 Hi everyone, welcome back to our day two keynote of CSV.com. Today I have the distinct pleasure of introducing Emily Jacoby. Emily is the executive director and founder of Digital Democracy and is passionate about leveraging technology to empower marginalized communities. Beginning her career as a youth journalist at the age of 13, she has led technology, media, and research projects in Latin America, West Africa, Southeast Asia, and the U.S. Prior to founding Digital Democracy, she worked for InterNews Network, AllAfrica.com, and as assistant bureau director for Y-Press. Emily has presented on the intersection of technology, civic engagement, and human rights to U.S. Congress, the State Department, the United Nations, and numerous universities and technology conferences. Devoted to protecting the environment and democratizing the design process at Digital Democracy, Emily works with its staff and board oversees strategic planning and development and works directly with grassroots partners to design programs and tools that empower marginalized communities to defend their rights. With that, I'd like to introduce and turn it over to Emily. Thank you so much, Jonathan. Hi, everyone. It's really an honor to be here today and to be keynoting in virtual space. I've given many, kind of, I've done a lot of webinars and everything, but this is my first time really doing a keynote in a virtual conference. So it's, yeah, it's an honor to be here, and really thanks to all the conference organizers and everybody who's put this on. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. Let's see. Here we go. All right. So, let's see. Okay. So, yeah, today I want to talk about data solidarity, which is a phrase we've been tossing around at Digital Democracy, and I'm particularly excited to talk about with all of you because I think you're going to have a lot of insight into how you may already be practicing this in your work, in your experiences, and how we can do our own, like, version of it better. But before I want to do, I want to begin with something that is really important to me, which is to ground this in place. So, of course, we're all here digitally right now, but I really want to start with where we are. So, for me, if we were actually in-person together, I actually live in D.C., I would want to begin with a land acknowledgement. So, D.C. is traditionally the territory of Nakachank and Piscataway people. And because we work with Indigenous people, we feel like it's so important to acknowledge the original tenders of the land, and though colonization has had a brutal impact on his displaced people, we still would acknowledge that where we're starting from. So, for you, you know, people are calling it from all sorts of different places. You might be Indigenous to the land that you're on right now, or you might be a settler, you might be a visitor, you might be a migrant. But if you could take a minute to think about where you are, and let's just have a moment of silence to acknowledge all the traditional peoples who have maintained this beautiful planet for so long. All right, thank you. And I included this link to Native land. If you are not familiar with where you are or even places that you might go, this is a great resource for finding out who Native peoples are to that territory. So, also talking about where we are right now, I want to talk about where we are emotionally. And I'd love if everybody could take a minute to just send an emoji or a few quick words of where you are and how you're doing. I think there's been a lot of excitement on the Slack and everything for how people are doing right now, which is great. But I had to be honest with you. I felt like I couldn't show up as my full authentic self today if I didn't say that it's been a really hard week for me. For the past 24 hours, I guess 36 hours, my family was wrestling with whether or not to take my grandmother, who's 98 years old, out of the assisted care living facility where she is and whether or not to move her in with my parents. She lives in Indiana, where my parents also live, which is traditional land of the Miami peoples. And there's just a coronavirus related death at her assisted care facility. And that's something that I'm working out with my family. I'm sure all of you have your own difficulties and challenges, especially right now. It's been awesome to see Danielle with her kids showing up for the hello intros yesterday. I think there's just so much that we're all dealing with. And it struck me that how can I talk about data solidarity if we're not acknowledging all the different things that are going on in our lives that we carry with us into our professional settings and our work settings, and especially right now, as those lines are so blurred. Yeah, I just really wanted to start by acknowledging that. And for those who maybe had planned to show up at this conference and haven't been able to because of the things they are dealing with, just naming all of that. So thank you for also sharing some of your feelings right now. Yeah, and please keep it going. And thank you. Okay. So the next thing I want to talk about, we already did that, is what brought you here? Why are you here? If we were here together, that would be the question I'd want to be asking all of you. For you, maybe it was a work requirement to come, or maybe this just aligns with the work that you're doing. But what is the deeper reason that brings you here? Maybe it's a commitment to wanting to share information in new ways. Maybe it's struggles that you had as a younger person or that you've noticed in your community. Maybe it's something you're fighting for that you want to see happen better, like medical information be better shared or something. So again, I won't be able to read them all, but I love if people could post a few of your reasons for being here in the chat. Like, I like people. That is such a great answer. Keep them coming. We'd love to see more. So for me, what brought me here actually started quite a while ago when I was much younger. Ironically, I'm currently growing out my beings because why not during coronavirus when I can't leave the house? And I think the last time I was growing out my beings when I was 13 years old, so I'm transported back to the awkward state. As Jonathan shared in my bio, I was a youth journalist when I was in middle school and high school as part of an amazing program that was dedicated to teaching young people how to tell young people stories through the field of journalism. And so it's been cool within this community to be connected to so many journalists because I haven't identified as a journalist in a long time. But this photo was when I was 13 years old and I was through my youth journalism program we received visas to travel to Cuba. So this is my hometown newspaper at Indianapolis Star reporting on the team of us who were going to Cuba to interview young people. We were hoping to interview Fidel Castro. That didn't happen. But we did get to hear him give a speech and most importantly, I had my eyes completely opened up to what was happening in the island nation of Cuba which is one of the United States closest neighbors but for many United States citizens was at the time and continues to be really inaccessible due to embargoes and just the hostility between our political governments. But what I really learned in Cuba more than anything was how the situation in Cuba and some of the challenges that young people were facing there was linked to policies that my government was enforcing and so that taught me in early age to try to think about all the ways in which stories connect us and the ways in which human beings I think share similar experiences but the way that government and policies and boundaries can cause hardships. So fast forward about 10 years later a little bit longer I was doing research in Southeast Asia with a group that I had kind of been in university with and we were researching the situation for young people along the Myanmar-Thailand border. So refugees, Burmese refugees and refugees of different various ethnic identity groups and we were just trying to understand what the situations was for them as refugees and migrant workers and in our research we came across a correlation between internet access and political engagement and that for me was honestly the moment that started me on a path towards becoming a technologist because this aspect of internet access seemed so important and so critical to them and they talked about how they would walk this young woman Sulein, she would walk an hour and a half in order to get to the internet cafe in order to communicate with her family members who were in a different refugee camp and so just this critical, you know the ability to access information and communicate with her loved ones was so critical it started me thinking about technology and over the next couple of years I did research with a couple other people on the ways in which grassroots organizations in Southeast Asia were starting to use technology to work on human rights issues. So some of them were starting to map human rights violations that were happening inside Myanmar Burma and they were just trying to share information in various ways and then in fall 2007 September there was what has been referred to as a staff on uprising which is where ordinary citizens inside Myanmar Burma were fighting against fuel price increase by the government which was a military regime and they were really just arguing for the basic safety and health of people and because we had a lot of contacts inside the country we knew the ways in which they were using mobile phones and internet access to share information and we were actually getting messages from inside the country of what was happening. That suffering uprising was halted effectively by the government not solely by violence there was a violent crackdown on the protesters but they actually ended up turning off the internet and cell phones for five full days and this was in 2007. Since then other governments have done the same and we actually right now in Kashmir I believe it's the longest going full internet shutdown which has been, that has been happening while there have been violent repressions against people inside Kashmir but so in that moment for 2007 for me it was a total aha moment of the power that governments have when they can shut down technologies and the need to have technologies that aren't dependent on government control and that enable people to actually get the information out in ways that they need to without that kind of interference so that was really what led to me co-founding digital democracy and exploring how technology itself is a powerful tool and information is a powerful tool and the ways in which the people who are the most marginalized and the most oppressed how they can leverage that as a tool to fight against the powers that be and we know that entrenched powers are always going to try to protect their interests in any way possible so when we start to subvert the power and make sure that people who are most marginalized have access to it and can actually share their own information and control their own information that is how we believe that a lot of positive change can happen so that's been our focus for a long time at digital democracy and as Jonathan said in my bio our mission is really just to work in solidarity with marginalized groups to use technology to defend their rights and that looks a lot of different ways and we've worked in a lot of different places but the work that I want to talk about today has been primarily in the Amazon rainforest and with indigenous peoples with whom we've been working for over seven years on a variety of issues so at digital democracy our day-to-day work is really comprised of two things one we're working directly with local communities here these are a couple of community monitors from the local group called ACA Amarikari they are an indigenous-led organization that co-manages a natural reserve a community of reserve in southern Peru the Amarikari communal reserve and here you see them actually taking a picture of a mining site near the reserve and they're documenting all these threats like mining and illegal logging in order to protect their territory and we work directly with these groups to help them incorporate technology in a holistic way into their work to protect their territories and then we also as a result and this is really harkens back I'm going to be referencing Ruto's talk an hour ago quite a bit you know Ruto at the Amazon conservation team is doing very aligned work and we've been longtime friends and allies and so similar to Ruto we saw in our work with local partners we've seen such a gap that a lot of the tools that are built for commercial reasons or just even for the situation here in the United States for example where there's a not complete internet access but certainly more internet access than the Amazon a lot of those tools just don't work for local partners needs in the Amazon and so the second area of our work and it's becoming an even bigger area is to co-create tools with our local partners oh I just accidentally let's see sorry I'm slightly different form than I'm used to so I'm just okay so here's here's just a map of some of our partners across the Amazon these are different indigenous groups that we've been working with some for you know over a decade many others in the past few years but I want to give you a sense there's no groups pictured in Brazil on this map though we are in relation and starting to work with quite a few work groups in Brazil as well gosh I did it again thanks for bearing with me so the the bulk of what I want to talk about is really the story of a tool that we've been building called Mateo and I'm going to tell it first through telling a story of one of our partners the Warani people and how we can co-built this tool together so this is my friend Damate she is a leader of the Warani people who live in what is now the eastern part of the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Warani have lived on their territory for thousands upon thousands of years and have very effectively fought against many different ways of invasion early on Incas later on the Spanish conquistadors later on rubber plantations the list goes on and on but they have been in contact with the outside world really only since the 1980s or so when American missionaries actually came in during that first wave of contact we've been talking a lot about it lately because what's happening right now with coronavirus is bringing up a lot of the memories of that first wave of contact because when the missionaries came in thousands of Warani people died from common illnesses and one of the things that the Warani have done is map some of the areas where they lost the most people but in recent years the Warani have been able to maintain a lot of their traditional ways of life even amidst contact with the outside world and they came to us in 2015 through a couple of our partner organizations a group called Allianz Disabled which is an alliance of four different indigenous nationalities in Ecuador including the Warani as well as Amazon frontlines who are an amazing NGO in Ecuador that's working directly with indigenous groups to build indigenous power and they asked us to help them with a mapping process and the mapping process we do is very similar to the one Rudo described which is we start with paper so here we're here in Normandy it's actually leading a group of women in the village of Nemombare to do some base level mapping and you can see this is another village this is from the village of Akaro we started with just two butcher blocks sheets but by the end of the initial paper mapping exercise they had eight butcher blocks sheets put together and just to give you a sense of how detailed their knowledge is of their community the village itself took up about this much sorry to see on my screen about this much of a paper it wasn't that big but their deep knowledge of all the rivers and streams they just wanted to keep going out and out so we start with paper maps because that's very accessible it means that everybody can get involved and then they would go out and at the time they were using GPS handhelds to go out and document places often with elders and they would do oral history interviews again similar to Rudo's work with elders of you know the different things and sites that they were documenting and then they would come back and this is kind of the part that we were really excited about because we were building at the time the early version of what we now call map AO desktop which is a desktop based application that our partners had on their computers were able to take into the field and then in real time they would actually hook them up to a projector project against the wall and have the whole community get to be part of the process of digitizing the data that they had collected and be able to put in wow tarot their own language all of the details about what was going on and so map AO is a tool that we built we originally built it on top of OpenStreetMaps ID editor but instead of the backend being the OpenStreetMap global database which of course is online they have an offline version that's just theirs and so we built it so that it's offline first so as you can see here this is Jorge who was a member of the Morani mapping team talking with an elder and they were able to look at the map together and really be involved in that not just the paper process but the digital process so here's a close up of one of the communities that they mapped Diamantaro and then here are just a few of the dozens and upon dozens of icons that they created over time and this process was a really cool process where the communities would first have a physical brainstorm of what are the things that they would do and then they would kind of categorize those and then they would do drawings of these and then they worked with an Ecuadorian Keto based designer to turn them into digital icons that they could put in and so these maps were really first and foremost created for the communities themselves and they were sharing them amongst their communities and then two years ago the government announced a map of the Ecuadorian Amazon with the yellow centered on Morani territory the government announced a sale of a lot of new oil blocks including Block 22 which is right here in the western part of Morani territory and Block 22 is actually where we had been doing that mapping so Diamantaro, Acaro, some of these villages I mentioned were all in Block 22 and the government announced that they were going to leasing these blocks for sale and they were basing it off of consultations that they claimed to have done with local communities the problem is that when they did those consultations they really just flew in, talked to a couple of people said we want to help you build schools we want to help you build hospitals and then can you sign this and a couple of people signed it out signed that but there really wasn't any actual full consultation process and most people had no idea what they were agreeing to so the Morani launched they launched a campaign to fight against that this is actually a screenshot from a map we helped them build a map story which I'll link to later which tells the whole story of their fight against oil and the threats that the oil posed for them and then they also launched an online version of their map and they this was again from the same map story that we helped them build that really tells the story of why their territory is so threatened by oil and why they're resisting oil drilling on their territory one of the things that they told us in the early stages that has just always stuck with me is we want to create a map full of things that don't have a price so they saw the way in which oil drilling has come into neighboring communities and just devastated the local environment it's made people dependent on outside food and water you know it's stopped them from being able to hunt and fish and it's forced them into a dependency on the national government that the Morani otherwise don't have so we launched this campaign and the advocacy side went along with the legal side and the legal strategy has been really critical and here you see Namante who was in that first picture I shared of the mapping the mapping workshop and here she is one of the lead plaintiffs in the legal case and the case was first heard by the local courts and then it went on to the national level and each time the Ecuadorian government ruled in the Morani's favor and said that the Ecuadorian government had indeed violated their rights to free, prior and informed consent being a really critical piece of the indigenous the UN declaration of indigenous rights and it enabled them to have the oil block removed from their territory so in effect that court case meant that one half a half million acres of the Morani Ecuadorian Amazon has been protected and now we're working with those same partners to work on a larger project around all the other territories that were also up for sale in that oil block which as you can see is seven million acres that those are now also being questioned as to the legality of them so that was really exciting to see and you know map AO was just really a tool in the background that enabled this community to create their own map and in doing so not only have tools that they could use in court to argue why their territory would be so threatened by oil but it also enabled them to actually just build up shared unity that they talked a lot and we debriefed about the whole process and they talked a lot about how the mapping process for them felt critical to then building the consensus they needed to fight against the oil when it was announced so here's another story this is Alexandra who's one of the members of the Guardia which is like a local patrol of the Kofan people in Sinangue and they're also a member of Alianza Sabo and we started working with them about for the Warani mapping process we really used the handheld GPS and the desktop application but through that process we were starting to see and with many of our different partners the need for a better mobile phone application Ruto actually mentioned some of the tools that we've used in the past like open data kit and others and you know there's a lot of tools out there that are designed to help collect data offline but there are very few tools we've found that take that data collection and turn it into locally empowered data management so a lot of times when people are whether it's indigenous people whether it's rural villagers maybe for an academic study when people are kind of conscripted to help collect data it often feels actually like a very extractive process because I mean I've talked to people in so many different places who have been part of data collection efforts where they've maybe been trained on how to use a phone and go out and ask questions and gather information and then they never see that data again and that for us is deeply problematic so the idea behind Mapio Mobile is not only that it would be easy to collect data in the field you know in these remote areas without internet but that they could also then manage the information themselves so we worked with Alexandra and her community and we built this tool this is a screenshot of the kind of GPS view you can see some of the different points that have been taken along the way and you are kind of just you know very visual simple to do you press this orange button to take a picture or sorry to take a GPS point gosh I did it again uh um usually don't make so many tech mistakes but this is a new system for me um and then so you press that first button and then you are able to choose you know different these are um we have permission to share these images of some of the different icons that they've been collecting um in Sinangue um like trees um like different kinds of palms you know ants and so on um or and let me just go back um sorry um wow so you can also take you can also switch to camera view up here or you can look at all of the items you've collected here I don't have a whole lot of screenshots on this because I didn't want to get too technical in this but if you do want to learn more um you can go to our website I think Ruder actually already posted a video link and you can see a lot more um images of this and then this is um just actually a short video this that one of my colleagues took while in the Hague um of how you can how you can use um map.io very easily so you can see the different kinds of categories you know we work with partners to create their own categories or there are standards that people can download you can enter in information it's also designed that you don't have to enter information um so sometimes you know somebody just needs to really quickly take a picture that's connected to gps points and get out of there if it's a dangerous situation for example and so we've built in a lot of flexibility to that um to how map.io works so that it can meet different different needs um as well as different like permissions and privacy controls so here's another picture um some of Alexandra's colleagues from the the senior guardia um the patrol out doing doing a mapping um project so what map.io mobile does um is allows for both taking baseline map information um like you know sacred sites or where different rivers are where community sites are where plants and animals are but also allows for tracking ongoing monitoring information so where an oil spill maybe has happened or illegal logging or mining and so we're working with partners um many different places who are working across many different examples um right now it's being used by over 150 different frontline defenders um who are representing like 7000 people in total um and they're monitoring and mapping territory um of size about 4 million hectares um which is uh close to 10 million acres um of indigenous territory right now it's primarily being used in the Amazon um but we are starting to work being used as well um in Central America and we're starting to work with some groups in Southeast Asia who are translating it into different languages so I'll get into in a minute um so our vision for it really is that because we've built it to be offline first and to um to be used and adapted to different use cases our vision is to you know continue making available to people who might need it and if you have any you know potential case study ideas or groups that you think might want to use it we'd love to hear about that so all that um kind of brings me to the topic of our talk which is around data solidarity again I don't even know if that's a phrase that works I'm just kind of trying it out and I really would welcome feedback on that um but for me solidarity is really around recognizing that we're all interconnected and um you know power imbalances exist um systems of oppression exist all too well and yet when we start to recognize um that we're all interconnected and that we all stand to benefit from supporting one each one another then we can start to act I think in solidarity with each other and for us you know there's a few different ways we do that and I really was trying to think of how do I share this in a way that can be relevant you know like on the surface doing indigenous mapping in remote parts of Amazon may seem really different than running a library um and on the other hand I think there are so many similarities because we're all working you know to try to benefit the common good we're working around issues of how do we address different imbalances and try to you know make things better with information and data we share so yeah really I'm really interested in like what aspects of things we've learned can be relevant to you so one things we've become really clear on is that we think we are um oh my gosh I'm just seeing the comment about the system glitch okay thank you um so uh we have realized I'll admit when I first started digital democracy I thought that maybe technology was just neutral and it's all about how people use it um you know there's lots of kind of sayings like that in the United States about different things um and like for example I think a somewhat famous one is well it's not guns that kill people it's people who kill people and you know technically that's true and yet also the things that we build are imbued with different values and so often I mean for too much of human history the people who have the most power have claimed to be neutral and have claimed to be objective um and have you use that kind of veil of objectivity to actually enforce a lot of terrible policies that have hurt many many people and so we became as we started building our own technology we realized that we really needed to name our values and then we needed to constantly check if the decisions we were making were in line with those values especially in an era when so much technology is built um by for-profit companies um and not only for-profit but that you know are built into a system based on you know return um of capital to venture capitalists and and are built into um you know a system where like for many for many of this like social media tools that we use you know our our information our attention is actually the product and that's being monetized but often in such an invisible way so for us we felt like um uh we felt like it was really important to name our values and lead with those and I think it's something that you know everybody working with data um and information technology should be doing so some of our values are let's see if I get this right so for self-determination and autonomy um especially because we're working with indigenous peoples so critical to make sure that they are able to make decisions for themselves so with our technology work we're trying to reduce dependency on outsiders we're trying to um be sure that they're able to actually control their own information and choose you know how and when it's shared next is accessibility um you know this is obviously critical and you know something we've already been talking about so much these past few days at this conference um but all the different ways in which accessibility matters so looking at you know especially with indigenous peoples we're working on a lot of different languages also around you know just understanding you know what what to me brought up in the visual way I was might be you know really obvious it's going to be different to somebody from a different culture so how do how are we testing um and kind of working with with our partners to design things that really work for them from the get go next is collaboration um you know everything we do is a partnership and I think I think the funding model of so many things I was thinking about this with CC's comment yesterday around um you know how journal how there's collaboration on the tech within journalism but competition elsewhere and I think that's not so dissimilar probably from NGOs and from uh from academia and I I think at least in the NGO sector I really want to change that I think that the more we collaborate the better you know we're not we have the benefit of we're not working for just a financial bottom line we're working for a human bottom line so the more we actually are collaborating and sharing sharing our work and sharing sharing um our approaches I think the greater impact we can have and then finally our final value that was kind of one of our guiding stars is just the integration of social and environmental justice um and again in the NGO sector I think there's so much push to kind of separate those two things out as though you know what happens to people over here and what happens to the environment over here are really separate things but we believe that those just cannot be separated and especially um today in an era of you know with the threats of you know changing climate and everything else we really have to look at those things as linked and um you know we're not going to be doing anything good for the environment if we're harming indigenous peoples um along the way and vice versa so yeah you know based on that I wanted to talk about some of the ideas like some of the ideas that we've been working on that might apply to the broader um CSV community and I'm excited to see you know your thoughts um and and please feel free to like add to the chat as well and communicate afterward um but one thing we've been really talking about a lot is local first so um Ruto was talking about offline first um and how critical that is so for us local first means not only that things are built to work offline first um from the get go but also that all the data can be stored locally um and that information can all be can all be shared there and so we've we've written a we've written a blog post about this would love to get your thoughts on it um but for us if things work offline and then can go online then we know that they can reach everybody um so that's again about the kind of accessibility issue second we think a lot about community own data um and not necessarily open by default um I know a lot of folks in this community are doing really important work around um open data and I think that's so critical when we think about governments um when we think about oil companies when we think about mining companies you know basically anywhere where the power um is held you know like where there are power imbalances I think opening up data is really important because often it's through closed data sets that um that entrenched power interests are able to maintain those interests um and are able to you know uh really continue harming people but sometimes I think uh it's also important to understand again around power imbalances for indigenous peoples you know sometimes um opening data can be the worst option for them you know one example that really sticks with me is during the fight over um the dakota access pipeline in 2016 the um the uh the tribe put in a information to the local government office about where some sacred sites were because they wanted to make sure those sites were protected um from the pipeline that was coming through and that day and of course this was in the time when there were many you know so many nonviolent protesters who come to um come to the camp and were trying to you know support the tribe sovereignty around preventing the um the pipeline from coming through the um the pipeline company jumped ahead in their construction process so the the information was filed with the local government on a friday the following day on a saturday morning the pipeline company jumped ahead 20 miles in order to actually start construction exactly where these sacred sites were um because they would rather pay the fine for you know for violating that than have them being halted from from building the pipeline and you know there's there's many examples like that of ways in which you know really important sensitive information um from indigenous communities has been if it's shared has them been linked and turned against them so for us we talk a lot about community own data um because sometimes open isn't the right answer especially when you know we're dealing with marginalized communities and sensitive information um and then you know I've already kind of mentioned this but co-designing and co-building from the beginning um just seeing so many examples in our work around the world of really well-intentioned projects that have been built from far away and then brought to a community and you know the good all the good intentions in the world don't matter if people aren't kind of you know listen to from the get-go um and I think that it really especially when we think about the resources it takes to build new projects and to and to deal with you know new data projects um you know having things come from the local community is always the best practice and then finally taking a stance um I think that you know there's something we're we've been talking about with just naming our values and um you know maybe it feels a little risky like maybe we're going to get something wrong maybe we're going to realize some of the things we're doing aren't in line with our values but we think it's really important to to take a stance and to name what we're going for and what we're working for because it helps us like learn in the open um helps us find the people that we're meant to collaborate with and um and hopefully helps all of our work be better so that I believe is just about what I want to say um some ways you can get involved and I'll post these links in Slack as well um if you want to get involved in contributing to our code we would love that we have lots of different um you know ways to get involved and lots of different um repositories you can you can contribute to especially if you um know React Native um which is the kind of core tool um we've used to to enable our um our apps to work across different platforms and then we also have been doing a lot around translation I meant to include a slide of all the different language um languages that MFAO is being translated into um but you are welcome to contribute you click on those links you'll see some of the um the languages that it's being translated into and then I'll um also include our public Slack link um in this chat and in Slack and I think I'm good to go for questions thank you Emily um I think we have plenty of time for questions so I hope that people um will add their questions to um the chat or the ask your question feature um additionally I just wanted to say while we kind of wait for questions coming a little bit say thank you very much for um your your your your keynote address and the way you started the keynote um at least I'll speak for myself it um really put me in a mindset to receive the topic that you were discussing it's a it was a very um appropriate setting in mind frame uh to receive this really important discussion so with that I want to move to the questions that I see in the questions and the first one I want to ask is um from at Fubits uh can you share with us how much funding time and personality took to build the app and the ecosystem yeah that's a great question um it's hard to say because if we built that I don't know what the amount would be if we built just the app um because in a way we couldn't have ever built just the app because it I think we would have built a pretty you know like not very useful app if we had just built it um separate from the work we're doing with our partners um I will say it's been it's we started building the early prototypes of Matteo uh in 2014-2015 so it's been you know five or six years um we've had uh we've been building up I sort of mentioned this earlier um again it's been a hard day for me and um so nothing my most coherent self um which hopefully just gives permission to all of us and they'll always be our most coherent selves um we have been we built up a lot of open source tools that we've been building off of um like that project um which is uh running a lot of the kind of the running the core script underneath um which uh Matteo is is built as a distributed app with um peer-to-peer sharing so we have had two to three people working on the the core technology for the past three years um I I guess I'd say probably if we're thinking just about the technology up until now it's probably around half million dollars um to build uh but it wasn't just like Matteo mobile and Matteo desktop that we've built with that um it's also our technology team also does a lot of kind of customization of different tools for our partners um so yeah I'd say five or six years half a million dollars um two to three people over like depending on the time period over that time um but it's actually been so much more than that like we have a whole program team that you know are kind of constantly in contact with our partners and doing the trainings and workshops that have informed the process but the core the core technology that's that's my best guess answer for your answer um another question from the the chat um how is co-creation work being affected by the pandemic yeah um well first I'll just say indigenous people are being deeply affected by the pandemic and if you have uh if you have extra capacity to give um I'll also post a couple links um to some some funders that they're going on um people are being deeply affected and all travel of course has halted um uh internationally but even within countries so early on a lot of our partners had to make a decision um whether they were going to go you know back into their territories if they have territories where you know that they have control over many people who have retreated into their territories and for those who still have you know um food sovereignty and like clean water they're doing okay and they're able to just kind of shut away for a while um for communities that have been affected by oil drilling and by logging and mining um they are often dependent on outsider you know outside access for clean water for food for everything and so uh we're seeing a virus hitting a lot of those communities and even our partners that are based um in country like in Peru and Ecuador are able to travel right now so um we are certainly a lot of our things are on hold one of my colleagues was supposed to be in Peru right now doing a two week workshop um that has been put on hold however many of our partners that are dealing with the most urgent threats like the mining and logging they are based in like border communities where they have internet access so we've been able to stay in communication with them and we're doing some adjustments like um map AO allows for exporting data through like WhatsApp or other you know apps on your phone and so some of the people who are kind of separated by each from each other physically are still able to communicate if they have minimal access um over um you know over basic cell phone connection so uh our to-do list is actually so long that we even if we had no contact with our partners you know they've already given us enough things to do that we would probably keep busy for the next half a year um so we're just kind of playing it by ear and we're doing we're doing some more webinars now for for kind of intermediary partners to get them trained up in map AO so that once uh you know once travel domestically is able to happen again that they can go and do more trainings um in in remote areas that currently you can't visit um so I will in the chat it looks like um people are really engaging with that the concept and putting um links in and from another uh question from the chat and I think this was to the the general try but uh I think it's fair to ask you as well is um can you recommend some readings on uh this topic data solidarity sovereignty but on this collective societal level yeah um I will send some we're actually producing some right now we've been doing a q&a series with some practitioners and there's there's a couple things we'll be putting out really soon with some amazing insights from like um a woman uh who I just interviewed um recently named uh chung who's based um in southeast asia and doing a lot of uh indigenous data um sovereignty with um with indigenous groups across southeast asia um I think that uh yeah I'll I'll put some links and then yeah we'll be doing more um ruto mentioned this on his talk um the concept of uh of indigenous data sovereignty I think is really critical so um and and I'm we're still trying to figure out kind of how that applies to individuals or you know non-indigenous groups and that's kind of where our framing around data solidarity has come up because while an indigenous nation should of course be able to have sovereignty over their own data you know how that applies to maybe more of a community group or you know different groups who don't have as strong of a you know national identity um I think uh is a really interesting topic so I'll include some links like that um one thing to note that comes to mind uh for example somebody mentioned I think in ruto's talk that ruto was talking about you know the good amazon um amazon.com actually has been engaged in a multi-year fight uh to take the domain dot amazon um and to have that be you know be theirs and I believe it's been a long process with the different um international like governing bodies um but for me that's a great example of like uh data colonialism or you know just tech colonialism to to to have the arrogance to say you know there's a whole there's a whole region of the world with multiple countries spanning it that spans the amazon and that we can instead have that the domain um that domain name um so that's that's something that um the peruvian and brazilian governments were fighting um but I believe that the latest news is that they lost that fight so I'll also send a link to that because I think it's something that most people don't know about and that is a great example of just uh how many ways I think corporate technology has just colonized even you know even our digital spaces thank you um uh a new question from the chat uh as technology advances exponentially every day where do you see the future of data solidarity and protecting our marginalized communities in five and fifteen years I think we're going to see and of course this is a totally biased answer because this is what we're working on but I believe we're going to see more and more offline first initiatives because as we recognize you know during natural disasters what happens well the internet often goes out um you know during during crises um you know like what's happening right now with coronavirus there's information that communities need to share and they often need to share you know in ways that are protecting private information and they need to share it quickly and so if we build tools that allow for decentralization um then allow for information to be shared amongst trusted pods and networks um then we're building tools that that can that can meet those needs um so I hope that we see more of a reclaiming of the internet and of you know spaces for sharing from the kind of centralized wall gardens that we currently have online into more decentralized spaces that are run by different communities um and I I hope that you know part of what's been challenging about building Matbeo is that we're still kind of doing a lot of somewhat cutting-edge things in terms of um a peer-to-peer database and decentralized sharing and so on um but I think as as more people work on on that and recognize the importance and you know we're seeing in um in academia like you know amazing work of people trying to to share share information that is decentralized so that's one of the things I hope we see um I also think again this is optimistic side I really hope we'll see more and more tools being built by the communities um that are using them so we'll see less of the innovation coming from from Silicon Valley or we'll recognize more of the innovation that's not just coming from Silicon Valley you know I'm thinking about uh Rizomatica based in Oaxaca where they've been building their own um cell phone networks um you know there's just there's a lot of examples um around the world of people creating technology you know for themselves and and I hope we'll we'll see more of that in the next 10 15 years. Thank you um just looking through uh the chats and the questions it looks like they've slowed down a little bit but it seems to be a really active discussion based on um your your thoughts your presentation and comments I appreciate that we have a couple minutes left for questions if anyone wants to to get um submit a question not seeing anything I had I had a question earlier and I think you started to or you you spoke about it a little bit about um how the technologies and these methodologies might be deployed in um places that have less recognized um less recognized cohesive communities um and I'm thinking a lot about like um communities that have been established over the last 100 200 years 300 years are now being distributed through external forces have people been thinking about how to apply either these methodologies or even the tool that you've developed in these communities yeah I mean that's a great question so we we we pretty much only work with people who kind of come to us um so we're not actively like out kind of evangelizing um necessarily or trying to get people to adapt our tool um because we're just kind of not interested in that but that being said um I mean we are having lots of different groups come to us for different reasons or people see you know learn about that they own some way like you know maybe through this presentation and they're like oh you know that's interesting maybe we could apply it to this so um I do think I mean we knew from the get go that we had to design it to be offline and local first for our partners to use it um but our hunch has always been that it because it um it allows for communities to control the information themselves and then choose how and when and have the power to share the outward that it will be useful to other groups and and so I think um I think we will see more and more of that I mean our hope is just to make make it available and to hopefully be able to to make whatever changes communities might request so for example a lot of our current partners are very cohesive and so they're able right now the peer to peer database is like automatically share everything within a network of trust and you choose what you're going to export out but for other communities they may need to you know they don't have that full trust yet and so because of colonization because all these different forces that you know the impact community trust they may need to have different sharing settings just within the app not just for export so that's something we're working on currently like a kind of levels of kind of trust within the app um so uh yeah right now I mean like I said we've had we've had some different groups coming to us and and I think we will see more who are adapting it to not just environmental data but it could be people at some some groups are adapting it to you know coronavirus related information right now and to could be a whole host of different issues thank you um I think we are officially at time so um with that I wanted to say thank you thank you again for your presentation and for answering all the questions and the confirmation that you started thanks so much Jonathan and thank you everybody for your kind words in the chat is a really sweet way to get feedback and so folks who um had questions that we didn't get to of course we'll move them over to the Slack Q&A CSV Q&A and then um with that I think I'll if I could uh do a little bit of house cleaning and housekeeping that's the phrase okay I'll sign off thank you all right thank you and uh say that coming up now is um llama brunch lunch munch um and uh there are going to be there are uh zoom rooms that have been posted in the uh Slack sort of bird of a feather style so folks can follow up with those if they're interested and um uh thank you everyone who attended and I will sign off but uh remember the llama brunch is at at the half hour you can find that on the schedule as well