What we’re about
This group is for anyone interested in building a better, decentralized web. Let's build the web we want, the web that we deserve.
DWeb is a series of events driven by local communities of developers, designers, information architects, activists, policymakers, artists and journalists toward a global goal - building a web that's locked open for good.
Mission 🚀
We want to build the web that…
… remembers and forgets.
… is a marketplace and a public square.
... is a safe private space.
....learns.
...that's magical and fun.
… has many winners.
The Web we use today is not private, reliable or free from censorship. It lacks a memory, a way to preserve our digital record through time. Decentralization offers security. By distributing data, processing and hosting across millions of computers worldwide with no centralized control, a new Decentralized Web has the potential to be open, empowering users around the globe to control and protect their own personal data better than before.
Our story has two roots - in Berlin and San Francisco 🌳
DWeb San Francisco started at the Internet Archive, with a call from founder Brewster Kahle to "lock the Web Open." (See more of our origin story at: https://decentralizedweb.net/about/). In 2016 and 2018, the group held the Decentralized Web Summits in San Francisco. From the momentum of the 2018 convening, this group formed to host monthly events for the local SF community to learn more about decentralized web protocols like IPFS, DAT, Blockstack, Webtorrents, Scuttlebutt, Holo, Solid and more, as well as applications being built on top of them.
Joachim Lohkamp opened our Berlin chapter in September 2014:
“I started the first GET Decentralized (GETD#1) hackathon to bridge the community of change-makers around Ouishare with those of tech. My guts drove me to SF to hold GETD#2 (https://youtu.be/-YgOYjOGZuQ) at the Red Victorian. This is when I met with Wendy and Brewster the very people who shared the same values and had the energy to bing this initiative to a whole level. DWeb was born.”
Today web architects, designers, artists, activists, policymakers and journalists from all over the world gather in Berlin, San Francisco and new, emerging locations around the world to learn from each other and to co-create infrastructure we can trust.
DWeb around the globe 🌍
#DWebAZ >> https://www.meetup.com/Desert-Blockchain/events/sgztmqyzlblc/
#DWebAUS >> https://www.meetup.com/DWeb-Austin/
#DWebBLN >> https://www.meetup.com/dweb-berlin/
#DWebBoston >> https://www.meetup.com/DWeb-BOS/
#DWebCamp >> https://dwebcamp.org/
#DWebPerm >> https://www.meetup.com/Permanently-decentralized/
#DWebSF >> https://www.meetup.com/dwebsf/
#DWebShanghai >> https://www.meetup.com/dweb-shanghai/
Our vision is a global network of decentralized nodes—working together, sharing knowledge, engaging local communities of all kinds to co-create the web we want, the web we deserve.
Upcoming events (1)
See all- DWeb Sept Meetup (Virtual) - AI: Ethical Paths ForwardLink visible for attendees
DWeb Virtual Meetup: AI: Ethical Paths Forward
Artificial Intelligence is here, challenging notions of what "openness" and "public" mean in the context of AI.Join us for a thought-provoking online event where we delve into the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its ethical implications. Our lineup of speakers will share their ideas for paths forward to develop AI for the public good, in service of the public not at the expense of it.
Don't miss out on this opportunity to gain insights, ask questions, and connect with like-minded individuals passionate about AI ethics at this virtual meetup hosted by the DWeb community!
CONCEPTS WE'LL COVER:
Josh Tan of Metagov on Public AI
Public AI are publicly accessible AI models funded, provisioned, and governed by a public body, especially a government. In this talk, we'll discuss some of the arguments for public AI, its relationship to the open internet, and different ways that different public bodies might set up their own forms of public AI. We'll also share work-in-progress to assemble a coalition to make public AI into a reality.
**Click here **to see the collaborative working doc on this concept.Peter Wang on Paths forward for AI
At DWeb Camp on Tomorrow Day, Peter Wang gave a provocative talk about the future of AI. Many who saw it asked that we share it more widely, and those who missed it asked: can we hear it too? So the founder and CEO of Anaconda, a 300-person company supporting data science, Python development and open source communities will bring you his thoughts on how we can ethically move forward in the AI realm.Carlos Munoz Ferrandis of Hugging Face on OpenRAIL (Open Responsible AI Licences)
Hugging Face, the leading open source AI development firm, realizes that Open Source doesn't fit every circumstance. They are proposing OpenRAIL, a widespread community licensing tool. Think of it as a Creative Commons license but for AI data.Lia Holland on the AI Day of Action so artists and creators can thrive
Fight for the Future, United Musicians and Allied Workers, The Freelancers Union, and more are organizing an **AI Day of Action **October 2 in support of reducing large corporations' access to copyright on works with AI-enabled elements—so that individual human artists can thrive. Now through October 2, they've made it easy to put pressure on Congress at this crucial moment to act before a bad legal judgment or a misstep from the lobbyist-ridden US Copyright Office makes things worse, not better, for artists and creators when it comes to AI.OUR SPEAKERS:
JOSHUA TAN is the executive director of Metagov and a computer scientist / mathematician at Oxford. He is working on a governance layer for the internet.PETER WANG is the CEO and co-founder of Anaconda, Inc. Prior to founding Anaconda (formerly Continuum Analytics), Peter spent 15 years in software design and development across a broad range of areas, including 3D graphics, geophysics, large data simulation and visualization, financial risk modeling, and medical imaging.
As a creator of the PyData community and conferences, he devotes time and energy to growing the Python data science community and advocating for increasing data literacy around the world. Peter holds a BA in Physics from Cornell University.He is also an angel investor in many DWeb technologies, Chair of the Board of the Center for Humane Technology, and the astronomer who leads our DWeb Camp Stargazing each year!
LIA HOLLAND (they/she) is a social artist, writer, and activist in the Pacific Northwestern US. After 13 years in the music industry, Lia now focuses on emerging tech, artists’ rights, and surveillance issues at national digital rights nonprofit Fight for the Future while keeping up a rigorous speculative fiction habit.
CARLOS MUNOZ FERRANDIS is a lawyer and researcher targeting the interactions between open source and ICT standards. He is Tech & Regulatory Affairs Counsel at Hugging Face, where he drives the efforts on Responsible AI Licensing and Regulatory Experimentation. During his PhD research at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, Carlos also studied the strategic use of open source licenses in machine learning frameworks, as a core competitive factor in platform leadership. He is currently working on the implementation of regulatory sandboxes in the AI context and the setting of cross-sandbox compatibility frameworks.
