The Maybe-ist

Alix Dunn, like most of us, started her career excited for the potential of tech to change lives, reconfigure broken systems, and create a more level playing field.

Today, she’s not a pessimist, nor an optimist, but a Maybe-ist. The name of her firm, The Maybe, sums up the philosophy that tech is a gateway to transformational change. How it plays out is an open question. If we challenge structural power and focus on outcomes - rather than the seductive distraction of meaningless motion that keeps us stuck in a status quo - we might be able to use the openings tech offers to transform the world for the better.

Biography

Alix spends most of her time as the founder and director of The Maybe: a consultancy, collective, and media agency. She is a world-renowned convener, supporting cutting edge, multi-disciplinary collaborations on 6 continents.

Before The Maybe, Alix co-founded The Engine Room, a pioneering organisation that helped activist groups around the world use technology strategically. That work led to long-standing relationships with institutions including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Situ Research.

Over the past decade, she has helped shape the field of public-interest technology from multiple angles — advising organisations like AI Now Institute, Ada Lovelace Institute for AI & Society, OpenMined, Data & Society, Foxglove, RealML, Current AI, System, Mozilla Foundation, Luminate, Open Society Foundations, and the AI Collaborative.

Her work sits between the worlds of technology and politics, institutions and movements, ideas and action, and is focused on one recurring question:

‍What would the world look like if we focussed on structural problems and emerging opportunities at the same time?