An inspirational weekend – and a nice application of AI
We attended the Animal Rights Forum 2024 at Melbourne Town Hall over the weekend of 24th and 25th February. This was the first in-person forum since the 2019 event that we also attended in Melbourne and it was great to see the event sold out on its return with over 300 attendees!
TL;DR
I appreciate that most of my readers are looking to me to provide testing/IT content (rather than veganism or animal rights material), so the only tech-related talk at this Forum was around AI, surprise surprise! Thankfully, it was a great session and a neat application of AI and automation in the not-for-profit sector by Kyle Behrend of NFPS.AI. I immediately saw how this niche use of these technologies can be of huge benefit to not-for-profits to free up their valuable and limited resources. More details of Kyle’s talk can be found under the Sunday section of this blog post.
Read on if you have any interest in the event in more detail.
There were many awesome organizations in the animal rights space represented at the Forum and the two days were packed with track sessions, representing incredible value for around $100 (a far cry from the cost of many tech conferences!).
Saturday
We missed the opening sessions on Saturday while travelling up to Melbourne and I kicked off the day by attending author MC Ronen‘s talk, “How I use my passion for writing to create a better future for animals (and humans!) And what you can learn from it” MC’s talk was interesting and her use of fiction to spread an animal rights message is novel (no pun intended!). It made me think about my own passion for writing (both in this blog and elsewhere) and how I can put it to use in this area. Not long into MC’s talk, the Forum was sadly interrupted by pro-Palestine protesters who had issue with some of MC’s public commentary on this subject. The protesters were very vocal and physically abusive to volunteers and venue security, making for a very uncomfortable ten minutes or so before the police arrived. The volunteers need to be more prepared for disruptions – especially as the event is likely to be the target of animal agriculture interests one day – so hopefully the training they need is offered before the next forum. (The minimal Town Hall security staff also seemed very unprepared, which was more surprising.)
In the same timeslot, my wife enjoyed a remote presentation by well-known US lawyer/activist Wayne Hsiung (from The Simple Heart) talking on “Making repression backfire”. Well-known from his work with Direct Action Everywhere and the open rescue movement, it was good to hear about his latest developments and his stints in prison don’t seem to have weakened his resolve to fight for the animals!
The brief lunch break (just 45 minutes) didn’t give us much time but trusty Gopals was just across the road and fed us well as always, before we quickly made our way back to the Town Hall to commence the afternoon sessions at 1pm. The protesters had gathered en masse outside the Town Hall so we had to be escorted in and out of the building by police – a bizarre turn of events for a gathering with such peaceful motivations!
We both opted for the same session to open the afternoon, with Dean Rees-Evans (from Three Principles Training and Consultancy) on “Accessing a peaceful mind in the face of animal suffering” Dean is a psychological wellbeing practitioner and his messaging around mindfulness and its benefits in dealing with the realities of animal suffering we witness within the animal rights movement (and, of course, in all aspects of daily life where animals are exploited all around us) was OK, if a little incoherent. Many in the audience seemed to find his talk more confusing than helpful and their basic questions tended not to receive actionable answers. Dean generally offers longer workshops and it felt like he struggled to distill his message with useful takeaways into such a short talk.
We went our separate ways for the next session. My wife opted for Alex Vince (from Animal Liberation NSW) talking about “Poisons and Pesticides: An Animal Welfare Crisis”, while I attended a remote presentation by Jenna Riedi (from Faunalytics, US) on “Using research and data in animal advocacy”. Alex is very vocal in the movement to ban the awful 1080 poison in Australia (noting it’s been banned in many countries for many years) and his talk resonated well with his audience. I’d hoped to learn more about the detail of some of Faunalytics’ work as I was already familiar with the organisation and its approach. The talk was more of an introduction to the organisation, though, so I didn’t get too much out of it (but I still recommend their site as a great resource for data around so many different aspects of the movement).
We both then enjoyed Sandra Kyle talking on “An Extraordinary Time To Be Living Through – My Story Arc”. An older activist, Sandra told her story beautifully, reading eloquently and gently from a script (no slide deck here!) while also showing her obvious passion and continuing desire to grow old disgracefully! This simple talk was a highlight of the Forum for us.
A short afternoon tea break preceded the final talks of the day and we both went to the same set of group reviews, featuring Vegan Australia (represented by their CEO, Dr Heidi Nicholl), The Captain Paul Watson Foundation (represented by Haans Siver) and the Coalition for the Protection of Greyhounds. It was good to hear the new Vegan Australia CEO talking about their current initiatives and Haans did a great job of introducing the Paul Watson Foundation (founded as a result of Paul Watson’s departure from Sea Shepherd, an organisation we continue to strongly support). It was sad to hear about the continuing plight of greyhounds in the Australian racing industry but also inspiring to know that there are so many passionate activists helping to hold the evil protagonists to account (given that the government and regulators seem to be unable or unwilling to do so).
We caught the introduction to the Animal Justice Awards but unfortunately couldn’t stay for the award announcements as we needed to cross town to make our ferry back home.
Sunday
We again couldn’t make it to the Town Hall for the first sessions on Sunday, so we decided to aim for the first session after morning tea, giving us enough time to pop into our old favourite, Union Kiosk, for a morning coffee and cake. The little café was very busy with many others from the Forum there too.
We opted for different sessions to kick off the day, with my wife attending Matthew Lynch‘s talk on “Cancel Culture – An Open Forum”, while I headed to see Kyle Behrend (from NFPS.AI) and his talk on “The Power of AI & Automations”. Matthew’s talk was timely given the narrative around so many topics in Australia currently and his experience working with initiatives such as Dominion and the Farm Transparency Project made his insights very powerful.
I didn’t expect to see an AI-related talk on the programme for this Forum, despite AI chatter infiltrating everywhere I look at the moment. We’ve known Kyle for a long time through his work with Edgar’s Mission, a farm animal sanctuary we’ve visited and financially support on an ongoing basis. After leaving the mission, Kyle set up NFPS.AI and works with not-for-profit organisations to help them leverage AI and automation technologies. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this talk, given so much of the hype and nonsense spouted by so-called AI experts. Thankfully Kyle presented a very pragmatic approach to leveraging AI to help often time- and resource-poor not-for-profit organisations. He presented some interesting case studies, including one around emails where automation was used to categorise incoming emails based on their content, stashing them in different folders and then generating draft replies using AI ready for review. This process was helping to save the NFP many hours of basic email processing, freeing up valuable time for their resources to focus on more value-adding activities for their organisation. This is a very niche use of AI and Kyle is passionate about the sector and technology, so I wish him well (and have offered to help).
In the brief lunch break, we quickly headed back to Union Kiosk and managed to order and get a table before the masses arrived from the Forum. A tasty jaffle and another nice coffee with the good vibes of the friendly crowd made for an enjoyable break.
For the first session of the afternoon, we again split up, with my wife opting for Abigail Boyd MP (from The Australian Greens) with “Animal Cruelty Under Capitalism” while I went to Paul Bevan‘s (from Magic Valley) talk on “Cultivated Meat – The Future of Food”. Abigail was impressive & passionate, especially for a politician, and illustrated by example just how much of our current economic system sadly has animal exploitation as its foundation. Meanwhile, Paul Bevan did an excellent job of explaining how his company, Magic Valley, is proceeding towards production with its first range of cultivated meats (including the world’s first cultivated lamb, very Aussie!). This is an interesting space and controversial with vegans due to its use of animal cells but Paul did a good job of explaining how his (patent-pending) process works and fielded a very broad range of questions very well. Paul is certainly an impressive CEO with a passion for removing the need to kill animals for those who still want to eat “meat”.
The next session saw us both with Athena (from Animal-Free Science Advocacy) on “The Power of Story: Reframing False Narratives in Animal Exploitation Industries” (my wife was meant to attend a talk from a vegan interior designer in this timeslot, but it was cancelled). The message of this talk was excellent in explaining how to turn the narrative around from the way the animal exploitation industries would like to talk about things to a more accurate story from which to expose their obvious cruelty. Given Athena’s role in marketing, the delivery of the presentation surprisingly let down the message a little, but the content was still excellent.
Next up, my wife headed to Gary Hall (from Sheep Advocate Australia) and his talk “Sheep Crisis”, while I went to Kimberley Oxley (from Animals Australia) with “The C Words: Using Social Media to drive change for animals through compassion, connection and content”. Gary operates a sheep rescue close to where we live and his passion in advocating for sheep was palpable (as was his frustration with the slow progress to achieve even small improvements in their lives in the industry). As supporters of Animals Australia for many years, it was great to hear such an excellent presentation from Kimberley Oxley. The material was targeted perfectly for this audience and delivered very well, a highly impactful talk from one of the most professional animal rights organisations in the world (I’d encourage you to check out the quality of their content if you’re unfamiliar with their work).
Afternoon tea was a catered affair with two nice choices of vegan cakes as well as vegan samosas, before the final session kicked off. These final sessions were all group reviews and we split up for coverage, so my wife saw presentations by World Animal Protection, GREY2K USA Worldwide (represented by Carey M. Theil) and Action for Dolphins (represented by Hannah Tait), while I got Animals Australia (Kim Oxley again) and the Animal Justice Party (the Australian Alliance for Animals was also meant to present but didn’t). Hannah was particularly impressive, a young activist leading an organisation doing great work for dolphins. Kim Oxley did a good job again outlining the current priorities for Animals Australia and the Animal Justice Party (AJP) representatives did a decent job of introducing the party and its values. (Disclosure: we were both paid up members of the AJP until they sided with the Labor government in Victoria during the pandemic, unbelievably supporting policies that infringed on the most basic human rights and certainly not in alignment with the claimed values of the party.)
All too soon, it was time for everyone to come back together for a short wrap-up, thanking the volunteers and so on.
It was a great event and kudos to the volunteers for getting it up and running again in difficult circumstances. There was a broad range of organisations and diversity in the speaker line-up (again in contrast to many tech conferences).
We both came away from the Forum feeling inspired and keen to help out some of the organisations (as well as continuing our financial support for some of them).
(Featured image for this post by Adam Nemeroff on Unsplash)
