@captaincalliope

shifting where i post what on social media

Posted on by Lyre Calliope

Around 2016, I stopped talking about my professional life on Facebook and Twitter. I’m not going to go into why (2016 turned stressful for some reason..) but I’d like to start talking about work I’m doing more publicly in these places.

I’ve also really only ever blogged about professional things with higher expectations around quality that lead to less than prolific activity.

So I’m setting an intention for myself: I’d like to post more work related content on Facebook and Twitter. And I’d like to post more of everything else here on my personal blog.

Let’s see how it goes.

Here’s an unfiltered picture of my cats:

wordpress import

Posted on by Lyre Calliope

I’m consolidating infrastructure today and just found my old wordpress installation for the previous version of this blog! I’ve imported all my old posts from a few years ago so apologies if they show up in your RSS feed readers.

Annnnndddd.. does anyone else cringe reading their old content? Cuz I’ve got some cringe going on.

#morethancode and Securing Change

Posted on by Lyre Calliope

Back in August, the Technology for Social Justice Project released a report: MoreThanCode: Practitioners reimagine the landscape of technology for justice and equity available at https://morethancode.cc

This document represents a current snapshot of a number of interconnected communities (civic tech, nonprofit tech, technology for good, etc etc) and offers recommendations on how we as an ecosystem can move tech forward as a force for liberation.

I’ve been ranting and raving about this report to my friends and collaborators since the executive summary came out in June. If you work in tech or work with technologists, I highly recommend giving it a read.

One thing I noticed while reading the report is that it seemed like the beginning of a strategic planning document for an organization that doesn’t yet exist. This is relevant to my interests because one of my responsibilities this next year is to facilitate a strategic planning process for Securing Change.

Lo and behold, a major part of this work has already been done for us! The #morethancode report represents an environmental scan of the tech ecosystem we operate within and offers scenarios for potential programs informed by the knowledge and experiences of peer organizations.

I’m in the process of writing a strategic brief for my collaborators within Securing Change based on the recommendations within the #morethancode report. This will help us identify opportunities for collaboration on new program development in 2019.

I’d love to hear how other people are using this report to inform their activities within and between organizations in tech.

re-startup mode

Posted on by Lyre Calliope

For nearly two years, my primary focus has been on the information security of activists and marginalized communities at risk of being targeted by hostile actors through the internet. I began working on this as part ActSecure, an ad-hoc group of movement technologists formed after the 2016 election.

The need is great, and there’s only so much an informal group of volunteers can do before hitting the limits of what we can deliver. Despite the fact that we mainly work with individuals, we’ve been approached by a number of non-profit organizations over the past two years looking for help.

Serendipitously, we met Oliver Day, founder and executive director of an organization called Securing Change. Oliver had just had a baby and was in discussion with his board of directors around shutting Securing Change down. With a focus on helping non-profit organizations with tech security and five years of history, we started talking about what we could do together. Earlier this year, we began the process of transitioning leadership of Securing Change to the ActSecure core team and rebooting the organization.

As I have the most experience with startup and non-profit work, my primary focus right in facilitating this merger is to build an operation under which we can develop new programming within and parallel to ActSecure.

More to come.