July at Identity 2.0
OMG WHAT A MONTH
TL:DR — We reached over 3.5k people with our digital exhibition, spoke at Rights Con AND I finally finished Love Is Blind. Here’s what Identity 2.0 have been up to in July 2020 ✨
CTRL + U has come to an end!
And what a whirlwind it has been.
We wanted to do a public exhibition in 2020. We even started in September 2019, with a series of workshops to brainstorm what this could look like. We worked with a bunch of passionate creatives, got all excited, then had to put it on hold because of life.
It wasn’t until 2020 that we were able to bring structure to these ideas ; shaping the journey, figuring out the best medium for our message, and who was going to be part of it.
A few packs of post-it notes later we had the framework of what would be CTRL + U. We just didn’t know it at the time.
A month and a bit later, I had given in my notice at work, Arda was quickly moving into a role with a lot more responsibility, and the world didn’t know who Joey Exotic was. Enter Miss Corona.
There’s nothing we can write about the pandemic that hasn’t already been covered. Zoom. Home haircuts. The new normal. You get it.
What I can tell you is that Arda and I decided that this wasn’t going to stop us. We were both very fortunate to be in safe and stable environments that allowed us to create things. And that’s exactly what we did.
Over 6 weeks, we took those frameworks and transformed them into a digital experience. We worked over video calls, google docs, voice notes and whatever other free tools we had at our disposal. Carving out time at weekends and post 5pm, we found the space to explore our future manifesto, in a hope to empower people to explore their digital identity.
Looking back, it honestly feels like a bit of a blur. I can’t really go into detail about how long each piece took, what the last thing to do was, or even what was the first thing to be built. Because the great thing about being part of a team is that you create things at the same time but also independently. Often I’d receive an excited voice note along the lines of “I just did this thing, take a look” — which is an amazing feeling because you’re both in awe of it but know it’s yours too.
Also — we’re in a pandemic. How can I tell you how long it took to make a chatbot when I still think it’s March and haven’t haven’t got my eyebrows done in 6 months.
So, mid-May, we launched. Of course we immediately found 4728 errors— from typos to mobile views breaking. Ensue a 24 hours of triple checking the chatbot, asking for feedback from siblings and prepping the final comms.
Then, on 16th May we shared it with the world. And it was there. A real thing for people to click on and (hopefully) feel intrigued by. Weirdly anti-climatic, with no hugs of joy, just a few button clicks and some happy dances.
We don’t have a big network. Our intial splash was small but significant. But we had a plan in place (i.e a really big spreadsheet).
We started to invite people. And invited some more people. They invited other people. Who tweeted it. Liked it. Blogged it. Who knows, someone might have even tatto’d it.
In two and half months we reached more people than we could have possibly have dreamed of. Top highlights include:
- Chatting with incredible humans like Alice Thwaite, Callum at World Wide Web Foundation and Bec Hill
- Every word of feedback that still makes my heart warm just thinking about
- And OF COURSE being featured in the MIT Tech Review which doubled our views and I will never get over
We didn’t have a marketing budget because we don’t have any budget. We’re just two people who really believe that big tech is the biggest threat to our human rights and our sense of identity. And this belief led us to reach over 3500 people in less than 3 months. Madness.
Being online has meant we’ve reached new audiences around the world. And also led to some incredible opportunities like….
RIGHTS CON
For our first ever Rights Con we had the privilege of hosting one of the opening community sessions of the conference. Never before have Access Now ran a digital only Rights Cons and we were SO excited.
The session included the wonderful Wanuri Kahiu (filmmaker, speaker, and science fiction), Jacob Mchangama (founder and executive director of Justitia), Sofia Jaramillo Otoya (legal advisor to the UNSR Freedom of Opinion and Expression), Diego Naranjo (head of policy at European Digital Rights), Srirak Plipat (executive director at Freemuse) and Paige Collings ( advocacy and campaigns officer at Freemuse). We launched FreeMuses’s Know Your Rights Campaign which included their first Digital Toolkit for Artsits — a guide to helping protect yourself online against censorship and harassment.
It was a great session to be part of and we really learnt a lot.
Over the week we were able to learn from the amazing community at Rights Cons. We took part in conversations spanning stakeholder engagement, international AI developments and how evil Amazon is (spoiler altert: really evil).
We’re so excited to have been part of RightsCon 2020 and can’t wait to join you next year with another great headshot.
AOB
- As I write this, Arda and I haven’t seen each other yet. We are hoping to reunite this weekend IRL and we are SO EXCITED. Whilst we have a lot of planning to do, we are also going to celebrate our successes and make the most of this moment.
- We’re currently revamping the website. If you want to know something that you can find online, get in touch
- I finally finished Love is Blind last Friday and highly recommend it. I hi-key cried during it, no shame.
Until next time
xoxox
Savena + Arda
