Responsible Tech Summit! Mixers in SF & NYC! Upcoming livestreams!
Plus Sherry Turkle, our venue for September, roundtable this Thursday, and more.
🥳 Our Responsible Tech Summit: Improving Social Media will be held September 14th in NYC at the SVA Theater!
🎉 We’re thrilled to announce the Responsible Tech Summit: Improving Social Media will play host to a number of high-profile panels and fireside chats. It’s an honor to welcome Sherry Turkle, who will be in conversation with Julie Scelfo!
Sherry Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT, and the founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. Her previous books include the New York Times bestseller Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other; The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit; Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet; and Simulation and Its Discontents. Her newest book, The Empathy Diaries: A Memoir, ties together her personal story with her groundbreaking research on technology, empathy, and ethics.
Julie Scelfo is an award-winning journalist and Founder & Executive Director of Get Media Savvy, a nonprofit working to establish a healthy media environment for kids and families. The organization is catalyzing a nationwide embrace of 21st-century media literacy survival skills using an array of pop culture strategies. She is also a parent of three who believes in prioritizing people over technology.
👍 All Tech is Human’s Responsible Tech Summit: Improving Social Media will bring together 275 people across civil society, government, industry, and academia to tackle the issue of improving social media in order to propose actionable solutions that provide a better path forward. This summit is being presented in partnership with the Canadian Consulate, which will be our third collaborative summit.
📚 This gathering is also timed around the release of our flagship annual resource, the Responsible Tech Guide, which incorporates the learnings All Tech is Human has accumulated from interacting with thousands of people across the globe with our regular summits & mixers, Slack community of over 5.5k members across 68 countries, job board and talent pool of more than 1K, large mentorship program, expansive working groups, interviewing hundreds of individuals in our reports, and more. You can find our overview here, and all of our projects here.
🤔Do you know of a person or organization should be involved in this key gathering? Let us know through our interest form. All talks will also be recorded and shared out to the community. Our non-profit is uniquely set up to affect positive change regarding our social media future. Since 2018, we have intentionally developed and grown a powerful global, multistakeholder, and multidisciplinary network to understand values and best practices, shares ideas and resources, and co-create a tech future aligned with the public interest.
🤯 Our upcoming mentorship program will have over 100 mentors, helping elevate new voices in the Responsible Tech movement!
Yes, you read those numbers right—we received over 700 applications for our free six-month online mentorship program in just two weeks. While our application process is now closed, those interested can sign up for our waiting list to be notified about a future cohort. Question about the program? Ping Sarah from our team.
In addition, in our next newsletter we will open sign-ups for our upcoming Responsible Tech Guide working group. Our working groups are an excellent opportunity to build community, learn from others, and help craft a crucial resource that is instrumental in growing the Responsible Tech movement. Groups work asynchronously across multiple time zones, along with regular online check-ins and discussions through our Slack.
🙏Our ability to carry out free activities and resources such as our Responsible Tech Mentorship Program is made possible through our support from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, Schmidt Futures, Ford Foundation, and Project Liberty. Thank you!
If you have been reading our previous newsletters, you may be noticing that we are growing rapidly. Our aim is to find additional support that will allow us to expand our team and capacity for carrying out activities that are elevating new voices, diversifying the “tech pipeline” for greater economic mobility and thoughtful consideration of technology, and strengthening the overall Responsible Tech ecosystem so that we can better tackle wicked tech & society issues. Have an idea for us? Please ping founder & director David Ryan Polgar.
🎉 We’re gathering 250 people in San Francisco on August 2nd!
In our last newsletter, we announced that we were planning a gathering in San Francisco for the summer. Thank you to everyone who reached out to share their ideas, venue suggestions, and organizations that should be involved. Today we are announcing that our Responsible Tech Mixer + Panel will be held in San Francisco on Wed, August 2nd at Manny’s from 6 to 8:30pm! Our theme for the panel conversation is centered on reducing online harms, and the gathering is being supported by Crisp, a Kroll business.
We have space for 250 people, so sign up today (it’s free) before we hit our capacity. Know of other people and organizations that should be participating in this gathering? Let us know and share the link with them.
🔴 Attend our livestream this Wednesday on Building a Career in Trust & Safety!
You’re invited to join us for a Responsible Tech career pathways panel discussion on how to build a career in Trust & Safety, featuring Alice Hunsberger and Pearle Nwaezeigwe, moderated by Rebekah Tweed on May 24th at 1pm EDT!
This is part of our University Network livestream series—we encourage all students, upskilling practitioners, and career changers who are interested in launching a career in Trust & Safety to join in and participate in the discussion. We believe that we can build a better tech future by diversifying the backgrounds and disciplines involved in the process, which involves strengthening the field of Trust & Safety. Other key areas we focus on include Responsible AI, Tech & Democracy, Public Interest Technology, and Youth/Tech/Wellbeing. [Check out our Knowledge Hub]
Alice Hunsberger is VP of Customer Experience at Grindr, the world's largest social media platform for the LGBTQ+ community. She specializes in creating a human-centered user experience through policy development, cross-functional collaboration, and sensitivity to a diverse and global user-base. She heads up the global CX team which includes policy, customer support, customer experience and user insights, content moderation, and trust and safety. Pearle Nwaezeigwe is a Nigerian lawyer with 5 years of experience in tech policy and public affairs. A graduate of University of Lagos and UC Berkeley, she has represented companies like TikTok and Twitter externally and worked with policymakers and private sector partners on issues related to tech-relevant public policy concerns.
👋 Join us this Thursday for our roundtable (virtual + in-person in NYC) with special guest Patrick Lin!
We like to bring people together here at All Tech Is Human. Good things happen when more of the community is woven together. Friendships form, resources are shared, collaborations happen.
On Thursday at 4pm ET, we will be finishing up our three-part series in partnership with Civics Unplugged around Creating a Youth-Led Responsible Tech Movement. We will be welcoming special guest Patrick Lin, author of Machine See, Machine Do, who will be sharing his insights at the intersection of Responsible AI and youth. His research focuses on technology law and policy, specifically artificial intelligence, privacy, and surveillance. He has worked for a variety of public interest organizations, including the ACLU's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project, Federal Trade Commission, and Electronic Frontier Foundation.
👋 Join us on May 31 in NYC! Our next Responsible Tech Mixer is focused on algorithmic bias and its impact on communities of color.
For our next Responsible Tech Mixer + Interview Series in NYC, we are collaborating with Consumer Reports and the Kapor Center to bring together a broad mix of 200 people to celebrate and screen Bad Input (short film series), have a panel conversation, and build community. All of our mixers + interview series fill up and reach capacity, so sign up today.
Our panel conversation, which will also be filmed and released in a future newsletter, will feature Nabiha Syed (CEO at The Markup), Crystal Grant (Technology Fellow for the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project; featured in Bad Input), Lili Gangas (Chief Technology Community Officer at the Kapor Center), and moderator Brian Vines (Deputy, Special Projects at Consumer Reports). Read the bios of our panelists here and join us on May 31st in NYC!
🥦 Let’s talk about healthy digital spaces!
🤔What if instead of our software being built for scale, it was built like a dining table — for connection?
Our monthly livestream series (Digital Playground) in collaboration with New_ Public exploring healthy digital spaces continues to roll on; the most recent livestream featured Anil Dash (check out the video above), and on Thurs, May 25th from 3:00 to 4:30 PM ET we will welcome Bhavik Singh—the founder of soft networks, an exploratory design and development studio that likes to make social software that feels like a long, slow walk in the woods. Join us for this exploration of software and space to create your own. Register and participate!
🌱 All Tech is Human’s home base of NYC is growing stronger. Come welcome Rebekah Tweed to NYC at our upcoming Responsible Tech Mixer on May 31st. And be on the lookout for more announcements in the coming newsletters about projects and activities designed to elevate new voices in the Responsible Tech ecosystem!
👋 Please welcome Laisha Ozuna, one of four summer interns working with All Tech Is Human!
In the coming newsletters, you will get to meet All Tech is Human’s four summer interns. Laisha is a first-generation, low-income (FLI) student at Stanford University that is from San Diego, CA. She is majoring in Sociology on a Data Science, Markets, and Management Track while also pursuing a minor in Education. She is particularly passionate about expanding equity in various aspects of our society like education, law, health, technology, while also expanding representation and access to those fields.
Laisha is excited about harnessing technology in order to make a positive social impact, such as using artificial intelligence or data science to analyze and solve social problems. What drew her to All Tech Is Human is particularly how much the organization’s values aligned with her own. She is most excited about contributing to All Tech Is Human’s existing Knowledge Hubs (and more!) in order to broaden and apply her knowledge of public interest technology.
💡We are doing a lot here at All Tech Is Human to both understand the Responsible Tech ecosystem and help grow and strengthen it. Our activities fall under three major buckets: multistakeholder convening & community-building, multidisciplinary education, and diversifying the traditional tech pipeline with more backgrounds, disciplines, and perspectives. We are active at every point throughout the ecosystem, tying together the emerging with the established, which allows us to blaze pathways for new individuals to enter and help shape the overall movement.
Outside of the Responsible Tech Summit: Improving Social Media mentioned in this newsletter, we also recently announced that we will be holding our Responsible Tech Summit: A Better Future for Youth on October 25th at the Australian Embassy in Washington, DC. Check out the recent joint announcement by the US and Australia to reduce harms to children online. We are currently gathering interested people and organizations as this comes together.
🔭 In the coming newsletters we will be opening up our working group for the next Responsible Tech Guide (our flagship resource that highlights the people, organizations, and ideas of the movement), additional roundtables and workshops, the next livestream in our generative AI series, our Responsible Tech Summer Reading List (have a book suggestion? Let us know here), and our next Responsible Tech Mixer + Interview series.
Catching up? Peruse our Responsible Tech Job Board that features over 500 roles, freely join our Responsible Tech Talent Pool with over 1k individuals, read our Welcome to the Responsible Tech Movement primer, and join our community Slack group that has grown to over 5k members across 68 countries. On Slack, we have recently added location-specific communities for Toronto, Chicago, LA, and Raleigh-Durham. We are also really active on LinkedIn.
Our most recent report is on Tech & Democracy, and in September we will release the latest version of our Responsible Tech Guide (first released in September 2020, with a new version each September). You can also find the 10 Principles of All Tech Is Human and watch a recent presentation that founder & director David Ryan Polgar gave to kick off Harvard’s D^3 Responsible Innovation Series. You can find all of our projects and links here.
✏️ We really like this illustration drawn by Jess Klein, who was at our recent Responsible Tech Mixer in NYC that featured a rousing talk by renowned media theorist and author Douglas Rushkoff. You can watch the talk here, and watch our earlier fireside chat with Meredith Broussard, author of the recently released More Than a Glitch, here.
🤔 Curious what it is like to attend one of our Responsible Tech Mixers? Check out the video below.
😎 Cool happenings in Responsible Tech
All Tech Is Human serves as a catalyst for positive change in the Responsible Tech ecosystem, by acting as a hub for people to build community, learn from each other, and find moments of collaboration.
Do you have something you want others to know about? Ping Sandra Khalil from our team. All Tech Is Human also runs a Responsible Tech Community Calendar; submit directly for consideration.
"Hi everyone. My name is Katie Harbath. I wear a lot of different hats as a consultant, but I'm writing to you today with my Integrity Institute hat on because I'm super excited to share a new guide that we released last week on election integrity best practices for online platforms. You can view the guide here and also listen to a podcast that my co-author - Glenn Ellingson - and I recorded. Please feel free to reach out to us via the Integrity Institute website if you have any questions. We'll are looking to schedule some briefings on this and will be in touch as those get scheduled. Thanks!"-Katie Harbath
Hey RT community! Are you headed to RightsCon this June? My name is Hallie Stern, I’m co-organizing this FREE satellite event on day zero (June 5, 2023, 9:30am - 3:30pm) called Empowering the Digital Citizen: Meaningful Digital Participation, Co-Designing Content Policies, and Building Safety and Trust Features Online. Join us for a series of fireside chats featuring incredible leaders from ICANN, Integrity Institute, Global Voices, Open Archive, Alliance4Europe, and National Democratic Institute, and more! Come see familiar faces from the ATIH community and mingle. Lunch will be provided on-site. Should be a great scene-setter for the rest of the conference, I hope to see you there! Location: National Convention Centre (San José, Costa Rica), Room Guanacaste “3” Registration is required, register soon as space is limited” -Hallie Stern
🏗️ We’re building a powerful network that can tackle wicked tech & society issues.
-All Tech Is Human | Write us at Hello / AllTechIsHuman.org
⭐ See all of our projects, including our new Tech & Democracy report, Responsible Tech University Network, 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, 500+ Responsible Tech Org List, knowledge hub, our Welcome to the Responsible Tech Movement primer, and more.