At the end of September I attended and presented at the Trust and Safety Conference at Stanford Univerisity. I was excited to share how my research on digital misogynoir helped shape the moderation for Blacksky. I also got to swing by Oakland Tech Week to listen to my mentor talk alongside some amazing people in tech.
Here are my thoughts from those few days:
I got to meet Julia from Pro Design Social Network and we had a great chat about moderation, The People's Assembly, our own spicy takes about the woes of traditional academia. My biggest takeaway and what I look forward to exploring with PDSN, Blacksky, and Atproto are our (me and Julia's) excitement for researchers to engage deeply with the pro-social web to produce amazing studies and for practicioners to be in community with them while doing it. We got something cooking for 2027.
The presentation that stood out most to me was a study done by two NYU grad students on youtube creators and safety on the app. The presentation was not only novel (in my opinion) it was also lively and I can see this connecting to creator studies in the future.
My presentation went over well. There were so many questions that showed how interested researchers and industry people are in what Blacksky is doing and also my research too! I also was acknowledged as a stand out presenter at the closing session.
Oakland Tech Week was dope. I went to "How to Shift Power in the AI Ecosystem: A Simulation Model of AI power Dynamics." which had some dope ass people on the panel, including my mentor Safiya Noble. She even gave Blacksky a shoutout. I got to meet students as well and many different people really interested in Blacksky and the work being doing in the ecosystem.
Overall I enjoyed my time in the bay, hadn't been back in years. Sad I didn't get to see some family and friends but maybe next time.
Next up....Mozilla Fest.