David Ryan Polgar on the next chapter for All Tech Is Human
Today I am excited to announce that Rebekah Tweed will be stepping into the role of Executive Director at All Tech Is Human, while I will move into the role as President. In addition, Sandra Khalil has recently been promoted to Head of Partnerships + Trust & Safety vertical. Moving forward, I will focus more of my time on ensuring that All Tech Is Human has the needed resources to scale our rapidly-growing activities.
I founded All Tech Is Human in 2018 to create a global, multistakeholder, and multidisciplinary network capable of tackling wicked tech & society issues while moving at the speed of tech. Since becoming a funded non-profit in July 2021 with a grant from the Ford Foundation, we have established our organization at the catalyst for the Responsible Tech movement that brings together people, organizations, and ideas to co-create a tech future aligned with the public interest. Our programs, centered around three key workstreams (multistakeholder convening & community building, multidisciplinary education, and diversifying the traditional tech pipeline with more backgrounds, disciplines, and lived experiences) grown dramatically.
Some highlights:
Our summits and mixers have brought thousands of people across civil society, government, industry, and academia together. Our monthly Responsible Tech Mixer + Interview Series in NYC has attracted a capacity audience of 200 people, along with recent gatherings in San Francisco, London, and DC. We are currently mapping out plans for future gatherings in London, Amsterdam, DC, San Francisco and more alongside our recent gatherings in NYC where we are based.
Our Slack community has grown to over 6k members across 76 countries.
Our Responsible Tech Mentorship Program has had over 1k people go through the program. The most recent cohort had over 700 applications in merely two weeks. The current program has over 100 mentors centered around our key areas of Responsible AI, Trust & Safety, Tech & Democracy, and Public Interest Technology.
Our flagship resource, the Responsible Tech Guide, has nearly 50k reads and is the bedrock resource for the Responsible Tech movement (new version out September 12th).
The Responsible Tech Job Board is the go-to job board for the Responsible Tech ecosystem and is the top item on Google when people search “Responsible Tech.” Related to our career activities, we have over 1.6k people in our Responsible Tech Talent Pool and recently partnered with Schmidt Futures to on Tekalo—a free matchmaking service for social impact roles.
Nearly 1k people have participated in our working groups which mix together the emerging and the established.
Our massive growth was recently covered in this MIT Technology Review article. All Tech Is Human is also an entire chapter in Greg Epstein’s forthcoming book, Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World’s Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation.
In my new role, I will be dedicated more of my energy around increasing our capacity as a non-profit, speaking about All Tech Is Human, and working to apply our grassroots-power model to complex tech & society issues. If you are interested in chatting with me about growing All Tech Is Human, or would like to have me speak at an event about our unique grassroots-power model, please reach out.
All of our activities at All Tech Is Human are oversubscribed. All of our mixers at packed, our mentorship program is wildly popular, and our demand for career services to elevate new voices is increasing. My obligation of the next year is to ensure the long-term sustainability of our non-profit and expand our team and activities.
All Tech Is Human is a paradigm shift
After directly interacting with thousands of individuals, three major problems has come to the surface:
Tech innovation greatly outstrips our ability to consider it social impact. We can reduce the gulf between the speed of innovation and slowness of tech consideration by having a more agile model. That is what we have built with All Tech Is Human. We move a heck of a lot faster that legacy orgs and academia. All Tech Is Human moves at the speed of tech. It is readily apparent that the current way to working through issues is not cutting it. In other words, we have built a better mousetrap.
We don’t have a proper mix of people focused on complex tech & society issues. Positive change happens from within the tech industry, with outside pressure/oversight/research, and by reimagining our tech futures. Quite simply, we can build a better tech future by getting a better mix of people involved in the process. What we have found as an organization is that there are thousands of people looking to get more involved, but struggling to understand pathways, education, and upskilling. By having our job board, talent pool, mentorship program, Slack community, summits, and mixers, we are elevating new voices in the Responsible Tech ecosystem and diversifying the traditional tech pipeline.
The Responsible Tech ecosystem should be more connected and collaborative. Over the last five years it has become crystal clear that we don’t lack for passionate people or great ideas, we struggle to create a cohesive movement that promotes knowledge-sharing and collaboration. So much of what All Tech Is Human has been doing is focused around building a vibrant, connected, and collaborative Responsible Tech ecosystem that can surface best practices, areas of consensus or friction, and best pathways forward.
David Ryan Polgar, Elisa Fox, Rebekah Tweed, Sandra Khalil, and Josh Chapdelaine
Over the last five years, we have learned from thousands of individuals and have established All Tech Is Human as being synonymous with the Responsible Tech movement. And for the next five years, I will be dedicated to showcasing the positive impact our organization can have with speeding our our tech consideration, getting new voices involved in the ecosystem, and building a more robust and cohesive movement.
Right now, we are stuck when trying to tackle wicked tech & society issues. All Tech Is Human is a new approach that will get us unstuck.
I greatly appreciate all of the incredible support that has taken our organization to where we are today. Now it’s time to turn it up to 11.
Let’s co-create a better tech future.
-David | email
