Qbix Platform presentation - exact script for voiceover. One paragraph per slide.

qbix.text

The social platforms we use today are all centralized. Whether it's Facebook, Twitter, Uber, or any of a dozen others, both people and organizations have come to rely on giant monolithic platforms to connect them, mediate their interactions, and trust them with their data, identity and brand.

It starts simply enough. A few smart entrepreneurs build a useful platform. They their first users, and pretty soon it becomes clear this platform is the next big thing. Investors start putting in money, as more and more people around the world join the centralized platform. Now, third party developers are invited to build apps on top of it, adding even more value to the community.

The problem is that it's all centralized. One company controls all the interactions. People build their social identity on its domain. Companies host their brand identity there too. Developers get API keys to build atop the platform. At any time, the platform could delete an account, shut down a community, or revoke API keys of a developer.

Now consider how we interact in real life. On the left, Bob and Alice are working in an office. They're thinking of grabbing lunch later. Alice and Carol plan to catch a movie that weekend. Across the street, a professor is teaching a class, where they all collaborate on a document together.

What happens today is that signals travel all the way to the centralized platform, to the company's servers hosted far away in another country. This requires scaling up, and money is spent on giant server farms. Storing all the people's information in one place attracts advertisers and government agencies looking to collect information about people in bulk.

Open source software can help change this paradigm. It's software that anyone can download and install, or even freely build on top of. Let's say a person wants to host their own website or blog. They choose their own web host and install Wordpress, an open source blogging platform. Now they can publish their own blog to their friends, or over the internet to anyone in the world. They can also install Wordpress plugins developed by people around the world, to extend their blog in new ways. The whole time they stay in control of their own data and their website.

Qbix began as a social network just like any other. We had a vision to help people get together in the real world, so we built several apps. Real-life events. Group rides. Conversations. A marketplace to buy and sell. And dating. Then we realized we built a social Platform that can benefit entire communities. So we went ahead and made it Open Source.

Suppose you're a community that works hard to organize events and programs, but you want to release an app for your members to interact with each other. You set up a server, install Qbix, and now your members can do all these things on their own time, helping unite your community. You can then install even more apps and plugins developed by others, and it all works locally on your own servers.

This leads to an organic, decentralized ecosystem. Communities host social apps on their own servers, which run Qbix. Developers build more apps, which they can sell directly to the communities without fear of being disconnected by a centralized platform. They can build entire businesses around the apps and plugins they build. Meanwhile, people can have an account in one or more community, and control their identity as they move between them.

Here's how that works. John is a member of three communities: a University, an online News Portal, and an Interest Group. In each community, he has a different user id. Now he lets his friend Greg know about his membership in the first two. And he lets his sister Jane see him in all three.

Greg visits the community's website on his personal device. It makes a request to the community's server, which sends an challenge to Greg's device and authenticates him as some user id in that community. Then it sends to Greg all the ids of his friends who are also members of the community, so he gets an instantly personal experience.

One of the coolest things about Qbix is that people's personal information stays private on their phone. For example, if Greg visits the New York Times, he will get a personalized experience, including his name, his friends, and actions they've taken on the site. However, all this information is displayed in iframes which are hosted by Greg's own app, running on his phone. He sees his own name and that of his friends, but the enclosing website and its servers don't – all they see are the user ids. After all, they don't need to know this information just to display it back to him.

If they need Greg's information for whatever reason, they have to explicitly ask for it. Here, Harvard is asking Greg for his name and relationship status, so he can meet others on their dating app.

In fact, this technique can be taken much further, allowing different parts of a website to be hosted by different providers. Here, a dental office greets Greg by name, and then loads a Google Map showing directions from Greg's home to their office. Greg shared his home address with Google, but not with the Dentist. Google can display Greg's name back to him without knowing it, also.

With Qbix, people can manage their identity across many devices, without having to remember any passwords. Greg can add his personal laptop computer by just scanning a QR code. He can use bluetooth to share information with another phone, or add it to his list of personal devices.

So now back to our local communities. Here is that professor teaching a class. But now, with Qbix running on the local wifi router, they can all collaborate on a document much faster. The signal never needs to go to a central server in California. However, once in a while an internet connection might be useful to let Greg join them from abroad.

Many local communities can benefit from having their own social networks. Buildings. Universities. Cruises. Companies. Nonprofits. With Qbix, people can Plan activities, Drive each other, Date, Buy and sell, and anything else that developers around the world can come up with. Each community is self sufficient.

Many cities around the world are building their own mesh networks to connect their citizens. Freifunk in Germany. Guifi in Spain. Digital Stewards in Detroit. NYC Wireless in New York. Red Hook Wifi in Brooklyn. Philadelphia. Baltimore. Pittsburg, and many others. And now, in the wake of the Net Neutrality debacle, Fort Collins Colorado is planning to launch its own municipal broadband.

They will need software to run on these local networks. That's what we built. Qbix Platform. Empowering people. Uniting Communities.