The Ethics of Data

In my role at Stanford's Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS) I am having a great time organizing a conference on The Ethics of Data. Our event, which will happen in September 2014, is a joint effort with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, the Brown Institute of the Columbia School of Journalism (and Stanford School of Engineering), and the Digital Civil Society Lab at Stanford PACS.

We're going to be focusing on questions related to the ethical challenges and opportunities created by digital data use in a number of domains, each of which has a large civil society component. We're working on medical research, civic tech and citizen data, digital scholarship, and crisis response - but expect those domains to be fairly fluid during the planning. The sessions will include scholars, activists, technologists, funders, and policymakers - stay tuned!

We're deep in the planning now - website and details should go live in late January, early February. In the meantime, we're trying to connect with and keep track of others working on similar questions and issues. Two events to put on your radar screen : RightsCon and the Responsible Data Forum.

Folks at The Engine Room (one of the hosts of the Responsible Data Forum) are starting to collect and track resources also. Here's their working list. Please share other resources or events with which you think we should connect.