Open Food Facts at EmpoderaLIVE 2024: Technology at the service of democratic spaces
Are technology, data and AI shaping our future? Or will they help us to build a common space and guarantee our rights?
It was to immerse themselves in these fascinating subjects that the Open Food Facts Partnerships team (Manon and Charlotte) travelled to Malaga on 21 and 22 May 2024 for the 16th edition of the EmpoderaLIVE event.
An initiative of the Cibervoluntarios foundation, whose main mission is to ensure access to technology, to learn about it and to use it as a means of reducing social gaps, generating social innovations and empowering citizens.
EmpoderaLIVE brings people and organisations together to discuss how we can use technology to shape the future. An event for ideas and solutions that demonstrate how civic technology is helping to boost citizen engagement on a global scale. An opportunity to spend two days thinking about these challenges in a collaborative, open, ethical, sustainable and inclusive way. An international event to connect, learn and be inspired by speakers from multiple backgrounds. 🌏
👉 Some inspiring contributions:
- Yolanda Rueda, founder of Cibervoluntarios
→ It helps train older people, people with disabilities and people living in rural areas to use new technologies to make their daily lives easier (4,000+ volunteers in Spain and 80+ employees).
- Chris Sekas, founder of Ctrl+Space Labs
→ Creation of open source tools for training artificial intelligence models
- Cesar Hidalgo, founder of Data Wheel
→ Creation of open source data visualisation tools
- Pelonomi Moiloa, founder of Lelapa.ia
→ It uses artificial intelligence to make it easier to communicate in under-represented African languages
- Dominic Finelli, founder of Founderspledge
→ A company that seeks to maximise the efficiency of philanthropy for the benefit of as many people as possible through solidarity and humanitarian action
- Aline Muylaert and Wietse Van Ransbeeck, founders of Citizen Lab
→ A digital engagement platform to make public decision-making more inclusive, participatory and responsive
- Niall McCarthy, DG chez AIRE
→ It builds applications without code, powered by AI
☝️Fun fact: he built a prototype of an app for pregnant women based on Open Food Facts during the round table.
🍊 So how does Open Food Facts fit into this event?
We were invited to testify as an NGI-winning project. Manon, in charge of Partnerships at Open Food Facts, was a speaker at the conference “AI and Open Source to create and ensure sustainability of the planet” with Aurora González Vidal. From 7:14:15
As a player committed to food transparency, and convinced of the importance of open and collaborative projects, we would particularly like to thank the NGI supports and all the European mechanisms that support open-source projects.
💡 Curious to hear more? The replay of the round tables is now available.
🤳And don’t hesitate to follow us on social networks for even more colourful, vitamin-packed content! 🍊