We’re excited to share with you an important update: RightsCon has undergone a few important changes recently. You might have noticed our new identity on our website and social media channels.
As you’ll notice, our new identity continues to carry the concept of the globe familiar to our global community, with a shift in perspective. Keeping with the vibrant and colorful tone that has always characterized RightsCon, this new perspective shapes the view of the horizon, indicating a feature of hope and humanity.
Why the change?
Together we’ve grown
Now the world’s leading event on human rights in the digital age, RightsCon has grown significantly since our first summit in 2011. The decision to update our visual identity reflects the increasing reach of our global community, which now includes representatives from over 110 countries. We also continue to include more voices than ever: nearly half of the RightsCon Toronto program is being built by first-time session organizers. Ensuring RightsCon is a diverse and representative space continues to be a core pillar of our summit series: this year, a majority of our organizers self-identified as women, transgender, or non-binary.
Our mission has expanded
At its core, RightsCon is an outcomes-oriented global internet and digital policy forum. However, the scope of RightsCon has also expanded beyond the original focus on digital rights. In an age where technology touches nearly every aspect of our lives and new frontiers of innovation challenge our rights in previously unimaginable ways, we’re seeing a convergence of human rights on and off line. The rapidly increasing breadth of issues impacting our world required a change in mission to encompass all human rights in the digital age.
Re-orienting our purpose
Alongside this change in mission, is a re-orienting of our purpose. This change means shifting from an annual event that brings together a community, to a community that meets once a year. We believe this purpose reflects the need to build on the energy of RightsCon in order for our collective efforts to continue beyond our annual in-person convenings.
Each year, a new global home
Each year, RightsCon will call a new city home. It is our commitment to bringing together business leaders, policy makers, general counsels, government representatives, technologists, and human rights defenders from around the world that has influenced the global nature of the event, as well as the places we’ve decided to host RightsCon (including Rio de Janeiro, Manila, and Brussels). Now, instead of alternating to San Francisco, as we have in the past, RightsCon will travel to a new international city every year.
As we look towards Toronto, and the future of RightsCon, we are excited to continue working alongside our growing community to shape the global agenda on human rights in the digital age.
