The Next TCU In-Person Global Event is Coming!
Find out How You Can Participate! But be ready for changes :)
For a complete experience, we suggest reading this post with Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams playing in the background.
In 2020, we were named one of the 100 “healthy moments’ of the Internet in the Mozilla Foundation Internet Health report. This is because of the spaces we immediately created following COVID shutdown around the world. These spaces were created because of the love we have for our digital rights people.
The last few years have been an incredibly difficult period for the digital rights community, with many entities, including Team CommUNITY (TCU), forced to cancel in-person events due to the risks brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and having to pivot programming, staffing and much more.
In response, TCU has been offering virtual spaces for the digital rights community, including our weekly Glitter Meetups, monthly Regional Meetups, and various Community Knowledge Share workshop series. We also continue to maintain our popular Digital Rights Job Board.
COVID-19 was really hard but psychosocial wellbeing is a step forward for all of us.
Actual face of Trinh, our Director of Tech and Security, in February 2020 when she saw what was coming down the line because of COVID.
Recognizing the added stressors that the pandemic has had on our community, we have also begun providing group and individual sessions and events led by mental health professionals to process trauma and learn coping mechanisms. We have also kick-started incredibly important work on labor rights and organizational health via our Digital Justice House, given the impact the pandemic has also had on the working environment in our field, which has led to an exodus of talent and increased challenges in our organizations.
However, these offerings are not enough - the craving and need for actual in-person connection is stronger than ever.
Despite the gaps that virtual connecting has filled during this time period, it will always be an inadequate replacement for the magick that “in-person connecting” brings. Our ongoing community research confirms this as well: isolation coupled with the escalation in censorship and surveillance is having a dramatically negative effect on the productivity and resilience of the digital rights field, as well as the ability to retain and onboard new talent.
Remembering the good times and relying on each other is one of the things that got us through. Let’s create new memories!
In other words, more than ever, we need to meet, connect and share in-person. We are all missing the center of joy we used to share during our global gathering.
Do you Want an In-person Global Gathering? … Well, then Be Ready for Much Needed Equity Work Post-Pandemic
As we saw in 2020, new ways of approaching life is essential if we want to be effective. Innovation and letting go is intrinsic to our future.
While the desire and need to connect is stronger than ever, the reality is that the risks and barriers to equitable participation are also higher than ever. This means that in order to bring a diverse group of people safely together in this new context, TCU needs to re-imagine the next global gathering, ensuring it directly speaks to the new challenges AND opportunities we are facing collectively.
What is clear is that old designs and formats no longer work.
Whatever we do next will have to be different, and directly speak to the risks brought on by broken health and governance systems that not only do a poor job of protecting the wellbeing of ALL humans but, also, have made life for the most vulnerable among us much more difficult.
It's also clear that the shared goals and strategies of the digital rights community have to be re-assessed. This includes real internal structural issues in our organizations and networks that have been pushed to their limits during the pandemic. “How do we get healthier” has to be central to our conversations.
The Blueprint: The New Vision of Gatherings
Nothing embodies Team CommUNITY’s spirit better than the 2020 “cat vibing to street musician” meme. In the moment of darkness, remember that joy is around us and a way forward is possible.
TCU has begun doing much of this re-envisioning work already, laying down the blueprint for a new type of gathering that keeps the essence of our spirit, and brings forth new energy, light and focus to help us COLLECTIVELY manage the new landscape.
Since the start of the pandemic, TCU has been actively exploring what a global in-person gathering would look like. Keeping with our spirit of radical practicality and glitter, our design for the global gathering will incorporate lessons learned from the past. However, we are birthing something new, with changes that help us ensure we are protecting and supporting our people and laying a groundwork for the future.
Right now, we are forced to think in three year time blocks because the world, travel, and health are still so unstable. Unfortunately, this means we are forced to begin to build back SLOWLY! Before we share our vision, we want to share with you our key considerations:
If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that you have to prepare for everything, from fire tornados to alien invasions. You just never know. We recommend looking up “2020 Bingo” for a complete list of possible threats.
Core Considerations
These are key considerations that are core to who we are. Specifically, any future TCU gathering must be:
Goals:
Creation of spaces of joy where people go to connect, build solidarity, and recharge their morale by being around folks that reflect their values, interests, and commitment to defending digital rights worldwide
Responsive to the safety and security needs of all participants
Creation of useful tools that effectively onboard and empower new voices to grow the community - we need new talent in our field!
Finding ways to increase equity in the digital rights space in the face of new barriers.
In addition to this, there are key materials things we have identified as crucial to in-person event design. They include:
This illustrated piece by Natalya Lobanova best embodies what most of us felt in 2020, when we were recommended things to do during the pandemic.
Community Care
We can no longer depend on the support of volunteers to accomplish tasks given the level of exhaustion we are seeing. While this spirit of collaboration and volunteerism was 100% informed by our experience and love of the open source community (the Taiwanese community being one of the first communities that influenced and educated us on this beautiful community approach), it no longer works.
We must be mindful that digital rights defenders are physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted and/or recovering. This means we must reduce any type of demand placed on participants, and provide them with a calm, healing environment that does not overwhelm them.
In addition, participating organizations, particularly those that are well-financially stable and have resources to share, must step up to the plate to help cover some of the gaps caused by this burnout/exhaustion and inequity many community members are now facing. In other words,
organizations with more privilege and resources will need to step up and help - taking the initiative and putting funding to people and communities with less resources so they may be able to participate.
The vibe for the re-launch is one of healing, where digital rights defenders can connect while processing what we have gone through collectively.
Location
Paramount to the next gathering, was a location that was not only in a warmer climate, but also offered multiple green venue spaces with ample outdoor space. In addition, the location must have progressive laws, a diverse population and be used to receiving people from all over the world. This time around, we wanted to find a location that has a well-established hospitality industry with seasoned professionals who have ample experience working with a global audience.
An adaptive, decentralized event design will allow us to to face any challenges coming our way collectively, together
Adaptive Event Design
COVID has brought many challenges including an increased need for security and safety, and a rise in mental health challenges which means people are exhausted.
Our new event design will be focused on redistributing the responsibility of keeping people safe and secure so that different organizations and networks can step in, while still centered on creating spaces that encourage sharing, network, brainstorming and human connections.
In addition, the new design must allow us to both kick-start in-person socialization, while giving us the space to grow slowly to pre-pandemic numbers. Most importantly, the new design must address:
Mitigating exposure to variants and sub-variants
Increased costs due to inflation
The impact of isolation and increased mental health issues
The changing landscape both internally to our field, and externally to authoritarian actors
Barriers to crossing borders related to visas and airline industry problems
Increased surveillance, censorship and attacks against activists, journalists and civil society
Yes, We Will be Hosting a Gathering in Fall 2023 But Read On to Understand the Format
We know that you have been through a lot, and this is yet another thing to get used to. Let’s follow 420DoggFace208’s example, when life keeps on giving, put on some Fleetwood Mac, get some cranberry juice, and do the best you can - which is the only thing we can do.
By the way, if anyone knows this guy, can you help us get him to the global gathering?
Change is hard, and some folks may be disappointed with the vision we are laying out below. We get it - believe us, we too miss certain aspects of the pre-pandemic world, and are also finding the change challenging. However, we also know that change brings new opportunities, even if they may not be apparent right away.
In Fall 2023, we will be hosting a gathering that may be different than what you have seen before.
As reflected in TCU's logo, we see the digital rights space as a center where different groups come together and overlap and have different intersections. We will be using this symbol to inspire the event design.
For the 2023 instance, we will be organizing a small event of no more than 200 people. In addition, we will be inviting organizations and networks to self-organize their own smaller gatherings throughout the NEW city serving as our event’s “home.” The location, which will be announced soon, is in a Mediterranean city that is small enough to benefit from a concentration of digital rights defenders, so that organic meetings can happen in the streets and individuals can go from meeting to meeting.
A new era brings in new light. Our re-invention is helping us go from Pitbull to Bad Bunny, but keeping all the celebration. (actual sticker from a Signal digisec pack).
However, it will take pressure off TCU so that they are not responsible to ensure the wellbeing of 1,000+ participants during such exceptional times - frankly, we don't have the capacity right now. The risks our communities are facing are too large and varied, and in today’s financial climate, takes much more money, resources and time to mitigate. While we hope to build on this capacity for our second and third instance, more than ever we must come together as a community to ensure that our collective threat model is addressed by all of us. This is literally what the word “community” means, taking care of each other.
The goal is to increase the number of participants we can host in subsequent years, with hopefully the 2024 instance holding 500+ participants. The good news is that the venue that we have found will allow for the growth.
We know it's not ideal, but we also know and celebrate the ability for our community to self-organize and make the most of any given situation. MOST IMPORTANTLY, the location we selected is quite beautiful, relaxing, providing you all with ample opportunity to do amazing, relaxing things together.
How is TCU Helping Organizations Self-Organize their Own Events?
While Tiger King was very entertaining, and our Head of Team is fond of tiger print, we believe that the only way to “win” is when we all “win” . We deeply believe in collaboration and solidarity. Helping you all achieve your goals is core to our remit. Though this show marked our 2020 experience, it also shows a culture of individualism and lack of ethics, that we at TCU are constantly fighting against.
To support organizations or networks do this, we will provide:
A list of venues that they can directly contact to arrange their own private events.
The contact of a local person that has decades of experience producing different types of events, that they can hire for logistic support.
In addition, we are trying to develop relationships with the host country, to help contribute to successful visa applications.
Note, TCU will not be able to provide financial support for self-organized events, nor will we be able to provide coordination. We will be able to provide you with support advertising your event, and finding appropriate community members if needed.
Once we announce the location, we will provide you with an email that you can contact for more information.
However, we encourage you all to start thinking about what in-person event your organization could be hosted in Fall 2023. Maybe it's your team retreat? A network gathering?
What If I don't Get Invited to the Small TCU Gathering?
Definitely not invited is this person for their outrageous claims about TCU staff liking Taylor Swift music, even if Swift hosted a very popular digisec educational Twitter profile for a while. For those of you that are wondering, this is a joke!
The small gathering TCU will be hosting will be limited to 150-200 people that are actively leading specific work or groups. Conversations will be focused on helping the field mobilize around real internal threats that are impacting the future of digital rights, while providing TCU with needed input on what the future of a larger in-person global gathering can look like.
Again, we are doing this because, capacity-wise, TCU currently does not have the resources to ensure the safety and security of more than 200 people maximum.
We acknowledge that there will be people that should be at this event that we will not be able to invite. In addition, we will be asking individuals that come from larger organizations with resources to pay an entrance fee to cover the costs of invited community leaders and/or managers that may not have those resources to self-finance their own travel.
If you are not invited, this does not mean you are not important to us. We encourage you to explore the idea of coming to the city, and self-organizing your own spaces.
To help with this, we will provide a virtual space where community members can also self-organize in-person gatherings while there. You do not have to be invited to TCU’s small gathering to take part in the decentralized event. However, you will need to do some leg work to help the community self-organize!
A Place of Healing & Reconnection
Our new location and venue will make you feel as though you are in the middle of a forest with real glitter beings.
While we don’t want to announce our new location yet, we can tell you this: it's a place that will allow every single person to relax, recharge, and connect in a healing and beautiful environment. When we say beautiful, we mean beautiful.
The selected locale is a type of picturesque small village that will allow us to do so much networking and bonding organically in a calm and FUN environment - while allowing you all the opportunity to still exchange valuable ideas, and make collaborations. In addition, it's small enough that the likelihood of just encountering groups of digital rights defenders on the street will be quite high.
We recognize this format may be difficult for people new to the digital rights space, but we will brainstorm on possible solutions to this.
Also, important to note, the small TCU gathering will be in a venue that is completely outside, reminiscent of a village, and filled with trees and positive energy.
I Want Details!
While things are still tough, you can look forward to seeing the planned interpretive dance performance of this member that will be used to express their love of PGP.
We will share details soon, including dates, the new location and much more. We are doing our best, and will share more information as we are able to. Much of the hesitancy to do so, is that things are still shifting globally: from COVID itself, to the state of the airline industry, to the difficulty of traveling over borders, to the accelerated global decline in democracy which is affecting the safety and lives of many of our community members . In addition, we are still in the process of finalizing the details.
However, for your planning, what to keep in mind:
1. The event will happen the month of September
2. It will still be in Western Europe, specifically in the Mediterranean
3. If you are a digital rights organization that will host a satellite event, reach out to us as soon as possible. Email team@digitalrights.community
4. If you are an individual, begin conversations with your organization and/or partners on if they can fund you.
We appreciate every single one of you tremendously, and are doing our best to provide you with the safe, secure and celebratory experience you all deserve. We ask that you are patient with us as we try to embark on this journey. And thank you for the work and service you do on a day to day basis.
Until then, we wish you all the best, and remind you to take care of yourselves and your loved ones.
Partnership & Sponsorship Opportunities
We currently are seeking organizations that are looking for sponsorship and partnership opportunities! Our global gathering is a perfect way to both support digital rights defender and advance Internet Freedom issues, but also expand your network by meeting system thinkers from over 140+ countries, working on the most pressing issues affecting our societies. Interested? Email team@digitalrights.community
“Attending an event with so many active and thoughtful people really helped me find a new direction in my life. I found professional pathways that allow me to use my security and technological background to help journalists and others in real ways. I’ve been looking forward to the return for some time now!””