The engine room is in full force at RightsCon this week. Alix, Christopher, and Tin Geber (our newest teammate) will be there. And it’s not just because we are adamant about protecting offline rights from digital assault. We’ll be looking back three years at RightsCon 2011 when the engine room convened its first advisory board meeting. We’ll also be preparing for the Responsible Data Forum on Thursday in Oakland. So, thanks to Access for helping us get started three years ago, and thanks to our sounding board members for all of the help they continue to provide.

Where will we be at the conference?

We will be co-organizing a session with Aspiration at 12:15pm on Wednesday on Responsible Data in Advocacy. Alix will be on the roundtable at 4pm on Tuesday co-hosted by HURIDOCS, Small World News, and Benetech on best practices for technical capacity development of human rights organizations, and the roundtable “Can mobile phones communications become secure?” session at 12:00 on Wednesday. 

The Responsible Data in Advocacy session on Wednesday will be setting the stage for Thursday’s Forum.

Here’s the blurb:

Data-driven advocacy is faster, cheaper and easier than ever before, but as recent revelations regarding surveillance recall, data also poses dangers. What does this mean for evidence and technology in advocacy? When do surveys infringe on privacy? When do citizen reporting platforms place users in danger? When should social media scraping require consent? And most importantly, what can activists and small NGOs do to answer these questions, and understand their responsibilities to the individuals and communities reflected in advocacy data? This session will explore these and other issues, and work to identify steps that can be taken at the program level and in support to initiatives, to enable responsible data practice in advocacy.

We hope to see you there and if you want to set up a time to chat at some point during the week, feel free to drop a line at post@theengineroom.org.