Once again, we were blown away by the quality & diversity of Summer of Protocols applications ☀
You can find the larger accepted grants, PIGs 🐷 & POGs 🧭, here: https://forum.summerofprotocols.com/t/sop-2024-pig-and-pog-grantees/1270
And smaller ones, PILLs 💊, here: https://forum.summerofprotocols.com/t/sop-2024-pill-grantees/1271
Here's a quick overview of the Protocol Improvement Grants 🐷 Note that the handles listed are for Twitter.
1. "Autonomous Realities" by @bah_eth & @TheYisiLiu
Their work will explore what sharing/merging protocols look like for AR worlds 🤖
https://forum.summerofprotocols.com/t/pig-autonomous-realities/691
2. "Shoreline Adaptations to Flooding in Urban Waterways (SASFUW)" by Celeste LeCompte & Danielle Butler
This one will research how various water-adjacent regions plan to deal with rising sea levels and propose improvements for NYC to handle this 🌊🌆
https://forum.summerofprotocols.com/t/pig-shoreline-adaptations-to-flooding-in-urban-waterways-sasfuw/1119
3. End-to-end Encryption in ActivityPub
Straightforward but important: @EvanPro and @tomcoates will be prototyping E2EE on ActivityPub and formally proposing a spec extension to support it 🔐
https://forum.summerofprotocols.com/t/pig-end-to-end-encryption-in-activitypub/440/1
4. "Fire Protocols: Attention as Autopoietic Space"
Jiordi Rosales & Nathalia Scherer claim that California should be doing ~20x the amount of controlled burn it currently does. They aim to gather data & make a case for more burn 🔥
https://forum.summerofprotocols.com/t/fire-protocols-attention-as-autopoietic-space/624/2
We had originally planned to fund 5 PIG grants. However, we received two applications which didn't quite fit the "PIG shape" but we felt we had to fund, so we asked them if they'd agree to a more minimal version of their initial proposal, and I'm stoked to say they both did 😄
We've dubbed these "Protocol Orienteering Grants" 🧭
First up, @BenediktBusch and Rich McDowell will analyze the allocation work done by pluralresearch.org & others to propose frameworks on how to better run QV/QF programs and use plurality scores within them
Our second POG, by @DayWaterbury and @IdentityWoman, will observe the IETF's formal and informal processes around standards setting, compare these with other similar bodies, and document these in pattern-language-esque frameworks
https://forum.summerofprotocols.com/t/pig-rfc-arc-regenerative-communities-protocol/1140
In addition to the PIGs 🐷 grantees, who will be actively working on protocol improvements, and the POGs 🧭 ones , who will observe protocol improvement processes at a higher level, we have one more grant category for 2024: PILLs 💊
PILL 💊 grants provide 1000$ for recipients to create materials to "protocol pill the world". @GCCofCommons, as part of a broader effort to help bring "protocol literacy" to China, has committed funding for additional grants beyond the original SoP budget ☀
I won't tweet out the dozens of PILLs, but I encourage you to take a look at the list on the forum 👀
The submissions range from fiction, to short films, memes and more!
If you want to follow along for the summer, the best place to do so will be the forum. We're starting the 2024 season with a @cdixon Q&A by @vgr later today:
Next week, we'll have the official kickoff of the 2024 research program 😄
