vision for personal knowledge graphs

Angelo Veltens

In our daily lives, we often turn to apps to get information and connect with others to gather knowledge. But this process can be unnecessarily complicated because our data is stuck in different apps, making it hard to share or combine with each other. In this talk, we'll explore the idea of personal knowledge graphs as a way to solve this problem. They allow us to easily access and combine information from various sources, making it easier to acquire knowledge.

I will provide some real life examples of how personal knowledge graphs could be used, such as:

Shopping for all the ingredients needed to cook a recipe
Adding a new window to the roof of a house
Preparing a party with friends
Planning a family holiday trip

By comparing these examples to how these tasks are currently done, we can envision the benefits and potential of personal knowledge graphs in our daily lives.

Slides

An oversimplified introduction to Solid Pods

Christoph Braun

For those developing Solid Pods it may be very clear what a Pod is and what components it is comprised of. But to those just starting out with the technicalities of Solid, the concept of a Pod may be confusing and existing codebases seem huge and hard to understand. In a nutshell - it is quite simple ...

This talk aims to provide a technical foundation for discussion of the current state of Solid, what it may become and what may be build on-top of Solid.

Slides

An insider's view on SolidOS

Angelo Veltens, Timea Turdean

In this talk, Angelo will show you how he uses Solid Pods and SolidOS to manage and organize his life. Solid allows him to store all his personal data and use it to create a knowledge graph that helps him in various ways. He will demonstrate how he

uses his Solid Pod as a document management system
organizes data in a graph
plans meetings and collaborates with others
keeps track of the things he buys and owns

We will examine the creation and utilization of a knowledge graph using the data stored in a Solid Pod, as well as the integration of linked data with traditional documents such as PDFs.

We have showed what a Pod is and that all your data is on the Pod. Great! How can one make simple use of the data, say for editing it? Or how can I simply visualize some of the data? Timea will present Solid Forms, how they work and how to make use of them.

By the end of the talk, you'll have a good understanding of the power of Solid Pods, SolidOS and Solid Forms for personal organization and knowledge management.

Slides

Verifiable Personal Knowledge Graphs?

Christoph Braun

Christoph's WebID profile says: “I am a research associate and PhD student at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).”
How do you know, this is actually the case?

Or in other words: How do you know that information from someones personal knowledge graph is true? You don't.
But you can choose to trust in the information anyway, if you are convinced enough.
This may be the case if the statement is digitally signed by someone you trust to provide correct information!

In this talk, we will dive into verifiable personal data using Linked Data Signatures and Verifiable Credentials. What's more, there is a demo you can try out yourself! And, of course, there will be enough time for discussion what this may or may not mean for Solid.

Open discussion

You, the other participants, Timea, Angelo and Christoph

We are curious: What are your thoughts on personal knowledge graphs and Solid? What do you think is missing? What do you not want to see or happen? What are you looking forward to?

All Solid Symposium 2023 sessions