Live from 4YFN: Žiga Drev from Trace Labs shares his insights

4 Years From Now (4YFN) is the place for startups worldwide to be these days. But if you can’t be there, don’t worry: DAPSI innovators are! Žiga Drev, Founder & Managing Director of Trace Labs - OriginTrail core developers (OpenPKG project), shared with us the trends that surprised him the most at this event, as well as his expectations regarding the future of the data portability field. Žiga Drev, Founder & Managing Director of Trace Labs - OriginTrail core developers What led you to attend the 4YFN event? Our company - Trace Labs - is the core developer of an open and inclusive OriginTrail Decentralised Knowledge Graph, which enables trusted knowledge exchange between organisations and individuals alike, achieving data portability, transparency and trust. We are building a global network of stakeholders in the OriginTrail ecosystem and we see the 4YFN event as an excellent opportunity to increase awareness about our technology, that is already being used by leading global organisations in supply chains, transportation, retail, pharmaceuticals and elsewhere.   How can this participation contribute to the development of your solution? We are looking to establish collaboration both with companies that seek benefits leapfrogging value creation from their data by using OriginTrail as a middleware for trusted knowledge exchange, and for creating value through the network effect. Moreover, we seek to empower developers to use the open-source OriginTrail protocol to further the capabilities of their applications or services.   What trends have you seen in this event that surprised you the most? I’m positively surprised by the steady advancement of usage of blockchain-based technology in the mainstream industries, a lot of times far away from the “hype” conversations or the public eye. These technological pillars, among which we can find OriginTrail Decentralised Knowledge Graph, are quickly becoming the ubiquitous trust foundation for many of the key fields of...

4 Years From Now (4YFN): here we go!

After a long wait, we are getting back to the physical events! And we couldn’t (re)start better: heading to Barcelona for the 4YFN (4 Years From Now) event. 4YFN is known as the world's most influential startup platform. So, this will be a brilliant opportunity, not only to promote the upcoming third and last DAPSI’s Open Call, but also to highlight the work developed by the teams already supported by DAPSI, in the data portability field. And that’s exactly what we have planned to present you. On June 30th and July 1st: Join DAPSI’s coordinator Sara Mateo at Zabala’s stand to know more DAPSI’s programme opportunities: Hall 2 Stand 2D4B Find out more about OpenPKG project (Open Provenance Knowledge Graph) at Trace Labs stand: Hall 2 Stand 2D4.1B Learn more about Rulebook project (Human-centric Legal Infrastructure for Data Portability) at Visions stand: Hall 2 Stand 2D4.2B This will also be a great opportunity to know more about two other DAPSI’s projects that will be visiting the event: EPPD project (Delta Chat E-mail Provider Portability Directory), through Merlinux GmbH, and Maemo Leste (A free and open source mobile experience). We’ve talked with Sara Mateo to find out more about what to expect!   Sara Mateo, DAPSI Coordinator Why has DAPSI chosen this event to showcase its teams and what have they been provided with for this event? 4YFN is one of the reference events for startups worldwide so it is the best scenario for our DAPSI projects to gain visibility and make promising connections with the ecosystem. Unfortunately, it was not held last year but it was a successful meeting point for innovators and investors in previous editions. In 2019, 3k startups attended, 950 investors, 23k attendees and €43 Billion Funds were Engaged. This is also one of the first physical events for a long time and we are all looking forward to...

Meet INTEROFFICE and its CryptPad project!

Following the announcement of our 2nd Open Call winners, DAPSI’s consortium member Cap Digital has interviewed Ludovic Dubost, CEO and founder of XWiki. This company was one of the winners of the Open Call with its solution CryptPad, and is member of Cap Digital's community. CryptPad is built to enable collaboration while keeping data private, restoring trust in the software. All content is encrypted and decrypted by the browser of the user. This means that documents, chats and files are unreadable outside of the session where you are logged in, even by us. Today, our main instance ‘cryptpad.fr’ has more than 200 000 users per month. There are also more than 700 other instances. In this regard, DAPSI will be the occasion for us to launch new features such as document conversion, import and export and make the product more competitive. Read the full interview here.

DAPSI Open Call #2 Statistics

The second DAPSI Open Call was open between the 20th of November 2020 and the 21st of January 2021. A total of 176 applications were submitted representing 66% of the number of applications started. NUMBER OF APPLICATIONS FINALISED OR NOT SUBMITTED Profile of applicants Applicants were asked whether they were applying as a group of individual(s) and organization(s), as a team, as a consortium, as a natural person or as a legal entity. Out of the 176 proposals, 70% (123 applications) were submitted by single legal entities, 19% (33 applications) by a groups of organizations (consortia), 5% (8 applications) by groups of individual(s) and organization(s), 3% (6 applications) by groups of individuals (teams) , and another 3% (6 applications) by single individuals (natural persons). PROFILE OF APPLICANTS Countries The second Open Call received proposals from 39 different countries. With a predominance of German (39), French (30), British (21), Romanian (16) and Italian (15) applications, followed by applications from Spain, Netherlands, Portugal, Finland, Greece, Estonia or Switzerland among others. A large number of countries were covered thanks to the communication and dissemination efforts in getting participants from all eligible countries. NUMBER OF APPLICANTS PER COUNTRY DAPSI challenges selected In this second Open Call, DAPSI allowed for applications within 3 established challenges or any other challenge within the data portability landscape. Applicants were able to select between Data Compatibility & Interoperability, Service Portability, Security & Privacy or Other. The distribution of applications received among the different challenges can be seen in the figure below, which shows Data Compatibility & Interoperability as the challenge chosen by the majority of applicants (69%), followed by Security & Privacy (57%), Service Portability (55%) and finally Other (10%). Note, the applicants could select multiple challenges. APPLICATIONS PER CHALLENGE Submission evolution The chart below shows the evolution of applications started and submitted along time, in which 56% of the submissions...

ONE YEAR OF DAPSI – WHAT’S NEXT?

As we celebrate the one year anniversary of the Data Portability & Services Incubator, we spoke with Sara Mateo, the project coordinator, about the past, present, and future for DAPSI. Sara Mateo, DAPSI Coordinator What is your assessment of this first year of the project? Definitely, it has been a special year for everybody. After the first months of project, mainly spent in preparatory actions, the COVID-19 pandemic arrived.All countries worldwide have suffered disruptions and face challenges at health, economic and social level. There is a complicate horizon and uncertainty, mainly for small companies. Nevertheless, moments of adversity are also moments of opportunity. Thus, I believe that the lockdown was somehow a time for innovators to think about new projects and dedicate time to make them real. This could be one of the key ingredients for the high participation in our 1st open call. Data Portability and Services awoke the interest of the researchers and innovators, exceeding our expectations in terms of call participation. We received 182 applications. A hard and intense process of selection resulted into 11 winning proposals with more than 1.3M€ of funding committed to support them. We officially started the incubation programme with our innovators in September. Let’s see the interesting results they deliver in the coming months! What are the lessons learnt and main achievements so far? One of the main insights after this first year and the first call is that Data Portability is a topic of huge interest in Europe. The large community of followers on twitter (with +1.000) prove it, as well as, of course, the results of the 1st open call. We have also learnt that remote work is possible. We have managed to adjust our DAPSI programme towards a 100% virtual format with successful results. Some sessions were designed to be physical, but the current...

Interview with Alejandro Russo, DPella coordinator.

DPella is part of the first and very selective batch of projects that entered the DAPSI programme. We spoke with Alejandro Russo, DPella project coordinator, to learn more about them, their technology and ambition. Can you tell us about yourself and your team? The DPella team is composed of Marco, Carola, and me. Marco and I are professors in computer science with expertise in building security solutions for data privacy. I am located at the Chalmers University of Technology, in Sweden – where I lead a team of four brilliant Ph.D. students -, while Marco is located at Boston University, USA. I have known Marco since my first steps as a Ph.D. student 15 years ago!, but it was in 2018 that we got the chance to start working together – a collaboration that led us to the decision of founding DPella. Our team is not all about pointy-hats academics, but also have an entrepreneur onboard: Carola, who was born in a family of Argentinian entrepreneurs. I have known Carola for my whole life. She is an architect who is passionate about developing ideas around software – a passion that I witnessed in the nine years that she has been running her own software company. I could not be happier with the team: we are diverse, have different backgrounds, and are 100% intellectually honest with each other. Where does your passion for data privacy come from? I have been always passionate about data privacy. It is something that originated during my early high school years during the 90s. Back then, I got introduced to the (pre-Internet) world of BBSes, which were a great source of knowledge about security vulnerabilities and techniques to create secure software. During those years, I found it fascinating to learn how to discover private information that no one...

DAPSI Open Call #1 Statistics

The first DAPSI Open Call for data and service portability innovators was open between the 20th of February and the 22nd of April 2020. A total of 182 applications were submitted accounting for 59% of the number of applications started. OPEN CALL RESULTS: FINALIZED OR IN PROGRESS Profile of applicants Applicants were asked whether they were applying as a group of individual(s) and organization(s), as a team, as a consortium, as a natural person or as a legal entity. Out of the 182 proposals, 71% (130 applications) were submitted by single legal entities, 10% (19 applications) by a group of individuals (teams), another 10% (18 applicants) by a group of organizations (consortiums), 6% (10 proposals) by groups of individual(s) and organization(s), and finally, 3% (5 applications) by single individuals (natural persons). PROFILE OF APPLICANTS Countries The first Open Call received proposals from 33 countries. It is possible to see a predominance of French (39), German (24), Romanian (23), Spanish (18) and British (15) applications, followed by applications from Portugal, Netherlands, Greece, Finland, Belgium or Italy among others. A large number of countries were covered thanks to the communication and dissemination efforts in getting participants from all the eligible countries. COUNTRY OF APPLICANTS DAPSI challenges selected In this first Open Call, DAPSI allowed for applicationswithin 3 established challenges. Applicants were able to select between DataCompatibility & Interoperability, Data transparency, Security & Privacyand Other. The distribution of applications received among the differentchallenges can be seen in the figure below, which shows Data Compatibility& Interoperability as the challenge chosen by the majority of applicants(46%), followed by Security & Privacy (28%), Data Transparency (22%) andfinally Other (4%). SELECTION OF DAPSI CHALLENGES Submission evolution The graph below demonstrates the first Open Call submissions curve along time, in which approximately 46% of the submissions were made in the...

Interview with Kathrin Knautz from Fraunhofer IAIS

Assessing the most pressing challenges in the Data Portability domain As a starting activity of the Data Portability and Services Incubator a survey was conducted on research challenges in the domain of data portability. We spoked with Kathrin Knautz, from Fraunhofer IAIS, to find out more about it. As the task leader of the survey on research challenges in the data portability field, launched under DAPSI’s project, could you explain what was its purpose and why was it so important to do it as a starting activity of the project? The aim of the survey was to assure that the relevant research domains and challenges in Services and Data Portability are addressed and assessed to contribute to the development of this field. The results of the survey form the basis of the research questions to be addressed for the 1st Open Call document. What kind of participants were you looking for and how did you reach them? We were looking for researchers from various domains such as legal analysis and compatibility, cryptography or database management. Additionally, the needs of users and industries were important aspects for us, so that the defined challenges would address their expectations and use cases. To obtain diverse answers from various groups, the survey was spread by using different channels. One channel were the internal networks of the project partners; a second one utilized expert networks. We also shared the survey on scientific events (e.g. conferences) and contacted selected experts after a previous analysis of the relevant backgrounds. In addition to the first survey, we launched a second one, which contained the same questions as the first survey, but was intended for the members of the Advisory Board. Overall, 221 participants took part in this survey of which 71 answered all questions. Most respondents work in the fields of research, development and entrepreneurship. Only a few respondents work in other areas e.g. in...

Interview with DAPSI’s coordinator, Sara Mateo, from ZABALA

Building the future for data portability Launched in November 2019, the Data Portability and Services Incubator (DAPSI) will empower internet innovators to develop new solutions and services addressing the challenges of Data Portability as underseen in the GDPR. We spoked with the project’s coordinator Sara Mateo to find out more about the programme. As coordinator of the Data Portability and Services Incubator, launched under the European Commission’s Next Generation Initiative, what is your perspective on the Data Portability regulation and its practicality? With the GDPR, Data protection is recognised as a fundamental right. Data Portability is part of this citizens’ right. It will give users more control over their personal data, to reuse it and transfer it from one service provider to another easily. However, although the purpose is clear and might sound easy, is far less in practice and there is still much work to do to really implement it. Research is needed to set the principles to allow the development of Data Portability solutions. How is DAPSI approaching the process of fostering innovation on the Data Portability field? DAPSI is a programme designed to support internet innovators contributing to the Data Portability field. We will support them with up to 150k€ equity-free funding, training in business and data related topics, coaching, mentoring, visibility and community building support. It will give them the financial support, skills and guidance needed to deliver a viable and operational solution in 9 months. With this opportunity, around 50 brilliant researchers and developers will have the resources to make Data Portability happen. Who are you looking to involve in the programme? We target internet technologists, researchers and innovators willing to make a better internet, delivering new services with potential to improve the internet infrastructure or those with the purpose to reach the market in the short run with their solutions. They can participate as natural person or legal entity, individually or...