PublicSpaces Conference

Panel - Cross-sector collaboration to build social media that is truly social A growing part of our encounters, communication, and access to information takes place on Big Tech social media platforms. As a result, we are losing control over essen...

Panel - Growing an ecosystem beyond the big platforms As Mastodon celebrates its 10th anniversary and BlueSky surpasses 43 million users, it has become clear that the Open Social Web is here to stay. Yet while these two larger platforms continue ...

Panel - Digital Ethics and The European Marketplace The pursuit of digital autonomy is now widely embraced. The government is seeking solutions to strengthen this digital autonomy and is preparing a new form of industrial policy. This creates opp...

Panel - How do we uphold public interests in a digital society? In an era of increasing geopolitical tensions, rapid technological change, and growing ecological pressure, one thing is becoming ever clearer: democratic control over technology is ...

Panel - Designs for digital public spaces Mental health in the Netherlands is under pressure. More and more people are experiencing psychological complaints, while waiting times are increasing and the current healthcare system is reaching its lim...

Keynote - Reimagining Community-led AI for the Global South Who gets to shape AI — and whose communities, cultures, and knowledge systems should it serve? These are the central questions that Tatenda Tavingeyi brings to the stage in this talk. T...

Panel - Strengthening European Democracy with a ‘Euro Social Stack’ Social media platforms are having an enormous impact on European societies. Through addictive design and opaque algorithms, public opinion is manipulated, political agendas are p...

Panel — Who gets to shape AI: the case for arts and culture The development of AI depends on training data. Much of that data is scraped without consent, and a significant portion consists of works of intellectual property and the fruits of cultu...

Panel - What can The Next Socials learn from Wikipedia and Europeana? On 15 January 2001, Jimmy Wales typed the words 'Hello World' into a piece of software called Wiki. Twenty-five years later, Wikipedia has grown into one of the world's most im...

Keynote by Erin Kissane In her keynote, Erin Kissane explores the rare window of opportunity that builders on decentralized networks currently have: the technical foundations across multiple ecosystems are now stable and increasingly interconnect...

Panel - Can journalism use the Open Social Web to strengthen democracy? We live in interesting times. Democratic values are under pressure, tech has become politics — or perhaps it always was — and the well-known Big Tech social media platforms a...

Panel - Strengthening Our Autonomy Following the opening keynote, the panel addresses some of the most urgent questions that will be explored throughout the PublicSpaces Conference. How do we deal with our digital dependencies, and can we transfo...

null Speakers: https://conference.publicspaces.net/en/session/closing-26

Keynote by Robin Berjon The current state of tech can feel disheartening. Years of critical analysis and reform efforts have left us with a digital sphere that seems worse than ever. In Europe, our leaders appear unable to formulate a clear strat...

Panel - Where digital and physical community spaces meet Following Rudy Fraser's keynote, the conversation broadens into a wider discussion on community, identity, and digital space. Lauren Challis, board member of the Internet Society Netherland...

Ceremony - Celebrating the pioneers building a healthier, sovereign social web This year, New_Public and PublicSpaces present the Open Socials Awards for the very first time. With this award, we aim to stimulate the field of decentralised social ...

Keynote by Rudy Fraser What does it look like when a community builds its own social media on its own terms? Rudy Fraser, technologist, community organiser, and founder of Blacksky Algorithms [https://blackskyweb.xyz/], has been doing exactly tha...

Panel - A roundtable on digital autonomy by Netherland’s public and civic society organisations It has been a recurring theme: the Netherlands and Europe need to become more independent in various areas, including digital. In this session, ...

Moeten we ons schamen voor de ogenschijnlijk onbenullige vragen die we dagelijks aan AI stellen? Het energieverbruik van kunstmatige intelligentie rijst de pan uit. Als de huidige groei doorzet, zal AI eind 2025 verantwoordelijk zijn voor maar lie...

Panel - How citizens across Europe take control over their digital space Traditional governments find themselves increasingly outmatched by technology tycoons and autocratic strongmen: geopolitical predators who shape the world through brute ...