As the hype around last year's developments in artificial intelligence continues, the social sector sits at a crossroads. How, where and why AI matters are still live areas of exploration among organizations. Many are waiting for signals about how to proceed and how they can get involved, while worrying about known and unknown risks of adoption and deployment. GivingTuesday's Chief Data Officer Woodrow Rosenbaum will outline where ground has to be urgently broken in order to ensure safe, effective, and equitable adoption of artificial intelligence in the social sector -- what assets need to be developed, how social sector actors can evaluate and learn from practice, and how platforms like GivingTuesday's Generosity AI working group can help drive progress. This roadmap will serve as a rallying cry for what we can get started working on right now.

Uttam Pudasaini is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Nepal Flying Labs, leading Drone initiatives in Disaster Management, Crisis Mapping, and Public Health. Throughout the Global South, local experts from nonprofits, for-profit companies, academic and research institutions possess the ability and deep local expertise to tackle pressing challenges in sustainable and innovative ways. However, they often face barriers in accessing suitable technologies, best practices, and resources, as well as gaining international visibility and recognition for their work. The Flying Labs Network, created by WeRobotics, is a practical example of responsible and sustainable bottom-up localization. It aims to amplify local expertise on a global level, redefine what it means to be an expert, and innovate new ways of collaboration between local experts and global actors in the fields of drones, and AI for different thematic areas such as Disaster Management, Access to Public Health, Agriculture, Climate Acrion and more . As a co-founder of Nepal Flying Labs, the first Flying Labs of the Global network of Flying Labs, I will share the story, learnings, and experiences from Nepal Flying Labs during this keynote.

Mila Dorji is the Public Health Analyst on the Research and Analysis team at Direct Relief, a nonprofit humanitarian aid organization working in all 50 states and 100+ countries to improve the health and lives of people affected by poverty and emergencies without regard to politics, religion, or ability to pay.

Powerful new tools and data systems are constantly emerging, many with enormous potential to benefit humanitarian operations and the public good. However, the paths by which emergent technologies scale towards adoption are rarely straightforward. Flexible thinking and a creative willingness to adapt are essential to the realization of their full potential. This talk will focus on Direct Relief’s use of spatial data - especially in several iterative deployments of the innovative realtime geomessaging tool Balcony.io - to protect vulnerable groups in high-acuity situations around the globe. These experiences will serve as a lens to explore how emerging social sector technologies can navigate hurdles, progress towards adoption, and produce tangible positive results along the way.

Data is increasingly at the center of so many efforts in modern society. The business world has broken the code on how to collect and widely share the world’s data for profit: it’s known as surveillance capitalism. However, this model is not appropriate for the social good sector, which is collecting data to better serve their communities, rather than to exploit them. As a result, data in the social good sector is scattered about in millions of tiny siloes, constraining its potential to be used ethically and effectively for the greater good.

What if there was a lightweight approach to data collection, use and governance? One that centered benefits to the individual and the community, not to companies and investors? One that was ideally as easy to do the right thing as putting a Creative Commons license on a video or a document, or an open source license on software?

Join Jim Fruchterman as he describes a nascent movement to build a Better Deal for Data together to fill the data governance void for social impact!

Every nonprofit board has a finance and legal expert. Did you ever wonder what would happen if they also had a technology expert? Hear from the founders of Board.dev about how the right technical board leadership can be a catalyst for tech-driven mission outcomes and how this new vision for tech governance is coming into focus for the social sector. Join Aaron Hurst and Erin Baudo Felter for this great conversation!

Enjoy a lunch break and we will see you at 4 MT for Keynote Section 3.

There’s tech hype (and despair), and then there’s blockchain hype. It's safe to say that one of the most debated emerging technologies these days is Web3. But what is the value of this emerging technology? Where can it offer a real improvement, and what applications can be delivered just as well in web2? With the Climate Crisis being equal parts a trust and communication crisis, how is blockchain reshaping how we respond to this urgency? And what are the pitfalls of relying on this technology to help us transition to a more sustainable economy? Join Anna Lerner as she discusses her work leveraging Web3 for climate and nature.

Tony Wilkins is the CFO of Hello Tractor. Hello Tractor is an ag-tech social enterprise that connects tractor owners and smallholder farmers through a farm equipment sharing application. Rural, smallholder farmers often face labor and equipment constraints, resulting in under-cultivation, late planting, and lost income. Hello Tractor’s user-friendly software enables farmers to request affordable tractor services, while providing enhanced security to tractor owners through remote asset tracking and virtual monitoring. Farmers connected with a tractor share can plant 40x faster, driving improved food and income security for their families, their communities, and across the continent. Over the next 5 years, Hello Tractor will bring 9 million hectares of land into production, creating 37 million metric tons of additional food and adding over 2 million direct and indirect jobs in Nigeria.

Meet Esther Ndungu. While technology has grown in leaps and bounds, the need for innovative lifesaving tech solutions remains largely untapped. #Helpfie is changing this. The #SmartFirstAid app equips the lay public with critical lifesaving instructions and the #SmartEMS checklist promotes EMS protocol adherence.

We're in the midst of yet another emerging tech hype cycle as AI washes over almost every conversation around the globe. How we navigate AI in the social sector remain to be seen, but the general lesson is clear - we've been here before. And we'll be here again. With every tech hype cycle - the web, social media, big data, AI, and everything in between - the social sector is thrown into disarray to keep up with the trend, often asking the same questions again and again: "How can nonprofits best use this tech when they're already so resource constrained?" "How will this tech potentially harm our constituents?" "What tools should I buy vs. build?" These questions force a scrambling of unproductive activity, wasted money, and ineffective action that distract us from becoming the tech-driven sector we could be. In this talk, Jake Porway will offer thoughts he and Andrew Means have for ending this cycle and building on the lessons of the past to build a responsible tech-enabled social sector for the future.

We’ll see you at 11am MT for Keynote Section 2

As Artificial Intelligence brings transformative changes to our world, immigrants and their advocates have the unique opportunity to harness these new technologies in the service of immigrant justice. Learn more about the Justicia Lab’s AI initiative, the world’s first AI innovation lab for immigrant justice. Launching this Spring, Justicia Lab AI seeks to bridge the digital divide between immigrants, their advocates, and AI industry leaders.

Jono McKay, founder of SameSame, delivers a presentation spotlighting the transformative power of mobile technology in supporting LGBTQI+ youth, particularly in places where it's difficult or even illegal to be different. Combining anecdotes and data-driven insights, he will share how his personal and professional experiences led to the founding of SameSame and the development of a WhatsApp chatbot that has provided over 100,000 young people in South Africa and Zimbabwe with access to mental health support. Jono hopes to illuminate the ways digital solutions can bridge divides and provide safe, anonymous and inclusive resources to those in need. Join us at 10:20am MT.

The humanitarian crisis in the U.S. Southern border is overboiling. Join human rights advocate Ana Ortega-Villegas as she fuses frontline immigration stories and the impact of harsh asylum policies to showcase the vital role technology and data play in helping asylum seekers achieve safety, justice, and a brighter future. Ana will uncover how unintentional digital barriers worsen the crisis while exploring collective solutions that uphold the dignity and rights of people seeking safety. Join us at 10am MT.

Join Dan Wagner and let’s take a practical, under-the-hood look at AI technology and use cases to better understand what’s genuinely useful, what’s overhyped marketing, and how progressive organizations can leverage AI as part of their data strategy. Because, real talk: AI technology creates enormous risk for Democratic organizations, making it even more important to understand the fundamentals and how to use AI for good.

Join us at 9:30am MT