Personal Democracy Forum

Danah Boyd is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and the founder of Data & Society. She is also a Visiting Professor at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. She is an academic and a scholar and her research examines the intersection between technology and society. For over a decade, her research focused on how young people use social media as part of their everyday practices. She wrote It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens (2014) to document her findings. More recently, she has turned to focus on the social and cultural dimensions of the “big data” phenomenon, with an eye to issues like privacy and publicity, data(mis)interpretation, and the civil rights implications of data analytics. This is core to the mandate of Data & Society, a research institute that she founded in 2013 and currently runs.

Daniel Kaplan, 52, is the founder and CEO of the Next-Generation Internet Foundation (FING).
FING is a collective and open Research and Development project that produces and shares novel and actionable ideas to anticipate digital transformations.
In 1986, he cofounded one of the world’s first digital communication agencies, JKLM, which he headed until the early 1990s. He then became a consultant and co-founded Proposition, a consultancy specialized in digital strategies.

Since the 1990’s, Daniel Kaplan has been deeply involved in the Internet’s development and evolution. He was VP-Membership of the Internet Society worldwide, and contributed to the creation of ICANN.
He served in the European Commission’s e-Europe’s Experts Chamber and currently serves in France’s National Digital Council. He is a member of several large companies’ Foresight Committees, and chairs the program committee of the Lift France international conference.

Mr. Kaplan has written or directed more than 25 books and public reports on the internet, mobility and ubiquitous networking, ambient intelligence, e-inclusion, e-commerce, e-education, electronic media, cities and sustainable development, privacy and digital identities.

His latest book in English is “Digital Privacy Revisited, To protect and to project”, Fyp Editions, 2010

Since 1993, Danielle Brian has been the Executive Director of the Project On Government Oversight (POGO). She frequently testifies before Congress and regularly meets with Members of Congress and officials at the White House and federal agencies to discuss how to achieve a more effective, accountable, open, and ethical federal government. Ms. Brian was appointed by the Secretary of the Interior to serve on the U.S. Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative Federal Advisory Committee in 2012. In 2013, she was elected chair of the civil society organizations on the Federal Advisory Committee. In 2015, Ms. Brian was elected to the Board of the D.C. Open Government Coalition. Ms. Brian serves on the board of Taxpayers for Common Sense, and is the chair of the Steering Committee for OpenTheGovernment.org. Ms. Brian was inducted into the Freedom of Information Act Hall of Fame, was ranked by Ethisphere magazine as one of the top 100 most influential people in business ethics, and received the Smith College Medal.

Under Ms. Brian’s direction, POGO has conducted numerous investigations that have resulted in major public policy reforms:

• Exposed wasteful spending, which led to the cancellation of some of the government’s largest contracts, including the Boeing tanker lease, the $13 billion Superconducting Super Collider, the $11 billion Army Crusader, and the Army’s Sergeant York DIVAD. POGO also was a leader in the fight to end production of the F-22 fighter.
• Uncovered oil and gas industry fraud on public lands that led to the Justice Department’s recovery of nearly half a billion dollars, rule changes to prevent future fraud, and the dismantlement of the Minerals Management Service into separate bureaus with strengthened ethics rules.
• Investigated lax nuclear power plant security, sparking improved training and working conditions for guards. POGO’s investigations into the U.S. nuclear weapons complex also increased security at the complex by reducing the number of vulnerable sites.
• Filed and won a lawsuit against then-Attorney General John Ashcroft for retroactively classifying FBI documents.
• Successfully pushed for reforms that bolstered both the independence and accountability of the federal Inspectors General system.

Named in Revolt TV’s New Leaders of Social Justice, Dante Barry is a grassroots organizer, communications strategist, and the Executive Director of Million Hoodies Movement for Justice, a national racial justice network of 60,000 members founded to protect and empower young people of color from mass criminalization and gun violence. Dante ran campaigns, organizing and leadership development programs for national progressive organizations including the Center for Media Justice, the Roosevelt Institute, the Roosevelt Institute Campus Network, School Based Health Alliance, and the Political Development Group, LLC. Dante is committed to building a just society valuing the leadership and dignity of all Black people and other marginalized communities.

Dante has appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, CNN, NPR, New York Times, Al Jazeera America, MSNBC, BBC World Service, among other outlets and has written extensively on policing, racial justice, Black activism post Trayvon Martin, and citizenship for the Nation Magazine, Colorlines, Huffington Post, MTV News, Next City, and more. As a student organizer, Dante graduated from Monmouth University with a degree in Political Science, International Relations, and Communications. Dante is also a graduate of the New Organizing Institute 2011 Blackroots New Media Bootcamp. Currently, Dante sits on the Millennial Advisory Board for the Andrew Goodman Foundation.

Trained as a sociologist. For years, engaged in the activity in the third sector. He is particularly familiar with issues related to local government municipal, especially the transparency of public action and the participation of citizens in public spaces. Involved in promotion and development of participatory budgeting institutions in Poland. He specializes in issues related to the overall civic participation in decision-making, especially related to finance of local governments. He is also interested in issues related to energy democracy. Since December 2013 he has been a member of the Council for the participatory budget of the Mayor of Warsaw. Coordinates the work in civic budget within the action Your Vote Your Choice.

Darko Brkan is founding president of Zašto ne (Why Not), a Sarajevo-based nongovernmental organization that promotes civic activism, government accountability, and the use of digital media and new technologies in deepening democracy in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is one of BiH’s leading organizations in these fields. In addition, he is a founding member of Dosta! (Enough!), one of Bosnia’s most prominent citizens’ movements for social justice and government accountability. Darko Brkan began his career in civic activism more than ten years ago as a coordinator of the Campaign for Conscientious Objection to Military Service in BiH.

He graduated from the Faculty of Electric Engineering in Sarajevo, majoring in Information Technology with the thesis “Use of Information Technologies in Election Processes”. He is an MBA candidate at the School of Economics and Business in Sarajevo majoring in Strategic Information Management. Darko did a fellowship as a Reagan Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy, where he was exploring how information technologies, online tools, and new media can be used to promote democracy and how Open Government Data could be used in the Balkans region.

He has won several awards in the field of innovation and new technology, including the 2011 US Alumni Innovation Award and first place in Innovative Projects Ideas at the Power of One Conference, Cyprus. Apart from that, he is a board member of the US Alumni Association in BiH, a member of the political council of ACIPS, and a board member of “Ekipa”, a foundation promoting independent, socially-engaged culture. He is also a 2008 Alumni of the Council of Europe’s Academy of Political Excellence, a 2010 Alumni of the Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Nonviolent Conflict, and a 2009 Alumni of the United States Government International Visitors Leadership Program.