Webinar with the European Commission and AP Community

just btw:
The Council of the European Union confirmed that none of its IT systems store content outside the EU.

And I had asked if that includes Great Britain :wink:


So: The instances would really need to be hosted within the EU.

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Super!!   :smiley:

There is a pre-meeting on Monday 10am CET between the EC and the NGI0 consortium to understand better why the EC wants to meet. I like that focus on EU principles, how we meet them now, and how we might evolve that further.

As for planning meetings and such I’ll leave @how (and @rhiaro if time permits) in the lead. I am just the enthusiastic helping hand providing my (hopefully) useful 2cts wherever I can :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Thanks @Sebastian. It makes sense, of course. I was mostly looking in the (still small) list of instances for a reasonable sounding domain name + no. of accounts for purpose of just demonstrating the fedi app. For real dogfooding purposes it might be best if SocialHub had their own instance, and use it to e.g. also announce SocialCG meetups.

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Great to have you all on this!

@CristinaDeLisle can you figure out an angle to highlight where ActivityPub helps with EU principles and values (including GDPR), and where it’s challenging or worse (e.g., right to be forgotten, etc.)?

@Sebastian they may be hosted in the EU but they remain with very complicated and binding contracts with M$ and Gaggle… Did they mention that?

@aschrijver thank you for your presence. Since you mentioned schemas, can you describe some you have in mind? Maybe using the diagram feature of HedgeDoc or images.

@cwebber I see on the pad you’re up for a presentation on the 26th? I hope we can work altogether preparing it.

There should be an easy way to use Discourse’s RSS to repost to the Fediverse. It would be better than nothing. If we can setup an instance on activitypub.rocks we could have a ‘socialhub’ account for all new things, and one per category for example, plus one for meeting announcements (or groups, etc.) – but maybe that’s for later.

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Hello! Yes, I will get back to you with a list to consider with main areas for the discussion with the EU principles. :+1:

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Thanks @how. I’ll track notes and discussion in EC Webinar Prep: ActivityPub beyond Microblogging --> Exploring Domains and move results to the Pad.

(This is a wiki post that anyone can edit, by clicking the ‘Edit’ link in bottom-right corner)

ActivityPub vs. Solid Collaboration

In Webinar 2 on Protocols it would be great if we can present how AP & Solid can be used to complement each other. There are discussions in both communities (SocialHub here and in Solid here), and we also have actual projects that discover how we fit together…

@Alice and @calummackervoy are both working on Startin’blox that implements ActivityStreams (AP too?). Maybe you’d like to get involved and see if and how things might fit into the event?

Then there’s SemApps (See Solid discussion) involved with both Solid and AP. I (@aschrijver) will post to Solid forum to see if there’s interest.

And of course we have the great OpenEngiadina by @pukkamustard

@rubenverborgh this is a good chance to explore a bit further, after earlier mutual intent for coop :blush:


Please edit this wiki post to add more ideas for presenting collaboration between Solid and AP communities

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I have created a square version of the Forum Header I made earlier, that can be used in toots to the fediverse:

Inkscape SVG:

fediverse-european-commission-event-2021-square

PNG:

fediverse-european-commission-event-2021-square


Update: A new version that highlights the cooperation with NGI0 …

Inkscap SVG:

fediverse-european-commission-event-2021-square2

PNG:

fediverse-european-commission-event-2021-square

Old header SVG:

fediverse-european-commission-event-2021

New header SVG:

fediverse-european-commission-event-2021-2

New header PNG (white background, 5px padding):

Slide header:

ec-event-header

Slide header PNG (898 x 378):

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(This is a wiki post that anyone can edit, by clicking the ‘Edit’ link in the bottom-right corner)

Fediverse and NGI Zero Discovery

Highlighting how NGI0 has boosted great fediverse projects and how they interact now and in the future, to innovate the web and evolution of the Internet into an Internet of Humans.

Most informed on the subject are @j8ter and @how

Funded projects

The following fedi projects have already received funding:

  • [TODO]

Information collected here is added to NGI0 European Commission / ActivityPub Liaison - HedgeDoc pad as needed.

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The list is at Scaling Up Cooperation - #5 by how but is incomplete.

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I just sent a first series of toots to announce the event to the Fediverse. Boosts much appreciated, of course :hugs:

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I made some announcements to various Matrix groups, and Gerben of ReDecentralize pointed me to their presentation Follow us OFF Facebook — workshop at the 2020 NGI Policy Summit — Redecentralize.org. He may have tips and such, so I invited them to hop onto the forum.

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That looks great, thanks! Will use this on the NGI.eu-site as well (I think the square PNG works best). Thanks for the toots also, I will boost and share them where I can! :ok_hand: :ok_hand:

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Wonderful, we have been in touch with Gerben for some time, he’s very informed, both on the technical and policy-level (which is kind of rare in these topics), so having him in the loop is great.

Reflecting on the suggested titles for the webinars…

Webinar 1 - Introduce the decentralized social media protocol ActivityPub

An addition?

Webinar 1 - Introduce the decentralized social media protocol ActivityPub and its role on the Fediverse

Webinar 2 - Investigate the need for online federation and how ActivityPub can bridge to other decentralizing communities

There seems a bit too much emphasis on inter-community collab. Most close to AP is the Solid community (in part that is also because we have Linked Data in common that we build on). For other protocols we currently limit to building Bridges.

More interesting imho would be a focus on evolution of the specs. What do we have now (a bit a deep dive) and what is being researched. Then we come to Spritely Project and DREAM / openEngiadina (and this is then a natural bridge to Solid).

Then to match that to needs that live among the EC participants, indeed, and that provides great input to the workshop.

Title-wise, maybe…

Webinar 2 - Activitypub, the EU and the future. Federation in-depth and role in the decentralized technology landscape.

Workshop - Demonstrate how national and European administrations can implement ActivityPub

For the third title “implement” means coding, right? We wanted to address deployment & application first. Participating in the fediverse and such.

Workshop - Demonstrate how national and European administrations can benefit from current apps and make ActivityPub their own

or simply:

Workshop - Demonstrate how national and European administrations can adopt and benefit from ActivityPub

Thanks for the suggestions, I updated the announcement (thankfully have access to the Wordpress-instance for ngi.eu again) → NGI breaks down walls: decentralize social networking with ActivityPub - Next Generation Internet

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@cwebber is suggested speaker for the second webinar, but i think that might be hard to attend, timezone-wise at 10am CET …

Just 2 cents based on experiences:
The shitpost surrounding of pleroma does not encourage the EU.

And based on assumptions:
I doubt that the EU is keen on playing Trump and informing citizens in short messages.
Short notes are one reason for inaccurate information.

@how About peertube livestreaming, it seems to work for digitalcourage –
@chpietsch@digitalcourage.social is the expert there.

So:
Maybe it would be a thing to tell them:
Everything is voluntary, not much means and if they give some money not to the monopolies they get software which would be really beneficial to the EU and these softwares do not go closed source to a huge media publisher.

And about Hubzilla:
It might make sense since it is running on ZOT to showcase the ActivityPub plugin.
Did anyone compare Hubzilla and Friendica?

And my favourite ActivityPub software which I think would be mindblowing to them is

Tried to raise awareness for NGI0 and ActivityPub (and more money for nlnet) during the whole EU Digital Flagship week and beyond at e.g. Masters of Digital, digitaleurope summit, Open Source Policy summit, OFE lounge, Lobbying of internet giants webinar etc. pp.
by being “the normal one” and “bombing” the sidechat and Q&As :wink:
Got personal reponses and DM attention from the organisers and had so nice conversations.
Encouraging everyone to do the same in the future …

When I attended these events, I thought a lot about the roles and tasks which ActivityPub could serve within the EU.
And so, e.g. the producers for an EU plenary session became a Persona for redaktor.

Maybe we can sketch out a VISION for the perfect ActivityPub EU softwares in the webinar?
And I mean ActivityPub “CONFORMANT” softwares, the part of the spec. where you can read “the entirety” 3 times!

I try to share the redaktor findings (maybe useful for the people who got any EU funding [we failed 11 times in 2 years]) because the surveillance monopolies get nearly all the EU money …


The European Union has 27 member states [wishing the best to my scottish friends, so let’s think 28 while also thinking of Catalunya and solidarity for Roma and Sinti and … but anyway] …

In these 27 states

  • 24 official languages exist
  • more than 50 languages are actively spoken
  • 3 writing systems are used [Latin, Greek and Cyrillic].

The whole EU public presence is pretty much multilanguage or audiovisual (or both) !
All the live content is translated simultanuously and the terps play a vital and critical role in the administration with great responsibility.

Sometimes it is a legal requirement that the content exists fully translated in 24 languages !
Frequently even press conferences about the same topic are held in multiple languages [e.g. attended DE and EN for #DSA]

The most important properties to us [which is used in 0 (zero, null, zéro) of actual ActivityPub softwares] are the multilanguage properties:

nameMap
summaryMap
contentMap
preferredUsernameMap
etc. !!!

In the spec, it is this nice NOTE in the BOLD GREEN BOX saying

“Properties containing natural language values, such as name, […], make use of natural language support defined in ActivityStreams.”


A plenary session consist of the Event with multiple Actors (also Groups) and has multiple Collections (private and public).
A common public collection would contain the video recording for https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu plus related press releases, stockshots, photo news and documents or articles related to the topics of the session. As well as maybe the polls.
So e.g. Video, Audio,Image,Document,Article,Question come together.

We can go one step beyond and e.g. cover the protocol in a OrderedCollection with interjections (like the famous ones by Martin Sonneborn [wink smiley]) with the Mention type …

We see, it is mostly important that most ActivityPub properties can have multiple values !!!
And it is also important to have a nice way to “share” the type Collection


So, we have nice multi-language and -values support in the protocol but due to the lack of funding not in the software.

Now the producer creates the Event and it could be type: [Event, Service] because if it an Actor then it can e.g. Announce “Plenary session foo in 10 minutes” and relay comments etc.

The politicians Join when they arrive at the seat.

When the session ends and the video recording with all the multilanguage captions and transcripts etc. arrives, the producer Announces it to the Services audiovisual.eu, documents.eu which can present it in different visual formats without loosing all the related content.

Hm, seems it would be nice to have an ActivityPub CMS but the EU does not fund CMS, sad :rofl:

There is a small multilanguage section which is not even directly in the protocol but thanks to the magic of the Linked Data core is easy to solve:

It is about

• time based content
in conjunction with
• multilanguage texts

You ask “What?”
Simply said e.g. the captions for the plenary session video …
Where I click “Deutsch” when I am to tired or lazy to follow :slight_smile:

So, anyway, redaktor wants to go one step beyond and find a “more native” way to do time based content (anyone remembers the magic of Mozilla Popcorn Maker by that time?)

If e.g. an Audio has startTime and (duration or endTime) and it has attachment:
If the attachment has the same within these constraints, it is shown at this time below the Audio, so when you speak e.g. about a Place, you can also show it to your listeners.

Seeking opinions here

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This is an important point to raise, I agree. Supporting multiple languages should be inherent to any federating tech and even more so in the European/EU-context. I can imagine that this is a good point to raise in the second webinar, once the introductions are out of the way and we go into the nitty and gritty (and underfunded, like you mention).

This might be good for the second webinar also, once we have covered the overall goals and approach of AP in the 1st gathering. @how what are your thoughts on this?

Hi @CristinaDeLisle, Joost here from NLnet/NGI Zero, thanks a lot for your contribution! I would say we can continue to stick to the written materials, but of course we could have a chat sometime soon (maybe coming Thursday or Friday) to meet up and talk everything through (if I remember correctly @how invited you to present during the 1st webinar).

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