September 3 2020 GM

Glitter Meetups What are Glitter Meetups Notes from Past Glitter Meetups Virtual Events Calendar Join the IFF Mattermost

Time: 9:00am EST / 1:00pm UTC+0

Where: IFF Mattermost Square Channel. Email us at [email protected] if you need an invite.

Community Updates

• The IFF have several regional meetups planned:
  • Africa Meetup: September 17 at 15:00 GMT + 2
  • Latin American Meetup: September 3 at 2pm Mexico
  • Asia Meetup: September 10 @ Deli(India) 14:00
• Kaliya Young/Identity Woman spoke about US's social security number system and how India borrowed the Aadhaar concept from assumptions about the US system. Read Article Here
• In Belaurs, some of the networks are going to ban "foreign" DNS servers according to some legislation. Read Article Here
• In Colombia, the community is facing a big genocide, in the last year more than 100 social leaders, environmental defenders and human rights defender had been murder and in the last two week more than 10 massacres took place in rural and urban areas. The government does not care at all (because they're the ones behind it) but also now they're passing bills to harm the labor class and keep the rich, richer.
• Some updates from Localization Lab:
  • Digisec Tools and Resources for Belarus. English and Belarusian
  • Swahili Localization Sprint at which all of the Psiphon tools were localized into Swahili to prep for the Tanzanian elections.
  • Great article by the LocLab intern on bias in tech language
• Convite, a series of sound postcards directed to land defenders, environmental defenders, social leaders of indigenous, black and rural communities that seek to, with the use of sound language, contribute information, tools and resources related to digital security and self care in their digital, physical, psychosocial spaces. It's now available with English subtitles in all the sound postcards.
• Keep Calm, Log On has sections dedicated to how to break people's absorption of disinformation mentally
• This a good resource on talking to people who disagree with you, COVID disinformation edition
• Community members are making steady advances with a Latin American project between universities and NGOs to promote a critical understanding of the internet government through using mesh networks and another one on including children's right to participation in the design of e-learning programmes in Uruguay.
• Protests are picking up again in Lebanon and the relief work is still ongoing with food security and shelter for people affected by the blast and the economic situation being a big problem. There are really qualified folks in this community already with orgs and resources to share but if anyone wants recommendations for orgs to support, contact the IFF Team.

Topic of Discussion: future skills for current challenges

We dedicated this Glitter Meetup to explore the needs that we have as a community with a futuristic exercise: It's 2030, you are remembering the last decade. What do you wish you knew how to do in 2020. What skills or knowledge do you have now, that you wish you had in 2020.

We took a few minutes and listed those needs and then, we were able to see some trends that shaped the conversation around what needs we can meet right now. We started to create some connections and future workshops and collaborations..

These are the trends:

• AI
• Storytelling
• Project Management
• Need for mentorship or niche expertise knowledge.
• Debate and meditation skills.

These are the needs listed during the brainstorming:

• How to hack AI systems
• Better understanding internet architecture
• Ability to break people's programming mentally, so they don't believe disinformation.
• An ability to shield myself from hateful talk/speech during elections.
• An ability to give money support to IF projects without exposing their identity
• An ability to shield myself from hateful talk/speech during elections.
• A way to physically deliver glitter to friends in different countries.
• Localization engineering / development skills to better support project owners.
• Strong constructive discourse skills. The ability to more calmly and thoughtfully debate.
• Corporate style project management skills.
• Better ability to delegate and encourage volunteers to take on more community management and outreach responsibilities
• How to better storytell about our space.
• How to better coordinate between different groups, despite capacity issues. outreach responsibilities.
• Better documented and collective experience with OSINT
• Better writing skills / more confidence in my writing skills.
• Background in research methods.
• M&E experience.
• No php/mysql based website anymore, just plain html using jamstack or other new technologies
• Better understand of machine learning and AI for "good" causes
• Improve my negotiating skills
• Be more confident about myself
• Organise my time better to read and experience all the stuff from different fields that I'd like to!!!
• Learn how to take a break from work
• Better tools for supporting and bringing the funding spotlight to grassroots and local organizations.
• To know more tools to work the ground and grow my own food but along with rural communities without hurting their income/ways to hack right far mentalities.