Program
Humanitech Summit is Australia’s flagship annual event at the intersection of technology and humanitarian action.
Wednesday 17 May 2023
State Library Victoria
328 Swanston St, Melbourne
Opening |
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8:45am |
Check in and connect (registration and morning tea)Humanitech Summit will begin with a check-in session, providing ample opportunity to meet fellow participants over morning tea. |
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9:30am |
Welcome to Country- Wurundjeri Elder Uncle Tony Garvey OPENING REMARKS
Better together: Collaboration for better technology futures- Penny Harrison – Chief-of-Staff, Australian Red Cross The opening will welcome the audience with a Welcome to Country and set out the intention for the day. You’ll hear how Telstra Foundation and Australian Red Cross came together to leverage their collective strengths and deliver transformational social impact for Australian communities by helping tackle complex social problems with the help of technology.As part of this collaboration, Humanitech honed its Humanity First approach to technology which seeks to shift norms by putting communities at the centre of technology, expand methods by creating reciprocal partnerships, and drive change by exploring the opportunities, as well as the challenges.
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Moving at the speed of trustHumanity First domain |
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10:00am |
LIGHTNING TALK
Human connections and community support: the missing pieces for building trust in tech- Zoë Condliffe - Founder and CEO, She’s a Crowd Zoë Condliffe is a Founder and CEO of She’s A Crowd, a social enterprise working to end gender-based violence through the power of storytelling and with the help of geolocative technology, data analytics, and artificial intelligence. Drawing on the insights from her partnership with the Humanitech Lab in which She’s a Crowd used the Humanity First prototype to refine its Gendered Safety Scorecard – Zoe will highlight the importance of moving at the speed of trust to create a future where trust in technology is built on human connections and community support. |
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10:10am |
PANEL
Navigating societal transformations driven by technology with trust at the centre- Prof. Nicholas Davis - Co-Director, Human Technology Institute Drawing on their diverse expertise, the central question for this panel is how can we navigate technology-driven transformations in ways that protect people’s rights and dignity and, in turn, promote trust in technology? The uses of advanced technologies such as automated decision-making or facial recognition by public and private organisations have grown significantly in recent years. These technologies have a range of applications, including risk assessment, resource allocation, identity verification, and service delivery, and their uses and misuses have raised questions of privacy, fairness, and safety. A growing body of evidence also shows they can replicate – even magnify - existing social vulnerabilities and inequalities, putting women, activists, and marginalised communities at higher risk of harm when mistakes happen. Yet, accepting, adopting and realising the potential of these technologies depends on the community having the confidence - in other words, trusting – that they are safe, reliable, and fair. The panel will explore how trust is understood in relation to technology, and the role of evidence-informed and values-led policy and regulation in protecting human rights and dignity, and potentially enabling trust in these transformative tools. |
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11:10am |
SHOWCASE
Humanitech Lab: putting principles into practice- Priyanka Ashraf - Founder, Maya Cares Humanitech Lab is an innovation program harnessing technological innovation to meet social and humanitarian need. Led by Australian Red Cross with the support of our founding partner Telstra Foundation, we explore new approaches to designing and developing technology for humanitarian impact. We do this by partnering with start-ups using technology to tackle social and humanitarian problems and supporting them to validate, pilot and scale their impact. This session will showcase the work of the 2022 Humanitech Lab cohort:
The speakers will share the insights from the collaboration with Humanitech Lab, and how using Humanity First approach to design helped improve their ground-breaking solutions that tackle complex social challenges with the help of technology. |
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12:10pm |
Lunch |
Community at the centreHumanity First domain |
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| 1:00pm |
FIRESIDE CHAT
From intrusion to inclusion: reimagining digital tools and platforms for better connections- Peter Lewis - Co-Founder, Civility In this fireside chat, cryptographer Vanessa Teague, public campaigner and broadcaster Peter Lewis, and innovator Chris Vanstone will explore the role of community and civil society in shaping a better future with the help of digital tools and platforms designed to serve public interest. In their respective fields, the three speakers are doing the hard work of putting the principles of participation and collaboration into practice by developing approaches that tackle complex social problems in ways that empower community and enable better social outcomes. They will share examples from their current work – Vanessa’s initiative called Democracy Developers, Peter’s new venture Civility.tech and Chris’ work at TACSI on People Powered Social R&D – to explore how we can make participation easier for everyone and develop a better model of citizen engagement through purpose-built, humanity-first tools. |
| 1:30pm |
PANEL
Engaging community as experts- Celeste Carnegie - Manager of Community Programs & Engagement, Inidgitek The question of "Who are the experts?" often omits community from discussions about how we design, implement and use technological tools and interventions. There is a recognition that engaging community and people with lived experience as partners will lead to better social outcomes by better reflecting diverse community needs and values - co-design and human-centred design are just two examples of practices that have emerged in this space. In practice, however, community participation can be seen as a checkpoint rather than an ongoing and reciprocal collaboration. Drawing on examples from various fields of expertise, including digital inclusion, co-design, human values-led policy making, and localisation of humanitarian response, the panel will share insights on how community involvement can create more equitable and inclusive outcomes. Using examples from their practice and research, the panel will also explore the barriers to community engagement and highlight the need for more inclusive and collaborative approaches to technology design and use. |
| 2:30pm |
Afternoon tea |
Ensure better futures for allHumanity First domain |
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| 3:00pm |
LIGHTNING TALK
From climate data to climate action: leveraging climate data for community resilience- Joseph Glesta – Co-Founder and CEO, Climasens Australian Red Cross has partnered with Climasens to scale its climate intelligence platform through the Humanitech Lab. This follows a pilot between Climasens and Humanitech to identify people most at risk of heatwaves in South Australia. The scale project will support Australian Red Cross and municipalities across Australia to better monitor heat waves and their impact on at-risk populations and help inform decision-making and program outreach. This short talk will showcase how these kinds of data-informed tools can supercharge humanitarian decision-making, and how through the combined expertise of Climasens and Australian Red Cross they can better support Australian communities to build climate resilience. |
| 3:10pm |
PANEL
Hacking the future of (humanitarian) service delivery- Harrison Ball - Co-Founder and CTO, Performl This panel brings together technologists, researchers, and practitioners to explore how we can create better community outcomes with the help of data, while leaning into the ethical tensions that arise from this work. Data analytics are helping organisations like Australian Red Cross improve their humanitarian response and build community resilience. Intelligence platforms harness large amounts of data from various sources to paint a comprehensive picture of community vulnerabilities and resources. They can identify patterns and trends in social issues and help inform solutions to address them. Their uses raise concerns around privacy, bias, and discrimination, which is a particular challenge when dealing with vulnerable populations in humanitarian contexts. When integrated with other strategies, including community engagement and cross-sector collaboration, these can be powerful new tools that decision-makers in the humanitarian and social sectors can use to improve their interventions. |
| 4:10pm |
KEYNOTE
A field guide for what's coming next- Tané Hunter – Co-Founder, Future Crunch Explore the fundamental technologies shaping our future. Artificial intelligence, web 3.0, the Metaverse, robotics, clean energy, electric vehicles, genetics, synthetic biology - each of these is transformative in their own right. Together, they constitute a true industrial revolution, creating unprecedented change in every sector at once. |
| 4:40pm |
CLOSING REMARKS
Summit highlights- Katy Southall – Head of Humanitech, Australian Red Cross |
| 4:45pm |
CONNECT
Continue the conversation @ Mr Tulk |
Note: This program is subject to change