New university ecosystem project, Tech & Democracy summits in NYC + London, and upcoming livestream to discuss our 2023 plans!

Plus join our in-person gathering to tackle online gender-based violence, let us know how you'd build a better tech future if you had unlimited funding, and join our Jan cohort for Tech Stewardship!

🥳We are excited to release Phase One of our Responsible Tech University Ecosystem work!

Yes, this is a heavy lift. Every day we hear from students who are curious about growing in the Responsible Tech field, professors who are interested in understanding the Responsible Tech landscape and careers, and prospective students who are asking our advice about programs they may want to consider. Check our our initial work here!

Ever since our launch in 2018, we have been busy mapping the ecosystem and connecting the community (see our list of 400+ people we have interviewed/spoken at our summits). This major project, which we are releasing our initial knowledge today in hopes of gathering a substantial level of feedback (do you know of a program we are missing? Let us know here!). We’ll be tweaking, expanding, and improving this work that is invaluable for students, those recently affected by tech layoffs, and the diverse range of backgrounds interested in pivoting into Responsible Tech.

We would love your help!

“This is a critical moment of change in education, where universities have a unique and powerful opportunity to change the way the next generation of technologists view the world, and their role in building it. College students go to school looking for opportunities to succeed and flourish as they start training for careers and adulthood, but they also come to college with visions of and hopes for changing the world for the better. These future leaders will seek out and be excited by programs that foreground courses, curricula, programs, and faculty committed to guiding their visions.” -Deb Donig, PhD. Assistant Professor of English Literature, Cal Poly, SLO | Lecturer, UC Berkeley MIDS Program, School of Information

“There are so many different ways to think about the questions and issues that technology presents—they cannot be understood, or managed, with a single perspective, skillset, or discipline. That is exactly why we started Tech & Society… to be a force on campus that leads to philosophers and computer scientists working with lawyers and policymakers. That’s where the magic happens. And from what we’ve seen so far, you can’t mandate that magic.” -Evagelia Emily Tavoulareas, Managing Chair at Tech & Society at Georgetown University

🎉We are also celebrating the announcement of our next summit in NYC! Tech & Democracy: A Better Tech Future Summit will happen on March 1st.

To coincide with the release of our upcoming Tech & Democracy report on Feb 28, we are holding a summit in NYC at Wed, March 1st from 1:00 to 6:30 at the Consulate General of Canada in New York. Similar to our previous Responsible Tech Summit held with the same partner on May 20th (check our videos here, scroll down), this will be a key gathering of 120 individuals across civil society, government, industry, and academia that are committed to tackling hard problems. This way we can ensure we have a thriving democracy in the years ahead!

Are you interested in attending? Do you know of an organization or person who should be involved? Do you have a panel suggestion? We want to hear from you.

🤯We said “we’re gonna need a bigger boat.” With 541 registrations for our Nov 30th mixer in NYC, we’re going to need a Responsible Tech cruise ship.

Yeah, you read that right. Our organization is tapping into an immense desire for a diverse range of backgrounds and experience levels to come together to build community, share knowledge, and tackle wicked problems.

Be on the lookout for continued growth in 2023; we have united a broad global network across sectors, disciplines, and experience levels since our founding in 2018 and now we’re going full tilt.

Where would you like to see a All Tech Is Human host a Responsible Tech Mixer? Reach out our way and let us know.

All Tech Is Human’s founder & director David Ryan Polgar presenting at the Stratcom Summit in Istanbul on December 2nd about building the global Responsible Tech movement.

✈️All Tech Is Human has a unique approach to grow the Responsible Tech movement and tackle wicked tech & society issues. We’re spreading the word!

David Ryan Polgar, our founder & director, recently presented about our organization’s tailored “grassroots-power model” that rapidly circulates power and ideas across a multi-stakeholder and multidisciplinary network at the Statcom Summit in Istanbul. This was followed a few days later at Yale School of Management (Social Impact Week). Throughout 2023, David and other members of All Tech Is Human will be socializing our unique method for tackling wicked tech & society issues while moving at the speed of tech. We onto something special here.

A video from the presentation above will appear in a future newsletter.

Interested in having us present about the concept? Contact us! And read about our plans for 2023 below. Have an idea for us? Let us know.

👋Join our livestream on Tues, December 20th at 1pm ET to participate in our 2023 roadmap

Here at All Tech Is Human, we have a significant amount of activities across three key workstreams: multi-stakeholder convening & community-building, multidisciplinary education, and diversifying the traditional tech pipeline with more backgrounds, disciplines, and lived experiences. Throughout 2022, we have had a significant amount of growth (twelve in-person gatherings in 2022, four working groups and reports, growing our Slack community to over 4.5k). Where would you like to see us go and grow in 2023?

Our key areas of focus are Tech & Democracy, Trust & Safety, Public Interest Technology, Responsible AI, and Youth/Tech/Wellbeing. In this livestream, we will be incorporating your questions and comments as we hear from team members Rebekah Tweed, Cate Gwin, Sandra Khalil, Josh Chapdelaine, Selene Hernandez, Karina Alexanyan, and David Ryan Polgar. Oh, and we’ll be growing our team in the New Year as well.

👍We don’t just do large mixers, we have tailored gatherings to tackle hard problems. Join us on Jan 31st in NYC to reduce online gender-based violence.

We are busy at work building a 60-person gathering (panel, research presentation, mixer) in NYC on Tues, Jan 31 from 5:30 to 7:30 for those interested in or involved in reducing online gender-based violence. Earlier this year, we partnered with the United Nations Population Fund to host an online discussion around the topic and are expanding into an in-person gathering to share knowledge and promote collaboration for this important area.

Would you like to attend? Do you know of research we should know about? Let us know.

🎊Based on the interest since announcing our Spring gathering in London, we are going big.

THANK YOU for the outpouring of interest and advice since we announced planning for an early April London gathering in our last newsletter! It has been quite overwhelming, in the most positive way possible. In the next newsletter we will be announcing the location and additional information about the format.

We have a lot in the works with this! For this 200-person gathering, we will be having two panels (speech online, tech policy), 10 quick org presentations, and a mixer. While this is our first official gathering in London, we have had a significant amount of people crossing the pond for our summits in NYC, along with heavy involvement in our mentorship program, Slack, working groups, and reports.

Do you know of an organization (sorry, organisation) that should be involved? Let us know!

Are you involved in Trustworthy AI and/or the internet health movement?! If so, you will want to participate in this year’s MozFest, a large online global gathering filled with a broad range of important discussions. All Tech Is Human is partnering with Mozilla Foundation to present this year’s funder track at MozFest (March 20-24).

Part of our goal with this partnership is to bring forth ideal panel conversations for this key event in the ecosystem. What should we be talking about? In particular, we want to hear from you as we look to build out panel discussions related to the role of funders in Responsible Tech.

So, how would you build a better tech future if you had unlimited funding?

🎓Thrilled to see so many people completing the Tech Stewardship Practice Program. Register for our January cohort!

Over 400 people ended up joining our inaugural cohort for the Tech Stewardship Practice Program, and we are excited to see individuals from various backgrounds across the globe tag us on social media with their new micro-credential.

Tech Stewardship is a professional identity, orientation and practice that supports us to find opportunities within our day-to-day work to help bend the arc of technology towards good. It’s about supporting each other to better navigate the socio-ethical tensions we all face. The concept of Tech Stewardship and the “shared infrastructure” that is being created to support it has been co-created by a diverse community of leaders and organizations. All Tech Is Human is one of the core partners that is collaborating to help continue to shape and share it, starting with the 12-week online Tech Stewardship Practice Program. In addition, we recently started a channel on our community Slack group to learn more and for cohorts to stay connected.

“The program helped me see the urgency of the need for multidisciplinary discourse and the fact that I could take responsibility in actively promoting that aspect. As an academic, I feel that my hands are tied in many ways related to the work in the industry, but this is something that I could take on, either independently, via my institution, or via a volunteering community. It was important for my continuous learning, and encourages my goal of understanding responsible tech from different perspectives.” -Salla Westerstrand

“Everything from the Tech Stewardship program is an "Ah-Ha" moment, and I am glad to have joined it! With the extensive knowledge gained from this program, I feel more confident to be able to highlight and inform the challenges I'm noticing in my day-to-day work, reflect on them and also be able to take actions which will have positive effects on my career, workplace and the global tech community. I will tell everyone about this program!” -Musa Abubakar

“In my line of work, we are building a deep technology solution that stores and interacts with customers all the time. I ensure that I’m using stewardship principles in everything I do as it ensures an inclusive design that cares for all users of my technology solution. Before the course, I never felt there was a need to have such a tenet to the success of the overall platform. I think the certification of completion will make me more qualified to showcase my skills in my career!” -Kiran Kadekoppa

“This course really made me think and reflect on things differently, and what actually constitutes technology and the drivers for innovation and growth, and how we can help humanity move forward. Tech Stewardship will become more and more important - especially in light of such rapid advancements in technology and AI, and very much in line with my career focus. Great course, great outline, great community - thank you for all the effort that went into creating and running this Tech Stewardship course - I will happily recommend it to others too. It offered great food for thought and a great community of like-minded people!” -Mari Cairns

😎Cool happens in Responsible Tech

Directly related to All Tech Is Human, our Program Director Rebekah Tweed (who runs our mentorship program, talent pool, job board) was just recognized in the ‘100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics’ list for 2023! Our organization also received a nice shout-out in a Fast Company POV by Josh Hendler (Tech & Impact at Schmidt Futures) recently about non-profits as fertile ground to tackle hard problems.

There has also been a lot of our Slack community meeting up outside of our official gatherings, which is terrific! A few days ago there was a gathering in London with members from our Slack + We and AI (read below), yesterday there was a meet-up in Chicago (see pic below), and right now on Slack there is interest for a Seattle meet-up.

Collin Borns from our community Slack group organized an All Tech Is Human meet-up yesterday in Chicago

“I am organizing the Oxford Synthetic Media Forum, Oxford’s first conference on generative AI! Taking place in-person at the University of Oxford on January 26th, 2023, the event will bring leading experts from academia, industry, government, and journalism together to grapple with the synthetic future, including efforts to both embrace its potential and address its consequences.Registration is now open! Register today at bit.ly/OSMF2023”-Cassidy Bereskin

“The We and AI x All Tech Is Human London Meetup was a great success. The Science Fiction narratives exhibition left plenty to critique, particularly of the overhype of the experience, and the clichèd use of an AI assistant “ALANN” - algorithmic artificial neural network (as opposed to a non algorithmic one?) to guide us through the experience. However there was much for everyone to geek out about, and operating the warp drive engine with commentary from one of the group who is a Physics Phd was definitely an experience! The Science museum truly turns into “night at the museum” once a month with hot dog stands and discos, a perfect place to make connections afterwards between a wide range of people from very different ages, backgrounds and roles in responsible tech in the UK. Fun, inspiring and very fruitful, we look forward to meeting more from ATIH in the UK in the New Year!” -Tania Duarte

We and AI x All Tech Is Human (from our Slack) meet-up in London recently

“Trust in tech is a podcast by and for integrity and trust &safety professionals (and anyone interested in an insider’s view of the industry). We examine issues like disinformation, community building, and election integrity, showing how nuanced and complex these issues are. The latest episode is a deep dive into burnout in the tech industry, with tips for both individual contributors and managers. We also discuss the systemic problems at many tech companies that make trust & safety teams especially vulnerable to burnout. Check the Trust In Tech podcast out at https://integrityinstitute.org/podcast or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.” -Alice Hunsberger

“Just Tech released the call for applications for the second round of our fellowship. If you are passionate about creating more just, equitable, and representative technological futures, we would love to have you apply for our fellowship. Fellows receive two-year awards of $100,000 annually, robust supplementary funding packages to subsidize additional expenses, and seed funding to work on collaborative projects with other Just Tech Fellows. If you need more information, you can check out our FAQ or sign up for our info session on December 16th at 12pm. Please be sure to submit your application before the clock strikes midnight (est) on January 30th!” -Catalina Vallejo & Eliana Blam

🪑Our tech future is being decided TODAY. Grab your seat at the table!

-All Tech Is Human | Write us at Hello / AllTechIsHuman.org

⭐See all of our projects, including our new Office Hours, mentorship program, job board, upcoming gatherings, livestreams, working groups, previous reports, community Slack group, Responsible Tech Guide, our talent matchmaking service, our Responsible Tech Talent Pool, Tech Stewardship Practice Program, 500+ Responsible Tech Org List, and more.