The team at InternetNZ is working hard to stand up a fascinating, engaging and inspiring programme for NetHui 2020. We’ll be really pleased to share all the detail about it with you soon… for now, this is a little bit of a teaser to whet your appetite and encourage you to buy your tickets now!
We were absolutely astounded by the number of expressions of interest we had from around New Zealand, and around the world, to be part of this year’s programme. Thank you to all of those that shared their ideas! Here’s some of the things that you’ll see on the full programme (and please note, some of these are working titles, so the real deal may evolve a little from here):
The truth is out there: mis- and dis-information
One of the wonderful things about the Internet is that it gives everyone a voice, a network, a reach to an audience. One of the challenging things though is that it is hard to know who and what to trust online. We are seeing some big challenges right now with COVID and how fake news, bad takes and wrong information spreads like wildfire, and causes problems in the rest of our society. This panel will look at some of those challenges about who is sharing what, and what we all can learn about who and what we can trust online, and how we can make it better for NZ.
Algorithms, surveillance and the money
Every day our online lives are shaped by forces we can’t really see, and that we don’t really understand yet. We have glimpses of how information is shaped and presented to us based on data we don’t control, and for monitoring purposes we don’t understand. Some of that is done for commercial reasons in order to help us buy and spend more. Some of it is done out of a concern to keep us all safe, and to monitor all of us in what we do online to protect us from risk. And it increasingly appears that some of it is done to shape how we participate in our politics and in our society. We don’t know enough about how algorithms and surveillance is conditioning our lives online, and this panel will explore what we can do about that.
Memes are illegal?!
This panel is going to look at a lot more than memes - it’s going to consider what limitations there are for sharing information, stories and ideas online. Some of these reasons are due to copyright law, or to licensing restrictions, or to rules, laws and practices that have the right intention but sometimes damaging impacts on sharing what we want to share online. This panel is going to share some examples of those limitations, and what people have done to work around and try new ways of connecting information out across our Internet.
How the Internet can help save the world
We’re going to look at online activism, and how activists, agitators and actors for change for a better New Zealand and a better world are using the Internet. We’ll have examples and stories about how you can make a change in the real world and use the Internet to build a network, a movement, a group of people that can rally together behind a cause. We reckon that this will be an inspiring endnote about how you could harness the power of the Internet to build your movement too.
You’ve got me interested! What do I do?
Well… you could get your ticket to NetHui via Lilregie so you can participate!
But I wanna know more!
We’ve got you covered too friend. This is just a teaser. In early September we will release detail about the whole programme. There’ll be even more panels, detail about who is speaking, some lightning talks, and heaps of opportunity for discussion, engagement and sense making with the rest of the NetHui whānau. And the best news of all is that it doesn’t matter where you are in Aotearoa or the world this year, cos it’s all online!
So if we haven’t whet your appetite enough yet, keep your eyes peeled for early September and we’d love to get you in the mix then too.
