The Applied Social Media Lab (ASML) is excited to open its doors for the 2025 Synthesizer & Open Showcase, bringing together people and projects that reimagine how social and civic technology can serve the public good.
Reception (In-Person Only):
Networking with the ASML & BKC Community, 2:00-2:30pm
Join us in person for a networking reception with members of the ASML & BKC community. Appetizers and refreshments will be served.
Session 1 (Hybrid):
Rethinking Engagement in the Platform Era, 2:30-4:00 pm
Hear from speakers shaping human-centered public interest technology and social media. Journalist Emily Baker-White will share insights from her investigative reporting and her new book, Every Screen on the Planet: The Secret Story of TikTok, followed by a conversation with ASML Senior Director Meg Marco.
We will also celebrate the launch of ASML’s newest open-source project, NextSpace, with a demonstration and spotlight from ASML Senior Software Engineers Jennifer Hickey and Johnny Richardson.
Session 2 (In-Person Only):
ASML Open Showcase, 4:00-5:00 pm
Explore an interactive showcase of work from ASML and initiatives advancing digital trust, safety, and connection—featuring live demos, creative experiments, posters, and prototypes. Connect with staff, students, faculty, and members of the BKC network in an engaging and collaborative atmosphere. This will be an open house session, so feel free to join us at any time, and come and go as you please! Appetizers and refreshments will continue to be served.
Speakers (in alphabetical order)
Emily Baker-White is a technology reporter at Forbes, where her TikTok coverage has won awards. A Harvard Law School graduate and former criminal defender, she previously led the Plain View Project, an investigation into police misconduct on Facebook, and covered TikTok for BuzzFeed News. She lives in Philadelphia.
Jennifer Hickey comes to ASML with a passion for public interest technology and years of experience as a software engineer, civil rights attorney, legal scholar, and nonprofit founder and leader. Jennifer has architected and coded open-source software tools used by millions of developers (Spring Framework and related projects), including simplified datastore access, cloud deployment platforms, application runtimes, and application monitoring.
Prior to joining ASML, she completed a four-year postdoctoral fellowship at The Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative at Emory Law, where she taught and published on the application of Vulnerability Theory in a number of substantive areas, including tech, and on the legal regulation of intimacy.
Meg Marco is the Senior Director of the Applied Social Media Lab, focusing on building public interest technology that helps make information available and understandable to researchers, journalists, civil society organizations and the general public. She has held senior editorial positions at WIRED, ProPublica and The Wall Street Journal.
At ProPublica, her team’s work was honored with the 2021 National Magazine Award for Social Media, and she co-edited the coverage of the coronavirus pandemic that was a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. She is also formerly the editor and head of product of Consumerist, a Gawker Media publication that was acquired by Consumer Reports.
Johnny Richardson is a Senior Software Engineer at the Applied Social Media Lab working on making social media discourse safer and more democratic. Over the past 15 years, he has developed numerous web and mobile applications and games across a wide array of tech stacks, either at a variety of startups, independently, or in academia.
These ranged from a social game based on Game of Thrones, experimental virtual reality experiences, a mobile game targeted at improving child hygiene in Tamil Nadu, to countless responsive web apps. Prior to joining the ASML, his work was dedicated to advancing civic technology and building solutions that addressed complex social issues at the Engagement Lab @ Emerson College for nearly a decade.