Building the Decentralised Web in Canberra

Greetings from the start of Solid 2026 Hackathon: Building the Decentralised Web in Canberra, at the Australian National University. Solid is a standard from the W3C, the people who look after the web. It allows individuals to decide who has access to their data. Solid uses  Personal Online Data Stores (PODS) which hold user data & they can choose who can read it. The problem, as I see it, is what would motivate for-profit companies and government agencies, to use the Solid standard, when their business is based on appropriating user data. Perhaps some of the teams today can come up with some business models to make Solid profitable.

Come and Build the Decentralised Web in Canberra at the Solid 2026 Hackathon

Solid Hackerthon Free Tickets

Just been talking to Jess Moore, who is organizing the Solid 2026 Hackathon. This is a free event anyone can sign up for 14 to 16 July 2026 at the the Canberra Innovation Network (CBRIN) Canberra. This is run by the Australian National University's  Software Innovation Institute.  The Solid protocol (SOcially LInked Data) is a way to have secure data under the control of the owner and has been adopted as a standard by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), based on work by Tim Berners-Lee. As well as protecting personal information, this has application in military and security systems, where sensitive information needs to be provided on a need to know basis. This is particularly difficult when working with allies you don't entirely trust.

Data Drives the Smart City

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Australian National University (ANU) are holding a half day event on "Data Drives the Smart City", in Melbourne 7 May, Canberra 8 May and Sydney 10 May, 2018.

"The half day conference will explore the challenges and progress made in the technology and underpinning standards framework needed to enable smart cities. You will hear from leading experts in the field on how challenges are being tackled. ...

Our world is increasingly being shaped by the vast amount of data being produced in every aspect of our lives. As more devices get connected through the Internet of Things (IoT), harnessing big data in an integrated way can offer valuable insights that can help achieve smart city goals. This comes with important and interesting challenges to solve in order to actualise the smart city vision.Challenges include data collection, integration and privacy.

TOPICS:

Topics to be addressed include perspectives from Government, tech industry leadership, Web standards for spatial data and city sensing, technical solutions to privacy management, and smart grid futures. A panel session will discuss capacity building for smart cities.

SPEAKERS:

Speakers include Dr Ian Oppermann (NSW Chief Data Scientist), Dr Ole Nielsen (ACT Chief Digital Officer), J. Alan Bird (W3C Global Business Development Lead), Dr Mukesh Mohania (IBM Distinguished Engineer in IBM Research), Dr David Hyland-Wood (Blockchain Protocol Architect, Consensys), Dr Lachlan Blackhall (Entrepreneurial Fellow and Head, Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program), Dr Kerry Taylor (Chair, W3C Spatial Data on the Web), Dr Peter Christen (Professor, Data Mining and Matching, ANU), and Dr Armin Haller (W3C Office Manager, ANU)."

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Technical Standards for Learning Objects

The issue of Instructional Design technical standards,  compliance, SCORM, metadata tests and W3C HTML validation came up in the course I am doing. This is an area best avoided, unless someone is paying you to do it, as it is frustrating, time consuming and never ending. The Australian VET E-standards is a reasonable overview.

One general point: Most learning objects are a ZIP file which contains folders, the folders have web format  files for the content in them (HTML, CSS, JPEG, PNG). There are also some XML files with metadata (cataloging information) and quiz questions. E-books use a similar format.

The standards issue comes up with which version of file formats are used (HTML 4, XHTML, HTML 5 ...), what the folder structure is and what metadata is included. Vendors of products make claims as to what they support and educational institutions get stuck with particular products.

What I do is try to avoid using anything more than basic web formats for my educational content, so that this will more easily convert from one system to another. As an example, I use default formatting for headings and text. I do not specify the font, color, or size of text, so it will appear using the default of the system it is imported into. The result can look dull, but at least the student is likely to be able to read it and I don't have to spend hours fixing the formatting.

Just to show off, if you look through "IEEE Standard for Learning Object Metadata" (1484.12.1-2002) you will see my name it (I was on the balloting group, contributed one comment and then voted "yes"). ;-)