Conferences

We launched Data for Black Lives with our inaugural conference in 2017. In 2019, we convened 600 people for our second event where we turned a critical eye to the role that data & technology play in the lives of Black people and featured speakers who are reclaiming data as a tool for social change. This fall, we are hosting our third Data for Black Lives conference for the first time in New York City.

Learn more about D4BL 3 and RSVP below.

Ruha Benjamin speaks at the inaugural Data for Black Lives conference keynote address in 2017.

Rashaan Hall, Ejike Obineme, Leah Aden, Marc Elias, and Moon Duchin during the Data for Black Lives conference 2017 breakout session “Building Back Political Power in the Age of Big Data.”

Selwyn Rogers speaks on the panel “Code Black: Closing the Health Equity Gap.”

Charmaine L. Arthur, Adam Foss, and Samuel Sinyangwe during the Data for Black Lives conference 2017 breakout session “Automating (In)Justice: Policing & sentencing in the Algorithm Age.”

Conference participants work to solve data-justice challenges at a hackathon. We believe data is best utilized when it is combined with other organizing strategies, including media, legal, and direct action tactics.

Teri Williams – President and Chief Operating Officer of OneUnited Bank, the largest Black owned bank in the country – speaks on the panel “Black Work, Black Wealth, Black Futures.”

Two people sit in an auditorium between lectures.

A crowd of people sit in an auditorium. It's full to standing-room capacity.

D4BL is truly life giving. I haven’t ever thought of the existence of Black programmers and data scientists and ones who are doing liberation work publicly? Because of the D4BL conference, I applied to and am now in graduate school for CS. D4BL is my life.

N. Macklin

After leaving the conference last year, I realized the importance of answering those wicked questions as a community instead of as a single individual. Since that conference, we’ve formed a small community to explore how data is racialized and how we can ask better questions and enforce better practices. I also believe that as a community, focusing on how data has been and will be used to oppress Black people is an important organizing call for action.

T. Lovace

Our organization is committed to the St. Louis region’s ongoing and important efforts toward race equity. I am a program evaluator trained in Critical Race Theory and Culturally Responsive Evaluation. I provided research report for the Ferguson Commission on race and economic mobility. I manage a significant amount of data that I dis-aggregate by race/ethnicity and use to illuminate disparity perpetuated by policy and programs. I teach a masters level social work course that explores race equity and data, and I assign videos from your annual conference as mandatory viewing. I am in love with your efforts.

E. Stuart

Conferences

D4BL III

D4BL III

D4BL I

D4BL I

D4BL II

D4BL II