Social Impact Un-Pitch Day 2018

On Thursday, October 4th at 5:30pm the Center for Technology, Society & Policy (CTSP) and the School of Information’s Information Management Student Association (IMSA) are co-hosting their third annual Social Impact Un-Pitch Day! Join CTSP and IMSA to brainstorm ideas for projects that address the challenges of technology, society, and policy. We welcome students, community organizations, local municipal partners, faculty, and campus initiatives to discuss discrete problems that project teams can take on over the course of this academic year. Teams will be encouraged to apply to CTSP to fund their projects. Location: Room 202, in South Hall. RSVP here!

Agenda

• 5:40 Introductions from IMSA and CTSP
• 5:45 Example Projects
• 5:50 Sharing Un-Pitches

We’ve increased the time for Un-Pitches! (Still 3-minutes per Un-Pitch)

• 6:40 Mixer (with snacks and refreshments)

 

Un-Pitches

Un-Pitches are meant to be informal and brief introductions of yourself, your idea, or your organization’s problem situation. Un-pitches can include designing technology, research, policy recommendations, and more. Students and social impact representatives will be given 3 minutes to present their Un-Pitch. In order to un-pitch, please share 1-3 slides, as PDF and/or a less than 500-word description—at this email: ctsp@berkeley.edu. You can share slides and/or description of your ideas even if you aren’t able to attend. Deadline to share materials: midnight October 1st, 2018.

Funding Opportunities

The next application round for fellows will open in November. CTSP’s fellowship program will provide small grants to individuals and small teams of fellows for 2019. CTSP also has a recurring offer of small project support.

Prior Projects & Collaborations

Here are several examples of projects that members of the I School community have pursued as MIMS final projects or CTSP Fellow projects (see more projects from 2016, 2017, and 2018).

• A team of MIMS students partnered with a local non-profit working with vulnerable populations to build their information and communication capacity: Yakap
• A team of MIMS students partnered with the Center for Democracy and Technology to research perceptions of algorithmic personalization: “A User-Centered Perspective on Algorithmic Personalization”
• A team of first and second year MIMS students and an I School PhD student partnered with a local organization to study the workings of the Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission. This project culminated in a report presented to the commission and multiple tools designed as a resource for cities and citizens: Increasing Transparency into the Capabilities of Surveillance and Policing Technologies
• A team of MIMS students, partnered with an international non-profit and traveled to Nepal to conduct user research in support of the design of a sociotechnical data collection system: Matri-Raksha: Digital Data Collection for Maternal and Perinatal Healthcare in Rural Nepal

 

Skills & Interests of Students

The above projects demonstrate a range of interests and skills of the I School community. Students here and more broadly on the UC Berkeley campus are interested and skilled in all aspects of where information and technology meets people—from design and data science, to user research and information policy.

RSVP here!