September 9 2025 Agenda

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Join us for good food and music

9:00: 🏃🏽‍♀️🏃🏽‍♀️🏃🏽‍♀️Join the first GG 5K Run! 🏃🏽‍♀️🏃🏽‍♀️🏃🏽‍♀️

Learn how to register for the first GG 5k Run and where it will take place!

12:00 to 13:00: Lunch and Networking Hour

Check out the various food vendors and connect with participants in a beautiful setting.

Self-Organized Socials

Check out the list of self-organized Socials taking place at off-site (but close by) locations, ranging from meetups to numerous activities.
A Sample of Today's Socials:

Circles and Villages

You can find detailed Circle descriptions the end of this page. You can also organize your own self-organized Circle or Booth in the empty spaces (marked SOC TBD) by following these instructions.

Circles, September 9
Location
13:30 - 14:30
15:00 - 16:00
16:30 - 17:30
Circle 1 From Seas to Skies: The New Frontiers of Internet Governance
Circle 2 Leading AI Detection: Deepfakes, Provenance & Protection Who’s Writing Our Story? Documenting the why as well as the how
Circle 3 Inside a Cross-Border Investigation on Surveillance and Censorship Tech Inside a Cross-Border Investigation on Surveillance and Censorship Tech Mapping the Global Spyware Landscape: Perspectives, Gaps & Possibilities
Circle 4
Circle 5
Circle 6
Villages, September 9
Location
13:30 - 14:30
15:00 - 16:00
16:30 - 17:30
Luminate Village Effective Altruism: How can civil society and philanthropy respond? Effective Altruism: How can civil society and philanthropy respond? Effective Altruism: How can civil society and philanthropy respond?
Calyx Village Secure Messaging in 2025 and What Comes Next? Sketch It Out: Unblock Your Brain and Spark Creative Flow
Circumvention Tech Village
APC Village
Open Measurement Village
Digital Rights Sustainability Village Brainstorm on Alternative Funding Models (Part 2) Numun Fund Session Part 1 A Listening Session on the Digital Rights Funding Collapse
Regional Topics A
Regional Topics B
SWANA Cafe
Queer Rights Village

Booths

Each booth has a number, which can be found on top, center above a booth's "window".

You can find detailed Booths & Villages descriptions at the bottom of this page.

Booths, September 9
13:00 - 15:00
15:30 - 17:30
Location
Name
Run by
Name
Run by
Booth 1
Booth 2
Booth 3
Booth 4a
Booth 4b
Booth 5
Booth 6
Booth 7
Booth 8
Booth 9
Booth 10
Booth 11
Booth 12
Booth 13
Booth 14
Booth 15
Booth 16
Booth 17
Booth 18
Booth 19
Booth 21
Booth 22
Booth 79
Booth 80
Booth 81
Booth 82
Booth 83a
Booth 83b

Global Gathering After Hours

18:00 - 21:00
Karaoke!!! Our favorite pass time!

Partners

Thank you to all of the partners and sponsors that have made the 2025 Global Gathering possible!

Circle Descriptions

Circle Title
Circle Description
A Listening Session on the Digital Rights Funding Collapse This circle is a space to share stories, identify emerging patterns, and begin mapping the impact of the funding collapse on our communities and networks. Whether you’ve been directly affected, are supporting impacted groups, or are simply trying to make sense of what’s happening—come share your story.

Over the past year, the digital rights ecosystem has been shaken by an unprecedented wave of funding cuts. Organizations across the globe—especially those led by and serving marginalized communities—have been forced to downsize, pause programs, or shut down entirely. This isn’t just a budget issue; it's a structural crisis with long-term implications for our collective safety, resilience, and ability to defend digital freedoms.

Brainstorm on Alternative Funding Models (Part 2) This is part 2 of a three part circle series. As the digital rights field faces a historic funding crisis, many of us are asking: What now? We all are looking for alternative funding, but how do we organize for that? How do we prepare our organization to become more agile on fundraising? What options of alternative funding exist—from reimagined grantmaking models to untapped donors, ethical partnerships, and community-powered support. Together, we’ll surface bold ideas, share examples from adjacent movements, and identify who might be ready to fund this work—even if they haven’t yet. This session is about expanding our collective imagination and beginning to chart a path toward financial resilience rooted in solidarity, innovation, and justice.
Effective Altruism: How can civil society and philanthropy respond? Building collective knowledge about effective altruism, and the impact the movement is having on AI policy, among philanthropic organisations and civil society. Learning about the findings from previous work and explore how to take these learnings forward to explore strategies for responding to this movement’s incursion into the fields in which we work.
From Seas to Skies: The New Frontiers of Internet Governance Beyond traditional areas of network and telecommunications governance, new tensions are increasingly reshaping what internet governance means: who is actually governing the new technologies that increasingly facilitate our internet connections? As companies like Google, Amazon, AWS, and Starlink expand their control over submarine cables, cloud infrastructure, and satellite networks, the longstanding approach to governing the internet stack through a set of well-known bodies like ICANN and the IETF is becoming more fragmented and contested. This circle will explore both the traditional venues of Internet governance and what is at stake there for the IF community as well as map how governance is shifting from traditional internet governance and technical standards bodies to new venues, and what civil society can do to prevent the consolidation of power over the internet.
Inside a Cross-Border Investigation on Surveillance and Censorship Tech Join Amnesty Tech and InterSec Lab for a look at their groundbreaking collaborative investigation into surveillance and censorship technologies, which will be launched during the Global Gathering. Learn about the findings on how powerful digital tools are being traded and deployed across borders to suppress civic space. Together, we’ll explore:

+ The methodologies used to analyze and safeguard highly sensitive leaked data. + The secure platforms and workflows enabling cross-organizational collaboration. + Key investigative findings and their implications for the global digital rights community.

Engage directly with investigators, learn replicable practices, and discuss the broader ecosystem enabling rights-abusing technologies to flourish. It’s also one of the first chances to respond collectively to the investigation’s revelations, as it launches in real time at the Gathering.

Leading AI Detection: Deepfakes, Provenance & Protection Deepfakes are rapidly evolving—and so are the threats they pose. In this session, we’ll unpack how generative AI is being used to create increasingly realistic audiovisual content, and explore two key strategies for mitigating harm: provenance and detection. We’ll also spotlight emerging threats to those on the frontlines of media and human rights and invite participants into an interactive conversation to share experiences and strategies for collective defense.
Mapping the Global Spyware Landscape: Perspectives, Gaps & Possibilities Led by partners of the Spyware Accountability Initiative, this interactive Circle invites participants to collectively map the diverse range of work, perspectives, and lived experiences related to spyware and surveillance technologies around the world. Whether you’re working on investigations, victim support, policy reform, tool development, or community education—this space is for you. We'll explore the following together:

+ What does spyware work look like across regions and sectors? + Where are the critical gaps in accountability, protection, and response? + How can we better connect efforts, reduce duplication, and amplify underrepresented voices?

Numun Fund Session Part 1
Secure Messaging in 2025 and What Comes Next? Join the Phoenix R&D team for a conversation on what secure messaging looks like in 2025—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.
Sketch It Out: Unblock Your Brain and Spark Creative Flow Feeling stuck? Overwhelmed? In this guided circle, we’ll use simple sketching and visual thinking to unlock creativity, ease mental clutter, and see familiar problems in a new light. No drawing skills needed—just a willingness to explore with pen and paper. Through a series of playful prompts and reflections, you’ll learn how visual expression can:

+ Calm a busy or anxious mind Help externalize and reframe challenges + Tap into intuitive, nonlinear thinking + Make space for clarity, insight, and even joy Come as you are. Leave with a few lines on a page and a lighter mind

Who’s Writing Our Story? Documenting the why as well as the how Who decides what gets remembered, and why? Join us for an interactive session exploring how we document our organizations, our movements, and the moments that shape our lives. We’ll dive into the politics of memory, the power of storytelling, and the practical tools we use to capture and preserve our work. From everyday digital records to community archives, we’ll reflect on how to safeguard our stories and facts, without losing critical context along the way.

Booth & Village Descriptions

Village
Run by
Village Description