 Good morning. Good morning everyone. My name is Andrine Soli. I'm the director of the Public Interest Technology University Network here at New America. Welcome to the 2020 Pitt UN virtual convening. I'm happy to be co-locating this event with IEEE ISTAS and my co-host is Katina Michaels here. Thank you so much for joining us, Katina. Thank you so much, Andrine. And welcome, welcome, welcome everyone all the way from Australia at the moment. So one of the things I wanted to quickly let you all know about is the Public Interest Technology University Network is currently a partnership of 36 colleges and universities working to build the field of public interest technology on their campuses and to nurture a new generation of civic-minded technologists. The network recently opened our fall enrollment period, so you have an opportunity to learn more about the network and join the network possibly in 2021. One thing I wanted to draw your attention to today is that we're going to be having an afternoon session on becoming a public interest technology university network member. So please take a look at the schedule and if you're interested in learning more about membership in the network, please do attend that session. But before we go too far, I wanted to talk to Katina about why this partnership made so much sense for us this year. This means a lot to us, Andrine. Your involvement has been a catalyst. IEEE is extremely happy, particularly the Society on the Social Implications of Technology that I've been a part of since my PhD years. And basically, the Society on the Social Implications of Tech was started around 1972. Their interest in public interest technology is quite, you know, old. And what has picked our attention is the timeliness of this discussion begun by New America and also the bringing together of all these universities. If we're going to enact change, we have to do it together on a mass scale. And how do you do that? You do that through different communities. And in this case, we've got the university network and today's wonderful program that's a mixture of IEEE members, non-IEEE members, people from different disciplines and backgrounds like humanities and social sciences and also technologists and hardcore engineers. And that's really what it's about, having a common language, coming together in fluency and saying, well, you may be an anthropologist. You may be training in the humanistic side. Tell us more about what you're doing. Tell us more about the focus on the human side and how we can inject that in the design process. And it's really about not designing for people, but with people working at the core face and asking people, what do you need? So the international symposium on technology and society that is decades old. It began a long time ago. The emphasis of this particular symposium is public interest tech and it runs through to the 15th of November. So stay with us even after the public interest tech university network conference is finished. So with that, I just want to say we've got common goals, advancing humanities IEEE tagline. And to be honest, we're trying to shrug the emphasis purely on the technical theory heavy stuff that, you know, there are specialists that are doing that. It's about minimizing discrimination. It's about minimizing harm. It's about taking responsibility and care is fundamental concepts in society that seem to have been forgotten in our rush to digitize and perhaps become enslaved to a degree by technologies of rapidity and change. So we want to change this notion and say, how can we build technologies that are stable, robust, and will help our communities worldwide. Thanks for that introduction of the work that you've been doing for so long. It must be so gratifying for you to hear this language that you pursued in your PhD program, and now finding a sense of affirmation through them. Right. That seems to be the thing that this is meant for you, particularly and also for many of our scholars that we hear often. And during, again, I say you've been a catalyst behind this change. I don't know how you communicate to the communities that you do at scale, but it's starting to create I think what I would call a movement, a social change, not a technical change. Technology will always change and yes it's gratifying, but I think what you're doing is making people that have felt alone in the past actually feel that they're the majority. Most of us feel like this is the time for change. Most of us have been saying this for decades and to see the fulfillment of a hope that says society comes before technology. You know, how are we going to institute soft laws, regulations, the historical element. Let's think about what do we want our future to be like. And let's visualize and build that future together where there's tolerance, where there's humanity, you know, going back to those first principles and I know a lot of people are going to be talking about responsible innovation. They're going to talk about social justice and environmental justice and human rights and building for accessibility and disability, acknowledging gender diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Many of our university partners for them what this work has meant as members of the network is that they get a chance to focus on curriculum development that is engaging and cross disciplinary and trans disciplinary because our intention is to ensure that all courses that future public interest technologists take have a critical lens have have the ability to think about the implications of all technological innovations and the communities that will be served and potentially those that might be harmed. And so that's been a really key feature for us in the network has been to encourage course development. The other pieces that we're really focused on is the experiential side. How do you connect what students are learning in the classroom to what this work is going to look like out in the world, and particularly around the ethical questions that you raise. And of course, there's always the question of, if I'm going to be a public interest technologist, does that mean that I will be poor. Well, does that mean that I will not make any money. I think one of the things that we want to talk about is how do we support graduates who want to do this labor who want to work in civil society who want to work in government. That is not I believe an equation that we have to submit to. I don't think that we have to make this an either or or a binary, I think you can do both. And I think that's really the purpose of public interest technology for us right now is to think about how do you contribute your skills to making your community better, not just for others, but with others because you're also a part of this community to. And then the other piece that I think we're really excited about is how do we support faculty. How do we support faculty members that are like Katina who've been wanting to do this work, and who might have seen the intersection of policy and tech as a space that wasn't ready for them. I think one thing that we, I'm hoping that we'll leave you with at the end of this day at least is the conversation that we're hoping to host around anti racism, and how you take an anti racist approach to public interest technology. I'm really excited by the panelists that we've lined up for that session so I hope you'll stay with us throughout the day for that evening session and then also end the day with us with some poetry, and hopefully some music to create a different sense of what's going on in our academic convening. I know we're all trapped in our homes, and we're all probably zoomed out, but I think it's really important for us to come together as a community and talk about these themes, explore them, give real concrete examples of how you can pursue this work in your life, as a course of study and then also in practice. And, and then, after you finished with us continue on with Katina for the remainder of the IEEE conference and can you tell us a little bit about what's going to be covered in those remaining days Katina. Sure we have three parallel tracks and a fourth video track, but we've got keynotes specializing in tech ethics and looking at isms and how we smash those isms together in the technology world. We've got people looking at how they will ingest privacy and security by design that values by design you know not leaving our values to the door when we enter our corporates, or not thinking about just solely the end goal of money. What else can we do to innovate inspiring new technologies that will help people and how do we empower communities to actually build for themselves. We've got people from talking on behalf of the public interest technology groups in Aboriginal Australia. How do we actually empower Aboriginal people who look at the environment and think my environment around me is not just a sustainable thing it's a being to me I actually look at it as an entity that's almost humanistic. And so really starting to mix these understandings this cultural awareness that has been so much lacking in our technological development of respect, respect for one another respect for the participants who are dealing with the design process together, working with community groups in society, not just observing them from far lens, and then saying, asking the question for the different communities what do you need. You know, and drain we're talking about degrees here, and the faculty involved in teaching and delivering these degrees but nothing makes me happier than hearing a student who is knocking on your door and saying I'm thinking of doing your degree this public interest thing or this science and technology thing or this human and social dimensions thing or this responsible innovation or ethics in it thing. Actually, I've been waiting decades to do a master's degree and all of a sudden, I found my home. And what they've been saying is, I don't want to do an MBA. My outcome of my, my work is not going to be financial. And so does a pit student a public interest technology student have to be poor. Absolutely not. We're going to create new business models. We're going to, I think convey principles with consent with knowledge with the right things in place whether it's the identification better security encryption whatever it is whatever the society requires those community groups. We're going to do that and I'm asking our students at ASU and beyond to think of a roadmap. This is not just a degree that you get a piece of paper at the end of this is a movement. You have to visualize in that roadmap that I want to finish this degree. And I think I want to start an NGO I think I want to work for IBM who are encouraging actually at the nice 2019 conference I heard IBM encouraged pit scholars public interest tech scholars saying if you're from the field of music, if you're from the field of anthropology, we want you embedded in our security practice, because by diversity, we're going to challenge the people who are doing the majority programming but you're going to come and work with us together so I think it's a it's a big message to be corporate and I think they're ready to make the move they know this is the time, and also to these other inspiring innovations that will help in the volunteering engineering engineering sense that will help the homeless that will help the needy. So we've got a great charter ahead of us and I'm very excited about the next 10 years and dream. Thank you so much for that Katina and as I'm hoping that in the future, we will be able to accept institutions, educational institutions from around the world within our network we're just getting started within the public interest technology network. So stay tuned for opportunities for global partnerships. That's exactly what we are envisioned for our future and we're thinking bigger and better as Katina has indicated. And so I just hope you all have a wonderful day today. Please do continue on with IEEE is that for the rest of the weekend, and also continue to take advantage of all of the learnings that you'll take that you'll have here because we'll have recordings that are available. And we'll also be posting them on the new America.org website, as well as where will your site be Katina, could you just say that for everyone. Yes, it's IEEE is test 20. If you Google that you'll find it on the IEEE platform. Thank you so much. Have a good rest of the day everyone.