Hello,
I’m regina with a background in environmental journalism and hi-tech/intl. business (Cisco Systems, Twitter, among other start-ups). I quit hi-tech and, now, work as a leadership and cross-cultural coach in San Francisco and Internationally. I found out about this movement through the Wisdom 2.0 Conference. I believe this is one of the most important movements happening in the world today. Available for meet ups in San Francisco. I’m originally from Brazil and would love to help spread the movement to South America since it has the greatest social media population in the world. Because of my contacts in the hi-tech and social media world there, I believe that it’s possible to start creating a real momentum there. Would love to meet people for meet ups in San Francisco.
Hi! 
My name’s Katelyn, I’m from Maryland and I graduated last year from F&M with a degree in philosophy. Right now I’m getting my certificate in user experience design with the goal of becoming someone who writes about and promotes humane tech standards - but my biggest goal is to go back to being as curious, motivated, and creative as I was before tech became such a big part of my life. Growing up I was always doing creative projects but over time my stated interests started to make up only a small percentage of how I spent my time. One thing I always loved was making short films and recently I’ve been challenging myself to make one video a week in an effort to flip that balance!
Hi everyone!
I’m very excited about the founding of the Center for Humane Technology, and am so happy to be a part of this group. I watched the live stream of The Truth About Tech conference a couple of weeks ago, and was so so thrilled about the conversations that were taking place there.
I am a psychologist and life coach focused on parenting in the age of technology. I moved from South East Asia to New York City about a year ago, and have just launched my online coaching practice focused on helping parents navigate this rapidly-changing digital world and reconnect with their children in deep and meaningful ways. My work is informed by research in the fields of emotional intelligence and positive psychology as well as attachment theory and neuroscience, and I employ the strategic intervention approach to coaching.
I have witnessed countless scenes of children and their parents missing opportunities to connect to each other directly due to the disruptive presence of a device, and I am glad that a global community is forming around that very same frustration. I am looking forward to all the connections that may come out of joining this group!
Keep up the great work everyone!
Teodora
Hi I’m Simon Waller. I work with small and medium sized organisations in Australia (mainly) to help them use technology more effectively. I believe that throughout human history technology has provided incredible opportunity but almost always coupled with new hazards and risks. The rapid development of current digital technologies has meant that we aren’t yet fully conversant in what those risks are and how to navigate them. I’m also a professional speaker at conferences and strategic off sites and I try to use the platform I have and the influence I bring to encourage more mature conversations about technology and where it is taking us (one of my keynote is titled “Will technology make us more human?”).
I have been following the Time Well Spent movement for the last 18 months or so and keen to see where the current incarnation as the Center for Humane Technology takes these ideas. I’m keen to contribute to the community if my knowledge and skills can be of assistance.
Hi all. I’m Phoebe, and I work on big-picture societal stuff in the realms of environmental futures, biodiversity conservation, climate change, human health and well-being. My background was in evolutionary biology and behavior, so I’m uncomfortably aware of the disconnect between our 100 000 years of hominid storytelling and our frantic, dysfunctional modern lives. I’m not a techie, but work with my techie filmmaker husband to highlight big issues of the day for society. I work to try to reverse the erosion by technology and materialism of people’s awareness of/concern for the natural world, human relationships, and physical/emotional fitness. I’ve worked at global, national and local levels on many related issues and am relieved, happy, and reassured that you guys are all out there. Thanks all!
Hi Everyone,
I’m a master student Design for Interaction at the Delft University of Technology, so based in the Netherlands. For me this movement is extremely important because of the need of counterweight to the race for attention right now. At the faculty I notice more people trying to get rid of this addiction-design and really try to dig in something that looks like Humane Design. For me the way to good Humane Design, is making use of Design for Emotions and Design for Happiness. I have done courses to try to master this and hopefully implement this im my future work and designs. This strategy can be used for product design, digital design, but as well for strategy and service design. It’s making use of the basic human needs and in that way it can become emotion- and well-being-driven design.
I’m looking forward to reading all other interesting personal stories on this site and hopefully this movement becomes bigger and bigger!
Hello. My name is Germain.I live in France, Angers. My experience as a human being is deeply modified by the attention that I provided and that my relatives provide to their devices. So I think that it’s one of the most important subject of our “now”. Then I’m here. Trying to gather some people for action. I am extremely interested in events as I think they are the only tool available for a change. Anyone interested to build and shoot an event in France is someone I will be interested to meet. Paris / Angers / West France, I’m able to move.
I am an event builder generally in my work life.
Germain.
I’m Kai, a PhD student in human-computer interaction at the University of Washington. I research how technologies can be anti-distraction and pro-meaningfulness.
Colleagues and I recently studied the “junk food” effect: the idea that some smartphone use is highly engaging in-the-moment, but ultimately devoid of meaning. Participants reported that entertainment and passive social media were low in meaning, while active communication, information-seeking, and productivity all rated higher. We also found that it wasn’t just which apps were being used, but how they were being used. So chatting with close friends on Facebook Messenger was seen as meaningful, while browsing the newsfeed was not.
I also started a separate thread in the forums here on how academics can unite around a research agenda in support of humane tech. See here for more.
I’m thrilled that this community exists and hope to connect with many of you!
Hi group! I am Mala Suess, I am a Social Informatics specialist and media educator from Switzerland. I work in technology for visually impaired people and tour schools to teach parents responsible parenting with smartphones, tablets and gaming consoles. I have been working in the area of IT for over 25 years and also taught Social Informatics at the University of Applied Sciences in Eastern Switzerland.
Being a mom and a PTA delegate I work with parents in our wealthy neighbourhood to ensure that teaching at our public school is holistic. Tech is a means, not a replacement of parenting, education or manual skills. My son goes to a public forest kindergarden and we use a lot of Montessori principles. It is a public school for our little city in the north of Switzerland.
Hey all, I am a product owner with a background in SEO (and a pretty longstanding irritation with Google’s dominance), working in the UK. I care deeply about data privacy, as well as the addictive nature of technology, and am trying to get myself off as many services as possible that I find “invasive”, but of course, find it incredibly difficult…
Hi, I’m Kristoffer. I run a consultancy company helping organisations build meaningful connections.
I’m also part of the core-team of Techfestival, a festival we initiated last year to explore a progressive agenda for technology. Part of the outcome was a new manifest for technology written by 150 philosophers, founders, investors, designers, artists…
Technology’s role in society and our private life is close to my heart. It is usually the main topic of my weekly newsletter. It also translates into how I build side-projects. For example we do no tracking, design for efficiency and work slowly on a project for coffee lovers (Third Wave List).
I’m going to take time to read all of your presentations in this post. I’m genuinely excited about uniting disconnected forces in bringing a new, forward-looking agenda to the societies we build.
<3
Kristoffer
Hi friends
My name is Jonathan from Tel-Aviv
Since before the digital, smartphones era I remember myself sitting for hours on the phone with a call sheet every time we had to make a group decision and it got me interested in group communication and especially how decision making cause friction and reduce productivity
Fast forward a few years, I became increasingly frustrated with how chat groups (WhatsApp in my case) has taken up every second of my waken hours (and sometimes my sleepy time) and it only made group communication worse instead of improving it
Me and my 2 partners launched a free web app which allows anyone to quickly create a one-question poll and share it chat groups. Results are anonymous to make quick, chatter free, democratic decisions
I work from the social lab of the TLV municipality where I work with urban communities, youth groups and activists to better communicate and make decisions and gathering insights a pain free process
Love to hear and feedback from ya’ll - app.apeo.co , www.apeo.co
Excited to be here and keep up the important work
have a great week
J
Hi, My name is Katja Valaskivi, and I am a social sicentists specializing in media studies, living and working in Finland. I am particularly interested in the social and societal aspects of new media technologies, and their consequences to the wider society. Recently together with colleagues we have been trying to figure out what it means for the society when individuals are hooked on mobile phones and social media. It has consequences for sociality and socialization, but also for public dialogue, political decision making, democracy and international communcation. Most of the technology we use for daily communication has been developed for individual use and in order to create a revenue, overlooking the collateral damage caused for the social relationships and societal structures. I am excited of this initiative and hope to be a part of it in finding better solutions. If there is an interest to spread the idea to Northern Europe, I can take intitiative in building network here.
Hello everybody, I’m Pasquale,
I’m Italian, currently I live in Australia, and I often travel around for work or just to explore the planet.
I’m testing the messages in this community with this introduction (actually it looks like this thread is already too long 
).
I really would like to contribute in all the topics touched by humanetech.com - at the moment I’m just trying to understand what I could do better in order to maximise the effect.
ciao
Hey friends! My name is Pat and I am an actor and theater scholar currently living in New York City. I will featured in an upcoming documentary, 'Electronic Crack,’ which is about technology addiction and what to do about it. I also write for a blog, thelowtechtrek.com, where I discuss my research on the excessive technology use, its impact on the world, and how theater/acting practice can aid against this issue. Feel free to check it out. I would love to hear your thoughts!
I feel very fortunate to be a part of this community and truly believe in the work the Center for Humane Technology is doing. I would love to collaborate with them or any of you on related topics. Feel free to email me at contact@thelowtechtrek.com. Hope to connect with you all soon!
-Pat
Hi, I’m Richard from London, UK! I’ve been working in digital for almost 20 years now since 1999. I was part of a global advertising group Deepgroup which operated all the Deepend companies around the world and was part of the initial startup of Glue their online advertising arm which went on to be the ad agency Isobar. Since then I’ve worked for many international and national entertainment brands in the UK, Australia and New York and set up my own digital marketing consultancy called Laughing Buddha. However, I’ve been recently trying to reconcile my career and how I move forward with my work, with how I now feel about technology and social media today which I feel has had a negative impact on how we all communicate and socialise. Discovering Humane Tech was a real eye-opener for me, as it is the first thing I’ve seen that offers an answer to the status quo and a positive way forward. I would love to start doing work that matters and challenges the problems we face and to use my skills and experience to help shift the dial in the right direction. If there are other UK based folk out there interested in working together and help campaign for Humane Tech, give me a shout I’d love to hear from you!
Hi everyone!!
I am an earthling by the name of Rui, born in Portugal and living in Dublin at the moment.
I’ve been grinding my sanity mostly around food and knowledge networks/systems, but my background is mainly Design based - I am expert in nothing, as I rather be connecting dots than being the dot! I don’t use social media, last time I turned on a tv Michael Jordan was still playing basketball, and don’t own a mobile for the last 9 months also… besides LinkedIn and Skype (for those free calls) i don’t use any other apps or whatnots. With my recent Ma in Information Experience Design, I’m shifting my practice into a more research-based one.
My 2nd-year final project at university was focused on “HOW IS TECHNOLOGY MEDIATING OUR INTERACTIONS?” - you can found the full doc and research methodologies here. Which followed my dissertation theme “The Public Space as catalyst for change: a systemic approach to decision making in Urban Planning” - which you can find here.
A big shout out to Tristan’s team, that planted this seed, and to all of you that are nurturing it!!! See you around… Happy Monday! Best, Rui
‘Imagine a better future. Find your allies. Share tools. Build it. Start now.’ - Alex Steffan
“We all need to go beyond the obvious and engage with deep questions in order to find true and lasting solutions.” - Satish Kummar
@Max and community.
I’m Michael, a Dutchman living in the UK, who’s passionate about storytelling through a medium called Whiteboard Animation. It’s my own business.
I came across Tristan’s talk and found this because of his talk at Wisdom 2.0 in February 2018.
I have been cutting back on Social for a number of years and am only mostly active on two platforms, which are LinkedIn and Medium, but I have a presence probably everywhere.
I am also studying Yoga, Mindfulness Meditation and Minimalism as a way to develop a more meaningful life for myself. I love the Internet and I have been an early adopter of Technology all my adult life, but what has happened in the past 5 years on Social has meant that I have become deeply skeptical of the motives of all large Tech companies.
I’m interested to see where this initiative will go and will be pleasantly surprised if anyone takes notice. Did you know that Sci-fi movies are the biggest grossing movies? Most of us love technology and want more of it, not less.
I look forward to contributing to this community although I won’t be a regular. I will dip in and out when I can.
Success to you all.
Michael
Hi everyone. My name is Melissa and I live in New Jersey just outside NYC. I’m currently a self-employed writer and social media manager who works mainly in the interior design industry but has dabbled in a little bit of everything.
After some time spent in the NYC tech start-up world, I struck out on my own in 2013. I firmly believe that technology can be a force for good, and have encountered many such instances both in my work and my personal life (social media is how I connected with the woman I donated my kidney to, for example). However, over the last couple of years or so I’ve started to become disenchanted by all the negativity I’m seeing online - a feeling that has only intensified since the last election. I’d love to listen in on this convo around Humane Tech and contribute however I can!
Hello, my name is Scott, born in the US and currently living in Sydney Australia. I’ve been working online for the past 20 years, about half with marketplaces like eBay and Freelancer as business leads/PM, and half with straight up ecommerce businesses. Along the way I’ve picked up an undergrad in biology and an MBA. I’m hoping to help out in whatever way that I can for this. What is clear to me is that the current way we are going in tech isn’t working, both for personal impacts and for society as a whole. I want to be part of a change, and I hope that this can be the start or a part of it.