Metagov Seminar Series - March 2025
March Updates
Welcome to the March edition of the Metagov Seminar Series newsletter!
Since our last update, we’ve hosted seven incredible seminars featuring practitioners, researchers and leaders in digital governance. This edition offers a preview of the exciting seminars still to come, along with snapshots of the discussions we've hosted over the past few months.
Upcoming Seminars
Learnings from COPIM (Community-led Open Publication Infrastructures for Monographs)
March 26, 2025
Janneke Adema
Join Janneke Adema as she explores community-led models for academic publishing through the lens of the COPIM project. In this seminar, Janneke will introduce the philosophy of Scaling Small—a collaborative, community-centered alternative to commercial academic publishing. Drawing from her work on Creating Community-Owned Futures for Open Access Books, she’ll highlight how this principle informs the governance and design of initiatives like the Open Book Collective and the Experimental Publishing Compendium. Learn how these models aim to build resilient, bibliodiverse ecosystems that prioritize mutual support, shared infrastructure, and co-designed governance.
Register here - Luma
Choral Data 'Trust' Experiment by Serpentine Galleries
April 2, 2025
Tommy Introna and Team (Serpentine Galleries)
Join Tommy Introna from Serpentine Galleries as he explores the Choral Data 'Trust' Experiment—an artistic and participatory inquiry into how data governance can be co-created through trust-based, community-led models. Drawing from Serpentine’s R&D Platform, this seminar dives into experimental methodologies that challenge traditional structures of data ownership, consent, and control. Learn how artistic practice is shaping new paradigms of governance, collaboration, and accountability in the digital sphere.
Register here - Luma
Civic AI
April 9, 2025
Matt Stempeck (Civic Tech Field Guide)
How are civic tech platforms integrating AI to strengthen democracy—and are these efforts enough in the face of rising algorithmic harms? Matt Stempeck, curator of the Civic Tech Field Guide, shares insights from the world’s largest directory of democracy tech tools, including over 200 examples of Civic AI. With experience across tech companies, advocacy groups, and government, Matt will unpack where AI is helping—or hurting—efforts to empower democratic actors and institutions.
Register here - Luma
Introducing the Theory+Practice Project
April 16, 2025
Joseph Gubbels (McGill / Metagov)
Join Joseph Gubbels, political theory fellow at Metagov and PhD student at McGill, for an introduction to Theory+Practice—a new Metagov initiative connecting political theory and political science with real-world work on democratic practice. Currently running as part of Metagov’s Interop program, this project is designed to deepen understanding between theorists and practitioners working on deliberative tools and emerging models of governance.
In this session, Joseph will introduce the core motivations behind Theory+Practice, highlight key theoretical questions relevant to practitioners, and discuss how real-world democratic experimentation can inform political theory. Whether you’re building tools or engaging in research, this seminar offers a thoughtful entry point into the conversations bridging these domains.
Theory+Practice will continue with additional seminars later this month (outside the main Metagov seminar timeslot). Stay tuned in #deliberative-tools-and-interop for updates.
Got feedback or ideas? Share them via this 5-minute survey.
Register here – Luma
A Rule-Based Approach to Mitigating AI Risk
April 23, 2025
Evan Miyazono (Atlas Computing)
Join Evan Miyazono as he presents the work of Atlas Computing, a research initiative focused on building transparent and human-governable AI systems. As AI becomes more powerful and integrated into everyday life, Atlas challenges the dominant model of centralized, opaque systems—like large language models—by proposing architectures that allow for collective oversight and user intervention.
Atlas operates on the principle that AI should enhance, not diminish, human agency. By prioritizing transparency, accountability, and participatory governance, their work aims to ensure that AI serves the public interest and remains responsive to democratic control.
Register here - Luma
Becoming “Net Fiduciaries” with the GLIANet Alliance
April 30, 2025
Richard Whitt and Estefanie Govea (GLIANet Alliance)
Join Richard Whitt, technology policy attorney (formerly at Google and Twilio), and Estefanie Govea, program lead (formerly at Circl.es), as they present their work establishing and growing the GLIANet Alliance—a community of practice advancing a more ethical and public-oriented digital future.
Drawing from Richard’s book Reweaving the Web, this seminar introduces the concept of “Net Fiduciaries”—technology companies that operate with a legal duty of care, good faith, loyalty, and confidentiality to their users, much like doctors or lawyers. These trusted entities are envisioned as providers of advanced “edgetech,” including personal AI agents that protect and promote users’ best interests across digital and physical spaces.
Estefanie will share how the GLIANet Alliance is bringing this vision to life through a coalition of organizations focused on research, education, cross-sector collaboration, and policy advocacy.
This seminar is especially timely for those exploring alternatives to attention-based business models and seeking more just and trustworthy approaches to data privacy and digital governance.
Register here – Luma
Recent Seminars
Intro to Participatory Action Research (PAR): A Primer for Governance Researchers
March 19, 2025
Brett Stoudt (City University of New York)
Dr. Brett Stoudt introduced the principles of participatory action research (PAR) through NYC-based case studies on justice, organizing, and public science.
YouTube
Note from Ian Williams: "After attending so many interesting and informative Metagov seminars, it was a pleasure to add something to the mix as a member of the community, hosting my first successful seminar proposal. I am grateful for Dr Brett Stoudt's generosity with his time, expertise, and deep commitment to using public science as a vehicle for advancing tangible social change through a rich case study of The Morris Justice Project. Metagov members in attendance raised important questions about participatory research design and slow science, which could be the topic of another seminar. I am happy to continue the conversation on participatory methods and engaged scholarship, which are so deeply woven into pedagogical and research philosophies at CUNY, and important to the study of online communities committed to self-management and democratic governance."
Subvert: A Collectively Owned Bandcamp Successor
February 19, 2025
Austin Robey (Subvert)
Austin Robey shared lessons from building Subvert, a community-owned platform for musicians and creators, inspired by platform cooperativism.
YouTube
On Massive Decentralized Learning Communities
February 5, 2025
Angela Kreitenweis (Token Engineering Academy)
Angela reflected on five years of the Token Engineering Academy and lessons from building decentralized learning communities.
YouTube
Ize “Mycelial Process Platform” Demo and Workshop
January 22, 2025
Ty Sullberg
Ty Sullberg introduced Ize, a modular, “zapier for governance” tool connecting decentralized teams and processes across Web2 and Web3.
YouTube
Modern Markets for All: Digital Public Infrastructure to Unlock Each Person’s Economic Potential
January 15, 2025
Wingham Rowan (MM4A)
Wingham Rowan explored how government-backed digital labor platforms can transform economic inclusion and opportunity.
YouTube
Is Consent Watered-Down Consensus? 3 Key Differences That Are Easy to Miss
January 8, 2025
Ted Rau
Ted Rau shared insights from his experience with Sociocracy For All and distinctions between consent and consensus in governance.
YouTube
Inclusive Ocean Data for Decision-Making
December 18, 2024
Araba Sey (Research ICT Africa)
Araba Sey discussed her research and learnings specifically on Data for Decision-Making (D4D), "decision-making cultures," fostering inclusion in decision-making processes, and case studies from the domain of ocean governance.
YouTube
Get Involved
The Metagov Seminar is a vibrant platform for exploring cutting-edge ideas in digital governance. We invite you to join our community and participate in these thought-provoking discussions.
Join our Slack: Connect with other researchers and practitioners in the field.
Attend live seminars: Engage directly with speakers and fellow attendees.
Propose a seminar: Propose a seminar on our slack channel (#metagov-seminar)
Watch past seminars: Catch up on any seminars you've missed on our YouTube and Internet Archive channels.
Learn more about Metagov and our mission to cultivate tools, practices, and communities that enable self-governance in the digital age.