Operation Plankton Bloom | Open Data Initiative
Mission
Active community outreach to open data platforms & potential open data publishers in order to create a sustainable current of fresh data to act as foundation for the evolution of higher trusted Ocean Compute-to-Data algorithms and to attract more people to the Ocean ecosystem.
Name of Project
Operation Plankton Bloom
Website
Proposal Wallet Address
0x01e66950353400E93AEe7F041C0303103E2ef5Ab
The proposal in just one sentence
Operation Plankton Bloom opens a dialogue with data scientists and open data enthusiasts outside the crypto space to evaluate the value proposition of the Ocean datamarket and to attract new publishers and a stream of fresh data thus growing the ecosystem and contributing to new use cases, i.e. Compute-to-Data on open data for business.
In other words: Plankton is the primary food source for life in the ocean. Phytoplankton creates the necessary biomass on which zooplankton 
Project Shrimp and Compute-to-Data) feeds. The zooplankton is eaten by fish (Data Consumers) and whales (Investors) that bring more life from other parts of the ocean. Plankton therefore plays a key role in creating a sustainable life cycle for the Ocean of information. In the ocean it accounts for up to half of global primary production. It provides the primary food source and the base of the oceanic food chain.
Categories describing the project
[1] Outreach / community (grants don’t need to be technical in nature)
[2] Unleash data (and new use cases)
What problem is your project solving?
-
We need more data. In order to foster sustainable growth the Ocean ecosystem needs a wide choice of renewable food sources (plankton / data). Right now the beta market does not supply the rich variety of food sources that is needed to attract a fair share of the future global data economy. The current amount of data is not enough to attract a high number of algorithm developers, consumers and prosumers.
-
We need more people. In order to attract and develop more complex lifeforms (publishers, data providers, developers of algorithms for Ocean Compute-to-Data and investors) and to enable more complex life cycles we have to reach outside the speculative bubble and community of Web3 enthusiasts the crypto market in its early stage is. Right now those connections are rare and new currents that carry fresh data towards the ocean data market have to be created or we risk to stay in a pool.
-
We need more use cases, i.e. Trusted Compute-to-Data Algorithms. Some might have the expectation that this will miraculously just happen on its own. It will not. An attractive habitat and climate for all kinds of participants has to be created by the community and connections to other rich ecosystems have to be created by actively reaching out to other communities. To really create a flourishing ecosystem of highly valuable data the very much anticipated privacy-preserving Compute-to-Data feature is needed. However, the market needs to test thoroughly, experiment, look for flaws and gather experience so that it becomes safe to use. The beta has told us a lot about the time it takes to find and cure flaws and to establish basic reputation. Only when it becomes safe and trustworthy the really valuable data will come to the market. This requires education, good examples, best practices and a lot of training (
Project Shrimp ) and a lot of this can be achieved using open data and data from open science. Open data could be the endless supply of plankton that powers the first life cycle of the Ocean Market. In the ocean it accounts for up to half of global primary production. It provides the primary food source and the base of the oceanic food chain.
All of this requires patience, dialogue, active listening and years of hard work and the ability to endure setbacks. These qualities are sometimes rare in the financial world and crypto space, but they are highly available in this gem of a project and the wonderful and dedicated Ocean community.
Description of the project / How does this project drive value to the Ocean ecosystem?
Operation Plankton Bloom wants to be a first small step in the direction mentioned above. By seeking out active contact to the very active open data and open science community in Germany and elsewhere in the world it inquires about values, favorable conditions and (legal) requirements of the open data and open science community that have to be met to be an attractive space for data providers, consumers and prosumers.
By making contact and listening to other communities, Operation Plankton Bloom advertises the Ocean Protocol and the Ocean Market, collects valuable feedback and hopefully establishes a first small stream of visitors, new data and new publishers. This benefits the evolution of higher life forms (trusted algorithms, consumers, prosumers) and attracts even more life (investors, business partners and software developers).
Compute-to-Data would very much profit from open data as it is available in a wide variety, has a lot of proven use cases for many businesses and many already developed algorithms that could be ported to the Ocean market to work on other data sets. However, there is not much experience on how to deploy privacy conserving trusted Compute-to-Data in the Ocean market and open data offers a very safe option to further develop this critical feature of the market before the big fish enter the market.
If members of the open data and open science community are willing to do a test drive and publish on the Ocean market parts of the granted funds will be made available to interested persons to lower entry barriers and assistance will be given during the first steps, based on the rich experience of the past weeks and months. Another platform, more important than this proposal, that is highly beneficial in this regard is Project Shrimp .
In the worst case scenario we will learn about factors that actively hinder the participation of other communities which would be a very important step to address these concerns or obstacles.
Open Data in Business: Open Data Analytics and Data Journalism as a Service will play an important role in the development of the future global data economy. New startups are just the best way to establish a sustainability loop and to develop new and sustainable business models. The Ocean Market could very much be an incubator for this as the short but very fruitful history of the past few weeks in the market has shown us.
Open Data in Science: Scientific work is very much hindered by the fact that reproducibility as a central scientific value is not rewarded. However, the Ocean Market does just that. There is competition like the European Open Science Cloud, but it is not that easy to use and has a long road ahead. We are still very early.
The Ocean market has very much to offer. A new rapidly evolving space, instant valuation, dynamic pricing, a dedicated community with a wide variety of skills and hunger for new applications and risk tolerant investors/capital to fund new business models.
All three; the open data, the open science community and the Ocean Market could benefit from each other, why not give it a shot?
What is the final product (e.g. App, URL, Medium, etc)?
As I am not a developer the result will not be an application, but rather answers and statements gathered throughout a hopefully fruitful series of dialogues. These shall be presented and disseminated during the ongoing process as blog posts and shall be collected in what could be a Medium article (or other format if it is prefered by the community).
If interest has been stirred assistance will be given and funding will be made available to new participants to create new datasets in the market. Interested persons will also be directed to the open arms and the guidance of the - much more important! - grant proposal of the Ocean Academy. Please ensure the Ocean Academy and the wonderful Project Shrimp gets funded, as it is one of the most important projects in this space, at least in my opinion. Why? It brought me to this space because I have seen one person sharing his certificate on twitter. It works and a funded Ocean Academy will do tremendous work for this space!
Project Deliverables
- At least four blog posts will be published on the website https://data-brokers.de/ or maybe even better, Medium.
- At least one summarizing article will be published on an open platform, i.e. Medium.
- The results will be continuously covered on twitter with the hashtag #opendataocean
- Hopefully a number of new datasets can be made available by new participants of the market
- New participants to the Ocean Academy can be attracted and maybe become future Ocean Ambassadors that are actually rooted outside the crypto space
Project Deliverables - Roadmap
- December and January will be used to identify a number of institutions and individuals that play an active role in the open data and open science community as active contributors
- January and February will be used to get in contact with institutions and individuals
- March and April will be used to summarize the results and hopefully end up in a small number of data sets available on the Ocean market. This might very much depend on the ability to perform Compute-to-Data, maybe not.
Any prior work completed thus far?
- A number of important actors and data providers have already been identified.
- A number of research papers, publications and sources of information have been gathered and sighted.
- A website is in place
What are key milestones and the target dates for each milestone?
- By the end of February at least 15 new potential publishers should have been identified and/or interviewed and made contact with.
- Relevant social media interaction with members of the open data community shall be initiated by the end of February under the hashtag #opendataocean.
- By the end of February / in March at least 3-5 new data pools should have been created by new members of the community.
- By the end of March / April a summary of results should have been published giving valuable feedback on opportunities and obstacles that need to be addressed.
- If there is special interest from the open data and open science community this could lead to a strategy on how to further actively address this community in a virtual roundtable.
The Team
Just me. A dedicated problem-solver and Ocean enthusiast that believes in an inclusive decentralized global data market for everybody.
Kai Meinke, Product Owner, Economist and Global Citizen from Kiel, Germany
Some background with potential relevance to this grant proposal:
Co-Founder of the YES! - Young Economic Summit. The YES! – Young Economic Summit is the largest German school competition on economic and social challenges for teams of the grades 10 to 12 working with over 200 researchers of the leading economic think tanks from all over Germany. While no longer active full-time in this project I remain connected to various research institutions and researchers.
Worked as project manager or the ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, the world’s largest research infrastructure for economic literature, in the Area of Digital Information Infrastructures. It is a mission of the ZBW to make information accessible and visible for all. Open Science, Open Access, Open Tools and digitization of science make a large part of the ZBW’s vision and mission.
Worked as project manager for the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, one of the world’s leading economic think tanks, building the Global Economic Symposium. The Global Economic Symposium (GES) has established a significant international reputation as a research-centered, solution-oriented high-level conference and has attracted Nobel Laureates, Heads of State, Ministers, CEOs of major multinational companies, heads of international organizations, leading representatives of civil society institutions, and many other major decision makers and thought leaders in the past years. It is now called the Global Solutions Summit.
Isn’t this just one drop in the Ocean?
I can not answer this. This is a rather small operation compared to other current and potential future grant proposals that might be out there, but it might be an impulse, an idea and maybe one of many first steps in the right direction. You decide.
If you do not vote for this proposal I do not take it personal. If you have a better idea, I hope I motivated you to bring your own proposal forward to the Ocean DAO. This lives from a high number of ideas and contributions and I am very excited to see even more proposals here in the near future.
