Hello everyone
This is the running update from the Executive Director. Have questions or comments? Suggest some added information or edits? Contact ED colin at kantarainitiative dot org.
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I'm writing this on a cold but sunny winter's day in England. Nearly a foot of snow still covers the ground after 2 days of bad weather. Of course the temperatures and snow are nothing compared to the polar vortex that our community colleagues have had to endure in North North America and the knowing smiles from our Northern Europe neighbours who live with snow as part of everyday life. 10 days ago in London, that was exactly the case, as the Gluu World Tour rolled into town and I met up with them and the Open Consent Group members for an extended
Christmas lunch. With Kantara's 2018 Events Map with its near-on 20 events fresh in our minds, it was great to reflect on the year. I had just returned from Brussels where Kantara Programs Manager Ruth and I had been forward planning Kantara Is it just Kantara or is it everywhere? I can't recall such a turbo-start to a year. Right from the first working days in January, it has been full-on, with days of packed calls, proposals, meetings and interest - from all corners of the world and in all aspects of our operations and community activity.
In Europe, much of January was taken up with adding the final touches to Kantara Initiative Europe's 2019 European Union H2020 grant funded NGI_Trust project with other consortia members GEANT, Fraunhofer, Tecnalia, EFIS and EDN. When the call opens in February to European-based entities, you'll see our KIPI R&D submission process re-purposed for use in Europe that, together with our deep relationship with communities doing ground-breaking work in the digital identity, access and privacy-preserving domains, is the reason Kantara was invited to join this consortium in an already highly successful call. Reflecting on 2018, from Kantara's perspective, it has been a very good year overall. Kantara has significantly consolidated its finances over its 2017 situation and its net membership has grown despite some churn.This first call opened February 1st and closes April 30th. Regardless of whether you are a European based individual, research institute, start-up or mature company building for the Next Generation Internet, we need your help to make it humancentric by developing scalable privacy and trust enhancing solutions. It doesn't end there however. During January, Kantara Europe has been working in two other consortia preparing bids for further grant H2020 funding.
The KIPI R&D program has seen two projects advance to final stages - Lockstep's MDAV certificate capsules project re-branded as ValidIDy, already in final Phase (Transition to commercialisation) and Exponent's MOB4PACS project using smartphones as PIV cards with NFC and BLE awaiting final clearance to begin its final phase. Both of these are stunningly concepted projects capable of significant commercial exploitation for the right investment partner and I will be happy to introduce interested parties.
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Next week I will be in Washington DC supporting our KIPI Program partners at the DHS S&T Cybersecurity and Innovation Showcase. I've planned to meet with as many of you as I know will be available. If you are in DC next week please just Contact us to reserve a meeting time. And while on the topic of next week please, please.. remember the Identiverse deadline is closing fast, so make sure to submit your presentation idea before the January 11 deadline.
It is with great pleasure that we welcome new individual member Ivan Niccolai from Australia, joining fellow Australians, the Digital Transformation Agency, Lockstep Technologies, Meeco, Unify and others.
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Program, Work Group and Discussion Group Updates:
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