At the end of September I attended and presented at the Trust and Safety Conference at Stanford Univerisity. I was excited to share how my research on digital misogynoir helped shape the moderation for Blacksky. I also got to swing by Oakland Tech Week to listen to my mentor talk alongside some amazing people in tech.

Here are my thoughts from those few days:

• I got to meet Julia from Pro Design Social Network and we had a great chat about moderation, The People's Assembly, our own spicy takes about the woes of traditional academia. My biggest takeaway and what I look forward to exploring with PDSN, Blacksky, and Atproto are our (me and Julia's) excitement for researchers to engage deeply with the pro-social web to produce amazing studies and for practicioners to be in community with them while doing it. We got something cooking for 2027.
• The presentation that stood out most to me was a study done by two NYU grad students on youtube creators and safety on the app. The presentation was not only novel (in my opinion) it was also lively and I can see this connecting to creator studies in the future.
• My presentation went over well. There were so many questions that showed how interested researchers and industry people are in what Blacksky is doing and also my research too! I also was acknowledged as a stand out presenter at the closing session.
• Oakland Tech Week was dope. I went to "How to Shift Power in the AI Ecosystem: A Simulation Model of AI power Dynamics." which had some dope ass people on the panel, including my mentor Safiya Noble. She even gave Blacksky a shoutout. I got to meet students as well and many different people really interested in Blacksky and the work being doing in the ecosystem.

Overall I enjoyed my time in the bay, hadn't been back in years. Sad I didn't get to see some family and friends but maybe next time.

Next up....Mozilla Fest.