GG26SandBox

JoiGG Agenda SandBox

This page is ONLY to coordinate between TCU and participants leading circles, booths, and workshops. The official agenda of the Global Gathering 2026 can be found here.

PLEASE MAKE SURE TO CHECK OUT your activities description at the bottom..

Sept. 3	Times	Sept. 4	Sept. 5	Sept 6
Pre-Registration will run from 16:00 - 20:00	9:00 - 12:00	Satellite Events and Workshops Security for Beginners Workshop (9:00 - 11:30) Interactive TFGBV Networking Salon (10:00 to 11:30) Break into the Firewall: A War Game RPG (10:00 to 11:30) Demystifying End-to-End Encryption ... So You can Better Evaluate Tools for Your Threat Model (10:00 to 11:30)	Satellite Events and Workshops Making Sense of Chaos:  Lessons from the Front Lines of Washington DC (9:00 - 12:00) Journalism Security Salon (9:00 - 12:00) Latin American Breakfast by FAULAC (9:00 to 12:00) Hands-on Internet Shutdown Salon: Building Off-Grid Communication Networks and Low-Fi Approaches (9:00 to 12:00)	Satellite Events and Workshops The Costs of Protection: Turning GG 2024 Insights into an Agenda for Global South Sovereignty (11:00 to 12:30) From Activist to Consultant: How to Build a Revenue-Generating Consulting Career (11:00 to 12:30) Agentic AI for Activism: Building Local, Sovereign Tools for Human Rights and Social Justice (11:00 to 12:30) Experience the Shutdown! A Role-Playing Training Simulation (11:00 to 12:30)
	9:00 - 12:00	Wellbeing Morning Activities Catalyst Coaching Group (10:00 to 11:30)	Wellbeing Morning Activities Sound Bath Grounding 🔔🌿 (9:30 to 11:00)	Wellbeing Morning Activities GG 5K Run!! 🏃🏽‍♀️🏃🏽‍♀️
	12:00 - 13:00	Networking Hour	Networking Hour	Networking Hour
	13:00 - 18:00	Circles, Villages, Meetups and Booths	Circles, Villages, Meetups and Booths	Circles, Villages, Meetups and Booths
	18:00 - 21:00	The Drag Show: Valencia Drive	Karaoke Extravaganza	DJ Boom Boom Boom

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September 4

	12:00 - 13:00 Networking Hour Come to the venue to have lunch and explore our amazing food vendors, while meeting new folks. In addition, some meetups will be taking place during this time as well. Do you not have to be part of a meetup to join us!
Where	Meetup
Venue / xxx	Africa Meetup
Venue / xxx	Asia Meetup
Venue / xxx	Eastern European and Central Caucasus Meetup
Venue / xxx	Latin America Meetup
Venue / xxx	North America Meetup
Venue / xxx	Russia Meetup
Venue / xxx	SWANA Meetup
Venue / xxx	Western Europe Meetup

	Circles and Villages | Sept 4
	13:30 - 14:30	15:00 - 16:00	16:30 - 17:30
Circle 1	Researchers Meetup	Tech Justice Promenade: Gathering of LGBTQI+ and Allies	Digital Transnational Repression: Connecting Across Regions
Circle 2	Journalism Meetup	Cross-Borders Storytelling: Device Searches, Metadata, and Collective Preparation	15 Things We Learned from Auditing 15 Brazilian Media Organizations
Circle 3	Policy Advocates Meetup
Circle 4	Participatory Defense Meetup	Criminalization Is a Design Condition: Building Most Resilient Tech from the Margins
Circle 5	Influence Operations Investigators Meetup
Circle 6	Countering Disinformation Meetup
Circle 7	OSINT in the Open Meetup
Circle 8		Self-Organized TBD	Self-Organized TBD
Offsite Meetups
	13:30 - 14:30	15:00 - 16:00	16:30 - 17:30
Calyx Village
Digital Security	Security Practioners Meetup	Beyond Borders: How Authoritarian States Use Digital Tactics to Target Diaspora and People in Exile	Auditing AI on the questions that matter to you: learn a simple, repeatable method for testing how LLMs handle politically contested topics.
Circumvention Tech	Technologist Meetup
Spyware Village	Spyware Researchers Meetup
Autonomous Infrastructure
Ecosystem Resilience		U.S. Foreign Policy and Human Rights: Impacts, Challenges, and Opportunities	Lean Operations in Small Teams
Regional
Regional
Secure Communications		Owning the Graph: Movement-Grade Coordination Without a Company in the Middle	Secure Messaging in 2026 and What Comes Next

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September 5

	12:00 - 13:00 Networking Hour Come to the venue to have lunch and explore our amazing food vendors, while meeting new folks. In addition, some meetups will be taking place during this time as well. Do you not have to be part of a meetup to join us!
Where	Meetup
	Caribbean + Diaspora Meet Up
	South Asian Digital Liberation Meetup
	Francophone Africa Meetup

	Circles and Villages | Sept 5
Circle 1
Circle 2
Circle 3
Circle 4
Circle 5
Circle 6
Circle 7
Circle 8	Self-Organized TBD	Self-Organized TBD	Self-Organized TBD
Offsite Meetups
	13:30 - 14:30	15:00 - 16:00	16:30 - 17:30
Calyx Village
Digital Security	Living in the Crosshairs: Operational Survival Under Ubiquitous Surveillance	Driving Action From Collective Alerting	Starlink Best Practices
Circumvention Tech	Strengthening Rapid Response Efforts to Censorship Events	Lights in the Tunnel: Co-Creating an Accountability Framework for VPN Transparency	Tor Reserved to Be Filled
Spyware Village
Autonomous Infrastructure
Ecosystem Resilience	Strategies for the Security and Safety of Community Spaces
Regional
Regional
Secure Communications	Can Signal Become Phishing-Resistant?	What Does a Girl Gotta Do Around Here to Get People to Download the Tool Before the Internet Shuts Down?	Reserved.

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September 6

	12:00 - 13:00 Networking Hour On the first day of the event, we will be featuring Regional Meetups during our networking hour.
Where	Meetup

	Circles and Villages | Sept 6
Circle 1
Circle 2
Circle 3
Circle 4
Circle 5
Circle 6
Circle 7
Circle 8	Self-Organized TBD	Self-Organized TBD	Self-Organized TBD
Offsite Meetups
	13:30 - 14:30	15:00 - 16:00	16:30 - 17:30
Calyx Village
Circumvention Tech
Digital Security	Games for Digital Rights & Security Education	Availability Over Confidentiality: Digital Security Lessons from Ukraine's Blackouts	Hands off my stuff! Tactics and strategies against physical device searches
Spyware Village
Autonomous Infrastructure
Regional
Regional
Ecosystem Resilience
Rotating

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Descriptions

Villages are "all-day hubs" focused on specific topics. They house both Booths and Circles.

Village	Run by	Village Description
Digital Security		This is a space for security practitioners and trainers to discuss securing our communities from digital threats from both the ground and the tech

Circle and/or Meetup Title	Description
15 Things We Learned from Auditing 15 Brazilian Media Organizations	What happens when 15 newcomers to the SAFETAG auditing methodologies are trained to perform their own assessments and then hit the road to audit 15 independent Brazilian media organisations? Join an implementer, an auditor, and a funder as we explore 15 lessons from the Mídias Seguras, Vozes Livres! (Safe Media, Free Voices!) program implemented by Tecnologia Humanista. This session brings together voices from across the program to surface what actually happened when a structured auditor-training model met the messy realities of small, resource-constrained newsrooms. Note: SAFETAG is a specialized audit framework designed for independent media, civil society and non-profits to improve their organizational security, adapting traditional risk assessments and penetration testing to fit the low-budget, high-threat, and capacity-constrained realities that these at-risk organizations face.
Auditing AI on the Questions that Matter to You: Learn a Simple, Repeatable Method for Testing How LLMs Handle Politically Contested Topics	AI models differ meaningfully in whether they mirror or resist state-aligned framing. In this hands-on Circle, participants run live tests across multiple models and leave with a reproducible audit methodology using AI analysis tool AIdas. The goal is to help participants replicate and extend an AI research methodology in their own contexts.
Availability Over Confidentiality: Digital Security Lessons from Ukraine's Blackouts	During Ukraine's long blackouts, supporting journalists and human rights defenders meant constantly looking for compromises between availability and security. Being able to work at all often came first, but security stayed part of every decision, and the work never stopped - we just had to adapt. This Circle shares real, hands-on lessons on backup power, staying online, and the hard choices teams had to make.
Africa Meetup	Connect with individuals actively working in the African region. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from diverse African projects, gain valuable insights, and expand your professional network. This meetup is designed to foster meaningful connections and enrich the Africa digital rights community.
Asia Meetup	Connect with individuals actively working in the Asia region. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from diverse Asian projects, gain valuable insights, and expand your professional network. This meetup is designed to foster meaningful connections and enrich the Asian digital rights community.
Beyond Borders: How Authoritarian States Use Digital Tactics to Target Diaspora and People in Exile	Across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and beyond, authoritarian governments are using increasingly sophisticated digital tactics to surveil, harass, and discredit activists and organizations operating outside their borders. This Circle draws on documented cases from Belarus, including fake Telegram bots, AI-generated deepfakes, fabricated hack narratives, and financial doxxing, as entry points for a broader cross-regional exchange about how these tactics are evolving and what patterns emerge when you look across different country contexts.
Can Signal Become Phishing-Resistant?	Targeted phishing campaigns against journalists, activists, and civil society increasingly abuse legitimate Signal account recovery and device-linking workflows rather than exploiting software vulnerabilities. In this session, we will examine the current threat landscape and explore potential improvements to account security that could significantly reduce the risk of remote account takeover.
Caribbean + Diaspora Meet Up	This meetup brings together human rights defenders from the Caribbean and the Caribbean diaspora community. We will discuss how we can create ""digital safety in numbers"" across our region and share examples and stories of our digital rights experience. We will also explore mutual support and collaborative resources.
Countering Disinformation Meetup	Come meet colleagues from across the disinformation frontlines. We'll share learnings, tactics, and war stories - as we seek to learn from one another on what works best, and what can inadvertently backfire in the fight against disinformation.
Criminalization Is a Design Condition: Building Most Resilient Tech from the Margins	Design from the Margins starts from a simple premise: the people most targeted by surveillance, censorship, policing, borders, and platform abuse are the people who can teach us how to design and build safer technology for everyone. Participants will discuss how criminalization can be used as a design condition and the understandings being built into it - turning lived harms and human rights documentation into concrete requirements for surveillance-resistant tools, safer defaults, alternative infrastructure, and tech that serves people, not power.
Cross-Borders Storytelling: Device Searches, Metadata, and Collective Preparation	Border crossings can transform phones, laptops and media archives into sources of risk for storytellers and the communities they document, particularly as border authorities in some jurisdictions gain wider powers to inspect digital devices and may seek access to cloud-based data. This Circle seeks to share and compare experiences of device searches and metadata scrutiny across regions, while exploring holistic preparation involving digital, legal, physical, cultural and psychosocial considerations.
Digital Transnational Repression: Connecting Across Regions	This meetup brings together practitioners working on digital transnational repression (TNR) to exchange experiences, compare emerging trends, and strengthen collaboration across regions. While TNR often appears as a series of isolated incidents affecting specific countries or communities, many of these cases reflect common tactics, shared methods, and recurring patterns employed by different states against diaspora and exile communities. Recent exchanges among practitioners highlighted the value of looking beyond individual country contexts. Thus, we hope to do just that, and identify common patterns, exchange practical lessons, compare tactics, and build stronger connections and continued collaborations across networks, regions and organizations.
Driving Action From Collective Alerting	Protection providers and security experts often spend their limited capacity urgently translating the latest threats into alerts that are relevant to the diverse communities they serve so they can independently identify and mitigate those threats or seek support when they can't. But, affected individuals often have trouble acting on these safety alerts because they may not understand what they mean, not know whether they apply to them, not grasp the risk level, not know where to get assistance, or lack the time/resources to take the suggested action. This circle will chart a path to a future where threat intelligence is rapidly and easily transformed into a range of alerts that allow diverse at-risk communities make informed security decision. Participants will explore what is necessary to make alerts actionable, identify the parts can/not be adapted and reused across different communities, and explore strategies and tactics for reducing duplication, and better connecting and building on other efforts
Eastern European and Central Caucasus Meetup	Connect with individuals actively working in the Eastern European and Central Caucasus region. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from diverse Eastern European and Central Caucasus projects, gain valuable insights, and expand your professional network. This meetup is designed to foster meaningful connections and enrich the Eastern European and Central Caucasus digital rights community.
Francophone Africa Meetup	Connect with individuals actively working in the Francophone African region. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from diverse Francophone African projects, gain valuable insights, and expand your professional network. This meetup is designed to foster meaningful connections and enrich the Francophone African digital rights community.
Games for Digital Rights & Security Education	Calling all practitioners and enthusiasts for interactive and play-based education! In this circle, we'll exchange ideas and lessons learned in creating and facilitating educational games. You're welcome whether you have created your own games, designed creative training tactics, or are just interested in how to elevate digital literacy and raise awareness in fun activities.
Hands off my stuff! Tactics and Strategies Against Physical Device Searches	An open discussion about the latest tactics and strategies to protect our devices and the data they hold against physical searches. We'll discuss tools, good practices, and threat models like border searches, lost/stolen devices, abusive domestic situations, etc.
Influence Operations Investigators Meetup	A space for people who research and track influence operations across different regions to meet, connect, and build trust. Many of us investigate influence operations in relative isolation, often under risk, and rarely get to meet peers facing similar challenges. This meetup is a chance to put faces to names, share where we are working and what we are up against, and lay the groundwork for ongoing cross-regional collaboration that continues well beyond the GG. We especially want to connect investigators from underrepresented regions, including the Global South, where influence operations are often under-documented but increasingly consequential.
Journalism Meetup	Connect with other journalists and media professionals in the digital rights field. This is a fantastic opportunity to foster meaningful connections, share your concerns and seek support, and expand your professional network.
Latin America Meetup	Connect with individuals actively working in the Latin America region. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from diverse Latin American projects, gain valuable insights, and expand your professional network. This meetup is designed to foster meaningful connections and enrich the Latin America digital rights community.
Lean Operations in Small Teams	Funding cuts, staff layoffs, and ongoing uncertainty are forcing organizations to do more with fewer resources while continuing to deliver on their missions. This is especially true for small teams. Participants will explore strategies for maintaining efficient, resilient operations in small teams, even during times of disruption. This includes how to priortize essential functions, and adapt processes to sustain organizational effectiveness despite reduced capacity. Additionally, participants will share tips on how to ensure redundancies so that so that team members can take needed time off without compromising critical operations.
Lights in the Tunnel: Co-Creating an Accountability Framework for VPN Transparency	Participants will discuss and begin drafting a community-informed methodology for assessing VPN transparency and accountability. This includes what the methodology should look like, key policies or practices that it will assess, and the selection of VPN providers that should be evaluated. The Circle aims to strengthen and raise the bar for enforceable standards of platform accountability in the VPN ecosystem.
Living in the Crosshairs: Operational Survival Under Ubiquitous Surveillance	When total digital evasion is impossible, how do frontline defenders manage the day-to-day reality of targeted targeting? This highly collaborative Circle moves past standard baseline tools to share hard-won operational strategies, psychological coping mechanisms, and risk-mitigation tactics for working under unlawful state surveillance. We will map out collective cross-regional wisdom on moving from digital paralysis to resilient, ongoing activism.
North America Meetup	Connect with individuals actively working in the North American region. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from diverse North American projects, gain valuable insights, and expand your professional network. This meetup is designed to foster meaningful connections and enrich the North American digital rights community.
OSINT in the Open Meetup	OSINT practitioners share methods and missions but rarely get to share a room. This meetup is a dedicated space for open-source intelligence professionals to meet, swap stories, and build the kind of relationships that make the work more sustainable and less lonely.
Owning the Graph: Movement-Grade Coordination Without a Company in the Middle	Civil society stays on Meta, WhatsApp, and Telegram because they combine private coordination, public discovery, and groups in one place, even though one company owns the graph and holds a shutdown switch. The open alternatives scatter organizing across several apps and often close when their funding ends. This Circle works on one problem: how to keep that combined coordination while removing the single owner, by splitting the stack across open protocols so no server is required. This meetup will define what a movement-grade decentralized social stack actually needs, and will surface the hardest unsolved problems. We will pressure-test a concrete approach (identity and social graph on AT Protocol, private messaging on MLS/RFC 9420, communities on ActivityPub) and turn the discussion into a shared specification any project in this space can build against.
Participatory Defense Meetup	This meetup is for people working on participatory defense and advocacy for individuals who have been imprisoned-to share strategies, tactics, and build up a stronger network for defense.
Policy Advocates Meetup	Connect with individuals working at the intersection of policy and digital rights. This event offers a unique opportunity to learn from fellow policy advocates from across the world, and learn about current policy initiatives related to the impact of technology on human rights.
Researchers Meetup	Connect with fellow researchers investigating digital rights topics and subjects such as internet freedom, security and technology. Participants will share insights, discuss recent findings, and explore emerging trends in the field. Whether you're a seasoned researcher or new to the field, this meetup provides a supportive environment to enhance your work and impact.
Russia Meetup	Connect with individuals actively working in Russia This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from diverse Russian projects, gain valuable insights, and expand your professional network. This meetup is designed to foster meaningful connections and enrich the Russian digital rights community.
Secure Messaging in 2026 and What Comes next	Participants will discuss what secure messaging looks like in 2026-and where it's headed next. We'll explore current trends, emerging gaps, and how evolving privacy technologies and federated protocols are reshaping the landscape. This session invites input from developers, advocates, and end users alike to help define the future of secure, user-centered communication. Come share your insights and help us imagine what comes next.
Security Practioners Meetup	Meet security practioners from around the world - from cybersecurity professionals conducting audits to digital security trainers. Whether you’re looking to share your expertise, learn from others, or expand your professional network, this Circle is a great place to learn about new developments, and find opportunities for collaboration.
Starlink Best Practices	We have been documenting the threat model, risks, and mitigations around the use of Starlink without detection. We'd like to share what we have documented, and discuss any risks or mitigations that we have not yet thought about.
Strengthening Rapid Response Efforts to Censorship Events	Join this session to discuss challenges, needs, and ideas for strengthening global collaboration on rapid response to emerging censorship events around the world. We will also share OONI's tools and methods for censorship rapid response.
South Asian Digital Liberation Meetup	This meetup brings together folks from South Asia, who has served as one of the largest markets for global digital platforms, but at the same time, some of the most egregious cases of digital violence have come out of South Asia, whether that is fueling disinformation, hate speech, or extremism. This meetup will bring together South Asian human rights defenders within the region and in the diaspora working at the nexus of tech and justice.
Spyware Researchers Meetup
Strategies for the Security and Safety of Community Spaces
SWANA Meetup	Connect with individuals actively working in the SWANA region. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from diverse SWANA projects, gain valuable insights, and expand your professional network. This meetup is designed to foster meaningful connections and enrich the SWANA digital rights community.
Tech Justice Promenade: Gathering of LGBTQI+ and allies	This meetup provides a strategic space for LGBTQI+ technologists, policymakers, digital rights activists, and allies to connect and build actionable pathways for increasing queer representation in the global tech ecosystem and examining the rapid expansion of Artificial intelligence. strategising on how our communities can move from passive consumers of these technologies to critical operators who can shape its future and counter algorithmic bias.
Technologist Meetup	Meet technologists from across the world who are working in digital rights, or in other public interest technology areas. Whether you’re looking to share your expertise, learn from others, or expand your professional network, this Circle is a great place to learn about new developments, and find opportunities for collaboration.
Tor Reserved to Be Filled	xxxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxx xxxxxx xxxxx xxx
U.S. Foreign Policy and Human Rights: Impacts, Challenges, and Opportunities	Participants will discuss the dramatic shift of U.S. government foreign policy since 2024 - from the gutting of foreign aid, firing of internet freedom staff, and deepening politicization of human rights policy. The discussion will center on how this shift has impacted human rights defenders around the world, challenges to engaging with the US administration, and potential efforts and opportunities that may still exist through 2028.
What Does a Girl Gotta Do Around Here to Get People to Download the Tool Before the Internet Shuts Down?	Okay, seriously though - We've been asking communities around the world for the past one year what they need when the internet shuts down, and one of the biggest challenges, no surprise, is adoption. So come, contribute your perspective, and jam with us on creative solutions to overcome common adoption challenges together xD
Western Europe Meetup	Connect with individuals actively working in the Western European region. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn about different projects, gain valuable insights, and expand your professional network. This meetup is designed to foster meaningful connections and enrich the Western European digital rights community.