2024 Keynote Speakers Nominations
Code4Lib 2024 will take place May 13-16, 2024 at the University of Michigan's Ann Arbor Campus.
Nominations will close at midnight on November 16, 2023.
When making a nomination, please consider whether the nominee is likely to be an excellent contributor in each of the following areas:
1) Appropriateness. Is this speaker likely to convey information that is useful to many members of our community?
2) Uniqueness. Is this speaker likely to cover themes that may not commonly appear in the rest of the program?
3) Contribution to diversity. Will this person bring something rare, notable, or unique to our community, through unusual experience or background?
Please include a description and any relevant links. Please try to keep the list in alphabetical order.
We require the following information in your nomination for a candidate to act as keynote:
- Speaker’s full name
- Brief description of individual (250-word max)
- Pertinent links (Maximum of 3)
- Contact information for candidate (email address)
The Keynote Committee will attempt to contact all nominees and will only include on the ballot those who consent to be nominated.
If you would prefer to submit a nomination anonymously, please send your nominee(s) to Mike Taylor at mike.taylor@nau.edu.
Please follow the formatting guidelines:
== Nominee's Name == Description of no more than 250 words. [[Link(s) with contact information for nominee]] [mailto:email_link.foo nominee's email address]
Jane Doe (example)
Jane works at ________, doing _______.
Some pertinent history/biography/hyperlinks that illustrates why Jane would be a good keynote speaker.
Dawna Ballard
Dawna I. Ballard (Ph.D., University of California at Santa Barbara) is associate professor of organizational communication and technology in the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin. An expert in chronemics—i.e., the study of time as it is bound to human communication—she researches what drives our pace of life and its impact on the communication practices and long-term vitality of organizations, communities, and individuals. Dr. Ballard is currently completing a book, Time by Design (under contract at MIT Press), about how effective organizations routinely communicate slow to go fast.
She delivered a keynote at Electronic Resources & Libraries in 2016. She talked about “her work and the search for work/ life balance.” She seems to be focusing on communication among group members, which I think is pertinent to all practitioners in our field and I wonder if she has anything to say about how researchers think about time when organizing and retrieving concepts. She has done keynotes at other professional conferences but no other GLAM-related ones, as far as I can see.
Faculty page on the UT website https://commstudies.utexas.edu/faculty/dawna-ballard
ER&L event: https://erl2016.sched.com/event/5ZPJ
Dr. Joy Buolamwini
Dr. Joy Buolamwani is a computer scientist and poet of code who uses art and research to illuminate the social implications of artificial intelligence. She founded the Algorithmic Justice League to create a world with more equitable and accountable technology. Her TED Featured Talk on algorithmic bias has over 1.4 million views. Her MIT thesis methodology uncovered large racial and gender bias in AI services from companies like Microsoft, IBM, and Amazon. In 2020, these companies stepped back from selling facial recognition technology to law enforcement. In addition to advising elected officials during US congressional hearings, she serves on the Global Tech Panel to advise world leaders and executives on reducing AI harms.
Dr. Buolamwini has a book coming out in late October 2023 called Unmasking AI which is investigating the harms and biases of AI. I feel she has a number of intersecting interests that are relevant to much of what this conferences/community discusses even though she's not directly involved in the GLAM field. Having a keynote from her would be particularly relevant given how much the GLAM community is currently wrestling with the ethical and professional concerns of using Artificial Intelligence. The algorthimic Justice league she founded has a mission to, "...raise public awareness about the impacts of AI, equip advocates with resources to bolster campaigns, build the voice and choice of the most impacted communities, and galvanize researchers, policymakers, and industry practitioners to prevent AI harms." I have no idea if she would be available or if this would be feasible as she's becoming more well-known but just throwing her name out just in case!
the email for the company who manages her speaking engagements
Kawanna Bright
Dr. Kawanna Bright is Assistant Professor of Library Science at East Carolina University. Dr. Bright earned her PhD in Research Methods and Statistics from the University of Denver in 2018. Prior to earning her doctorate, Dr. Bright worked as an academic librarian for twelve years, with a focus on reference, instructional services, and information literacy. She earned her MLIS from the University of Washington iSchool in 2003. Dr. Bright's research can inform how we can think about diversifying the field of library workers who code and red flags in positions for libraries.
https://edispeakers.ala.org/listing/kawanna-bright/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4siYUeGX_g&pp=ygUOa2F3YW5uYSBicmlnaHQ%3D
Dr. Noelani Arista
Noelani M. Arista is an Indigenous historian of Hawaiʻi and the U.S. She is ‘Ōiwi (Hawaiian) born in Honolulu, Oʻahu. She is the Director of the Indigenous Studies Program and an Associate Professor in the History and Classical Studies Department. Her research focuses on the organization of Hawaiian traditional knowledge, intellectual, legal and religious history and the ethical rules and norms governing relationships to ʻike (knowledge).
Arista seeks (ʻimi) to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to apply traditional modes of organizing Hawaiian knowledge in Hawaiian language textual and oral sources to increase community access to ʻike Hawaiʻi, the methods of which will provide useful and scalable models for scholars working in their own indigenous language source base.
Dr. Arista his one of the folks who worked on the Indigenous AI Working Group. Her areas of interest as seen on her faculty website include "19th Century U.S. History; Pre-Contact – 19th century Hawaiian legal and intellectual history, governance; AI and Indigenous knowledge organization systems, epistemology and methodology; Indigenous language archives and translation; Indigenous AI & ethics; Colonial and Indigenous history and historiography" I think her take on AI/ML is fascinating, and I think she would be a fabulous keynote speaker for this conference. Her focus is on the ethical use of AI, particularly in relationship to research and scholarship. This is a major subject of interest in many GLAM institutions.
Chuck Severance
Dr. Chuck Severance is a long-time advocate of open-source educational technology and open educational resources that empower teachers, librarians, and everyday people. His "Python for Everybody" course is the most popular online programming course in the world. He teaches at the University of Michigan's School of Information.
He has a long history of public speaking and has hosted television and podcast programs as an expert on the Internet and technology. A sample of his speeches is available on his website.
Emily Higgs Kopin
Emily Higgs Kopin is the head of digital collections strategy at the Swarthmore libraries. From her LinkedIn, she "is a librarian/archivist with interest and experience in digital collections, infrastructures, exhibits, and technology." I'm nominating her on the strength of her 2023 Code4Lib lightning talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McqOGzHfmOM&t=4486s), which was easily the funniest talk we've seen in years, and I would like 50 minutes of that, please.
Eli Neiburger
Eli Neiburger joined the staff of the Ann Arbor District Library as a helpdesk technician in 1997 and was IT manager and Deputy Director before being appointed Director of AADL in 2022. Eli has given keynote talks about gaming in libraries, the impact of the web of library services, and embracing open source solutions at library conferences across the US, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. AADL has been rolling its own tech whenever it can for 20+ years, and Eli would be happy to give Code4Lib an entertaining and inspiring overview of what it looks like to run a busy public library using as little proprietary software as possible, from the ILS and catalog to digital archives, from staff tools to the public computing environment. Eli is the author of 2007's GAMERS.. in the LIBRARY?! and contributed to O'Reilly's BOOK: A Manifesto and to Well Played, a games journal from Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center.
More information at this page
Patricia Garcia
Patricia Garcia is a professor at the University of Michigan School of Information. Her research and contributions center on gender, youth, race and their intersections with technology and justice. She has led a project with public libraries to study how a computational justice program can support girls of color in developing identities in computing and programming. She would bring a unique perspective that joins educational work with libraries and technology in highly current and topical ways.
More information at this page.