September 8 2025 Agenda
From TCU Wiki
12:00 to 13:00
Global Gathering Meet and Greet Brunch
Complimentary brunch bites, networking, and opening remarks. Join us for good food, music, and make connections!
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Self-Organized Socials |
| Arrange or check out the list of Self-Organized Socials taking place off-site (but close by) locations, ranging from meetups to numerous activities. https://pad.riseup.net/p/GGSocials | |
| A Sample of Today's Socials: |
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Circles and VillagesYou 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. | ||
| Location | |||
| Circle 1 | Digital Rights X Climate Justice: Meet Up! | Digital Rights in Portugal: Where Do We Go From Here? | |
| Circle 2 | |||
| Circle 3 | Africa Meetup | Security Practioners Meetup | AI Accountability in Practice: Centering Community Voices |
| Circle 4 | Western Europe Meetup | Gathering the Gatherers | Tackling Misinformation Through Open Tools and Civic Literacy |
| Circle 5 | Policy Advocates Meetup | Bridging Borders: Building Resilience Against Cross-Border Cyber Threats | |
| Circle 6 | Journalism Meetup | Remote Team Cohesion Best Practices | |
| Location | |||
| APC Village (Booth 7) |
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| Calyx Village (Booth 9) |
North America Meetup | Researchers Meetup | ED Meetup |
| Circumvention Tech Village (Booth 12) |
Technologist Meetup | Update on Censorship Circumvention Methods at Tor | |
| Open Measurement Gathering (OMG) Village (Booth 17) |
Are You My Measurement Tool? | Fighting Internet Censorship: Challenges and Needs | Internet Measurement Wish List |
| Digital Rights Sustainability Village (Main Stage) |
Imaginaries Futures (Part 1) | Brainstorm on Alternative Funding Models (part 1) | |
| Regional Topics A (Booth 21) |
Latin America Meetup | In the Face of Crises, Digital Care and Support for Sustainable Activism in Latin America | |
| Regional Topics B (Booth 22) |
Asia Meetup | Hong Kong Meetup | |
| TBD (Booth 79) |
Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Caucasus (EECAC) Meetup | ||
| SWANA Village (Booth 81) |
SWANA Meetup | Words & Actions - Digital Rights Status in the WANA region | |
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BoothsYou can find detailed Booths & Villages descriptions at the bottom of this page. In the venue (IRL), each booth has a number, found on the top-center of each booth's "window". | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | |||||
| Booth 4a | Feminist Helplines Community Booth | Navegando Libres | |||
| Booth 4b | Amnezia VPN | Amnezia VPN | Amnezia VPN | Amnezia VPN | |
| Booth 5 | Dash Chat - Resilient Messenger for Internet Shutdowns | Darksoil Studio | |||
| Booth 6 | MaadiX | MaadiX | |||
| (APC Village)
Booth 7 |
APC Village | APC | APC Village | APC | |
| Booth 8 | Article 19 & Yubico | Article 19 & Yubico | Article 19 & Yubico | Article 19 & Yubico | |
| (Calyx Village)
Booth 9 |
Calyx Village | Calyx Institute | Calyx Village | Calyx Institute | |
| Booth 10 | Experience it!
New Ways to Teach PGP, Anti-Censorship and Shutdown Preparedness |
Conexion Segura y Libre | |||
| Booth 11 | |||||
| (Circumvention Tech Village)
Booth 12 |
Tor Project & Guardian Project | Tor Project & Guardian Project | Tor Project & Guardian Project | Tor Project & Guardian Project | |
| Booth 13 | Rise Against Big Tech (by in.fra.red) | Cloud68.co | |||
| Booth 14 | Digital Defense Fund | Digital Defense Fund | Digital Defense Fund | Digital Defense Fund | |
| Booth 15 | Digital Safety Clinic | Access Now | Digital Safety Clinic | Access Now | |
| Booth 16 | DisCO.coop | DisCO.coop | |||
| (Open Measurement Gathering (OMG) Village)
Booth 17 |
Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) | IODA | Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) | Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) | |
| Booth 18 | Open Data Editor - What did we learn when integrating the AI feature? | Open Knowledge Foundation | |||
| Booth 19 | ReCIPE for Digital Rights | Oxfam, ReCIPE Project | |||
| (Regional Conversations A)
Booth 21 |
Escuela Común + Red Abya Yala | Sutty worker owned co-op | |||
| (Regional Conversations B)
Booth 22 |
SFLC.in : Promoting Open Knowledge, Free Speech, Online Privacy, Innovation & Equality | SFLC.IN - Softwware Freedom Law Center | |||
| Booth 78 | Leadership and Financial Resilience Coaching Support | Spring Strategies | |||
| (TBD)Booth 79 | |||||
| Booth 80 | Horizontal | Horizontal | |||
| (SWANA Village)
Booth 81 |
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| Booth 82 | Palestine Booth | Solidarity Network of Palestinians and Allies | Palestine Booth | Solidarity Network of Palestinians and Allies | |
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Global Gathering After Hours |
| Join us for music and socializing in our beautiful venue. |
Partners
Circle Descriptions
| 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. |
| AI Accountability in Practice: Centering Community Voices | Understanding and evaluating Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems and their societal impact is rarely rooted in the experiences, perspectives, and concerns of impacted communities and advocacy/rights groups. This Circle invites participants to share ideas and practices for advancing accountability and reducing harms in digital systems that affect their communities. Together, we will explore advocacy techniques and strategies for contesting AI systems, holding them to account, and protecting those most at risk. |
| 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. |
| Bridging Borders: Building Resilience Against Cross-Border Cyber Threats | Security practitioners will discuss how cross-border cyberattacks and data breaches are impacting CSOs, as cybercriminal groups exploit regional vulnerabilities, such as weak cybersecurity policies and inconsistent threat monitoring, to launch sophisticated multi-jurisdictional attacks that range from ransomware campaigns to state-sponsored espionage. We will also discuss building regional alliances to improve real-time intelligence sharing, coordinate incident response and, ideally, develop harmonized cybersecurity frameworks - ensuring that our defenses are as interconnected as the threats we face. |
| Brainstorm on Alternative Funding Models (part 1) | This is part 1 of a two part Circle series As our 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 Circle will help us expand our collective imagination and begin to chart a path toward financial resilience rooted in solidarity, innovation, and justice. |
| Digital Rights in Portugal: Where do We go from Here? | This Circle is a precious opportunity to touch base and network among all Portugal-based activists, share updates regarding our collective agendas, and start conversations about our priorities in the near future. |
| Digital Rights X Climate Justice: Meet Up! | Connect with participants working at the intersection of climate justice and digital rights. Individuals will share updates on their work and lessons learned; celebrate wins, and explore ways to better collaborate across continents and movements. Additionally, participants will take stock of global developments, and chart steps forward. Anyone engaged in digital climate justice is welcomed—whether combating climate disinformation, advancing sustainable digital infrastructure, protecting climate defenders, or addressing migration challenges linked to climate change. |
| ED Meetup | If you are an Executive Directors managing an organization, this is a fantastic opportunity to foster meaningful connections with other EDs, share your concerns, and seek support. |
| Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Caucasus Meetup (EECC) Meetup | Connect with individuals actively working in the EECCA region. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from diverse EECCA projects, gain valuable insights, and expand your professional network. This meetup is designed to foster meaningful connections and enrich the EECCA digital rights community. |
| Gathering the Gatherers | If you play a facilitator role in your community or movement, this Circle is for you! This includes community organisers, trainers, facilitators, and people who are often asked to hold space for others to negotiate conflict in their groups. Come share your experience, discuss challenges, and explore ways to adapt to the ever-changing realities of our communities and movements......while finding meaningful ways to sustain and support each other. |
| Imaginaries Futures (Part 1) | This is part 1 of a two part Circle series. Participants will explore how the current financial system shapes both possibilities and limitations for funding. Through guided collective inquiry and speculative ideation, participants will examine structural barriers, map dependencies, and reflect on the governance of financial flows. Rather than offering ready-made solutions, the Circle creates space for imagining new funding architectures - grounded in solidarity, care, and resistance t- could support more just and resilient futures. This is an exploratory phase for developing a shared language, identifying questions, and exploring potential directions for building alternative financial realities. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| Remote Team Cohesion Best Practices | Participants will surface the challenges related to working in a remote team, and then share learnings and best tips to overcome those challenges. Collectively, participants will also compile a list of best practices to share with each others and the broader field. |
| Researchers Meetup | Connect with fellow researchers investigating topics and subjects in digital rights, internet freedom, security and technology. This space offers a space to 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. |
| Security Practioners Meetup | Meet security practioners from around the world. Whether you are a cybersecurity professional conducting audits, or a digital security trainer, this is a great opportunity to meet security enthusiasts and get updates on new trends and issues in the field, while sharing your knowledge. |
| 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. |
| Tackling Misinformation Through Open Tools and Civic Literacy | Explore how open source tools can empower communities to combat misinformation, deepen media literacy, and foster civic collaboration. Together, they will: Share open-source applications that identify message similarity, detect false content, and support real-time response coordination across regions; Analyze how media outlets frame information, and build practical skills in fact-checking and critical reading, with a focus on emerging platforms; Explore strategies for civic engagement using cooperative platforms that support collaborative image and text analysis, inviting participants to practice co-creating knowledge with strangers. This Circle is open to both beginners and advanced experts. |
| Technologist Meetup | Meet technologists from across the world who are working in digital rights, or in public interest technology. 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. |
| Update on Censorship Circumvention Methods at Tor | Tor Project will share updates on how their circumvention tools are performing and highlight the recent censorship trends they are seeing around the world, including in countries like China and Russia. This Circle is designed as a conversation with the community regarding these latest events and to discuss how we can work together to continue to fight censorship online |
| 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. |
| Are You My Measurement Tool? | Have you ever experienced an Internet shutdown or censorship event, but then didn’t know which open Internet measurement tool to turn to? Join the Open Measurement Gathering groups (Censored Planet, IODA, M-Lab and OONI) in a workshop designed to guide you through which Internet measurement tool you need. Following Global Gathering, the OMG groups will release a public guide on which internet measurement datasets to refer to depending on the type of internet shutdown or censorship event you’re investigating. |
| In the Face of Crises, Digital Care and Support for Sustainable Activism in Latin America | Activists, human rights and land defenders in Latin America face multiple crises and threats today, many of these are facilitated by technology. How are we responding, and addressing them from a place of care? What are the implications of our work? |
| Fighting Internet Censorship: Challenges and Needs | What challenges have you encountered in monitoring, reporting, or advocating against internet censorship? How can the internet measurement community better support your efforts? Join this session to share your experiences, explore common obstacles, and discuss practical needs to strengthen global monitoring and response to internet censorship. |
| Internet Measurement Wish List | If internet measurement projects like OONI, IODA, M-Lab, or Censored Planet could offer you anything — what would be on your wish list? What features, data, or tools do you wish you had to better monitor internet censorship? Join this interactive brainstorming session to share your ideas, needs, and feedback. |
| Words & Actions - Digital Rights Status in the WANA region | This circle is an invitation for participants from North Africa and West Asia to share their words about the current status and challenges of digital rights in the region and share their recommended actions that should be taken to tackle these challenges. The output of this session can be used to guide funding strategies, prioritize advocacy efforts, collaborate around new themes to different orgs, alliances and networks interested in the digital rights scene in the region. This session is hosted and facilitated by the members of the MENA Alliance for Digital Rights (MADR) |
| Hong Kong Meetup | Connect with individuals actively working in Hong Kong. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from diverse projects in Hong Kong, and gain valuable insights, This meetup is designed to foster meaningful connections and enrich the digital rights community in Hong Kong. |
Booth & Village Descriptions
| Regional Conversations A | ||
| Regional Conversations B | ||
| Open Measurement Gathering (OMG) Village | Open Measurement Group (OMG) | |
| Circumvention Technology Village | Tor Project & Guardian Project | |
| SWANA Village | ||
| APC Village | APC | |
| Calyx Village | Calyx Institute | |
| TBD |
| Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) | IODA | Description: In this booth we will showcase both the IODA interface for live demos on how to use the IODA dashboard as well as share new guides developed for less technical users on how and when to use IODA, the IODA signals, and the IODA rapid response shutdown protocol.
Website: IODA’s booth is part of the Open Measurement Gathering (OMG) Village, which consists of the following projects/organizations: OONI, M-Lab, IODA, Censored Planet, Netalitica, and Project Ainita. Each of these organizations will have a booth slot throughout the 3-day Global Gathering event. |
| Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) | Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) | Since 2012, the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) has built free software tools that empower the public to measure and collect evidence of internet censorship. Today, thanks to the global OONI community, OONI hosts the largest open dataset on internet censorship of its kind. Join this booth to learn all about OONI, ask questions, share feedback, and learn how you can get involved in the global fight against internet censorship! |
| Amnezia VPN | Amnezia VPN | Amnezia VPN is an open-source project that helps people bypass internet censorship and protect their privacy. At our booth, we will present updates on our tools and research into how censorship is evolving, especially in authoritarian contexts.
We also want to create an interactive space that connects technology and art. Visitors will be able to: - Explore how we track and analyze website blocks across different regions Together, we'll build a shared archive of artistic and digital resistance. The goal is to spark new conversations and collaborations between developers, researchers, and creatives. |
| Dash Chat - Resilient Messenger for Internet Shutdowns | Darksoil Studio | Join us to test Dash Chat on Android and IOS!
Dash Chat is a FOSS, offline-first, end-to-end encrypted messaging app designed for use in adversarial and/or low-connectivity environments. Come by our booth to: - Try out our latest prototype and help shape its development - Discuss insights from our ongoing research with communities around the world - Sign up to join our pilot program |
| MaadiX | MaadiX | MaadiX is a privacy-oriented easy-to-use solution that puts users back in control of their data and communications without the need for technical expertise or large investments. It provides one-click installation and maintenance of free and open source online tools on own servers through an easy and intuitive graphical interface:|Mastodon, PeerTube, Tor, OpenVPn, Postfix+Dovecot , Nextcloud, mailman3 , and many others |
| Experience it! New Ways to Teach PGP, Anti-Censorship and Shutdown Preparedness | Conexion Segura y Libre | Step into our interactive lab and explore creative tools for defending digital rights
Experience and collaborate on our out-of-the box training tools and ati-censorship tools - Try our 3D-printed "toy" to teach the basics of PGP and what's the whole deal keys: the asymmetric lock box - Play a round a card game to teach the nuances of internet censorship - Take a look into our simulations for censorship and shutdown preparedness. - Use our anti-censorship tool that uses VPNs but isn't really a VPN: Noticias Sin Filtro |
| Rise Against Big Tech (by in.fra.red) | Cloud68.co | The booth will showcase the newly launched Rise Against Big Tech (#rabt) campaign to help organizations and individuals transition to more autonomous services. It will feature educational and technical materials of the campaign, answer questions from visitors and will host a gathering to collect feedback on next steps. Digital rights activists that are interested in moving away from big tech are welcomed. |
| Digital Safety Clinic | Access Now | A space for participants where they can approach digital security practitioners and get direct support to their digital security concerns. This will be coordinated by Access Now but the idea is to invite members of partner organizations (other digital security helplines) to also donate their time/expertise for the clinic. |
| DisCO.coop | DisCO.coop | The future of work is care for each other and the planet. DisCO is a radical, broadly applicable, and fun way to create inclusive economic democracy through socially and ecologically restorative work done by communities built on trust and care. Our mission is to completely reconceptualize the future of work towards social and environmental ends, while also factoring in reproductive work, rest and leisure.
Swing by the DisCO booth, meet the team and find out what Anti-Capitalist, Decolonial, and Intersectional Feminist Technologies look like. We'll be glad to walk you through our materials, and discuss how your organisation could become a DisCO and build economic counterpower for the 21st century and beyond! |
| ReCIPE for Digital Rights | Oxfam, ReCIPE Project | ReCIPE (ReCentering the Civic Internet through Partner Engagement) is a three-year multi-country project led by Oxfam, and co-funded by the EU, to amplify the voices of Global South civil society partner organisations on issues of digital rights in their contexts. The implementing partners are working in the following focus countries: Bolivia, Cambodia, El Salvador, Kenya, Palestine, Senegal, Somalia, Tunisia, Uganda and Vietnam. This booth will display information about recent and ongoing activities under the ReCIPE project, including research reports on digital rights threats facing vulnerable communities in the ten focus countries, analysis of key digital rights laws and policies like privacy and data protection frameworks, and digital rights awareness raising and capacity building materials for different audiences (e.g. women, youth, platform workers and journalists) in different formats. |
| Escuela Común + Red Abya Yala | Sutty worker owned co-op | Escuela Común (Common School) is a collective initiative focused on strengthening digital autonomy, privacy, and infrastructure within Latin American communities by developing open source tools and providing a series of workshops and subsecuent peer to peer support. We contribute to the right to communicate by facilitating tools and knowledge that empower communities improving their resilience to speak at loud and resist surveillance and persecution. It operates as a decentralized learning space, bringing together diverse organizations to share skills and develop sustainable, open-source technologies and share it through hands-on training and development of community-driven digital tools.The first cohort of the Escuela Común in 2024 hosted 12 out of 120 applicant organizations, representing 7 indigenous nations confederations, 1 Autonomous Community, 2 Community Media and 2 Human Rights Organizations. We met online for 4 months and in indigenous territory (Ecuatorian Amazonia) for 10 days to share about how to deploy and mantain autonomous infraestructure and document human and earth rights violations, using communication technologies to report, store and safeguard vital information to resist extractivist projects threatening their territories and lives.Red Abya Yala is a network that gathers a unique convergence of organizations supporting this project. By bringing together grassroots media collectives, digital rights advocates, open-source developers, and Indigenous movements, we're creating a resilient and far-reaching network.This coalition enhances our capacity to build sustainable, community-led digital infrastructures while ensuring adaptability to different contexts. |
| SFLC.in : Promoting Open Knowledge, Free Speech, Online Privacy, Innovation & Equality | SFLC.IN - Software Freedom Law Center | A space to explore and discuss the digital rights landscape in India. Since 2010, SFLC.in, a non-profit legal services organisation, has worked at the intersection of technology, law, policy, and FOSS, with a focus on advancing digital rights. We invite you to engage with our team for collaboration and knowledge exchange! |
| Leadership and Financial Resilience Coaching Support | Spring Strategies | Spring Strategies (www.springstrategies.org), in partnership with the Ford Foundation’s Technology and Society program, will offer leadership and financial resilience coaching throughout the event. A team of Spring coaches will host “Coaching on the Go” sessions over three days, giving participants space to pause, reflect, process ideas, address financial health questions, or explore leadership challenges, practices, and tools.
At our booth, participants can join a Spring CampFiRE mini-workshop—a facilitated space for leaders and activists to engage in dialogue about fundraising, burnout, and navigating leadership in times of uncertainty. For those wishing to go deeper, individual 45-minute coaching sessions will also be available and can be booked online (https://www.springstrategies.org/coaching-global-gathering-2025) or directly at the booth. Across these offerings, our aim is not only to support participants with practical coaching, but also to listen, learn, and connect with the diverse priorities and challenges shaping this ecosystem. |
| Feminist Helplines Community Booth | Navegando Libres | As the Feminist Helplines Community, we would like to host a space for sharing our work on gender based violence facilitated by technology attention. We would like to connect with other organizations doing accompaniment or giving attention on GBVFT. We want to create a safe space among the diverse initiatives working on human rights and technology specially feminist internet to share knowledge and strengthen our work.
This booth will have to spaces: one for connecting and share our work with others, and, second, to start a knowledge sharing session on digital feminist forensic for feminist helplines. |
| Palestine Booth | Solidarity Network of Palestinians and Allies | As we approach two years into the US-Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and across Palestine, and as we witness Western powers' unconditional material support for it, we want to make use of the space we have to hold conversations on how to understand this genocide, and 77 years of ethnic cleansing and occupation, how it intersects deeply with our spaces, and how we - as digital rights activists, academics, educators, researchers, technologists, human rights defenders, and journalists - can and should shape our work to engage meaningfully in this topic. We will also use the space to honor the lives of our martyrs, raise funds for our contacts in Gaza, and host Tatreez (embroidery) sessions to inspire conversations about solidarity through collective weaving. We will intersect this cause with other contexts of digital military warfare and exploitation as a space to learn, be in solidarity, and imagine what resistance against tech-assisted imperialism can look like. |
| Horizontal | Horizontal | At Horizontal, we support activists, journalist and human right defenders with technology and trainings. At the booth, we will demo our 2 flagship products:
- Tella (https://tella-app.org/): a free an open source tool to encrypt and hide files in your phone, and collect and share data even with limited or no internet connectivity or in the face of repression. - Shira (https://shira.app/): a web app to help users develop the skills needed to identify and defeat phishing attacks on email and messaging apps. We will also be available to discuss how we support organizations and activists and will love to hear feedback and requests to make our apps more accessible and usable to the community! |
| Open Data Editor - What did we learn when integrating the AI feature? | Open Knowledge Foundation | At Open Knwoledge Foundation we developed a tool that allows non-technical users to detect errors in tables. The app has a local AI integration that has been implemented and designed with insights from our community. Our small team (two developers, the project manager, a comms lead and myself) had diverse and internal conversations where we started asking ourselves questions about the work we were doing. For example: We wanted to communicate clearly to users what it would happen when clicking the AI button, we gave a lot of thought to messages in dialogs, we evaluated trade off and we put our communicate at the centre of our work: We ran a pilot with 5 different organizations, with focus on getting feedback but also questions about the local AI integration. And we learned a lot!|Our booth would be focused on sharing lessons learned when implementing local AI |
