Introducing OCF: our partner for RightsCon 2025
September 2, 2024 • Event Info • 4 min read
Open Culture Foundation is RightsCon 2025 partner in Taiwan
→ What is the Open Culture Foundation (OCF)?
→ Our partnership with OCF for RightsCon 2025
→ Join us in celebrating a decade of OCF
→ Plan your travel
We are pleased to announce our partnership with the Open Culture Foundation (OCF), a trusted non-profit in Taiwan and longtime RightsCon community member, for RightsCon 2025 (February 24-27)!
As RightsCon rotates to a different region each year, partnering with a local organization is crucial to ensure the Summit remains open, accessible, and rich in programmatic diversity. We are thrilled to collaborate with Open Culture Foundation (OCF) as our local partner for RightsCon 2025 due to their alignment in values, extensive experience supporting international convenings in Taiwan, as well as their broad network of tech and civil society groups in the region. We believe OCF is the ideal partner to support our mission to not only bring RightsCon to East Asia, but to bring East Asia to RightsCon!
What is the Open Culture Foundation (OCF)?
Founded in 2014 by several members of Taiwan’s open source community, Open Culture Foundation (OCF) is a nonprofit organization that works to advocate for open technology as a means to secure digital rights and internet freedoms. OCF helps governments, private sector, and NGOs better understand the benefits of adopting open source technologies, and promotes the importance of open data to the public sphere.
Through its successful efforts in organizing large-scale international conferences, seminars, and hackathons, and forming and funding collaborations across local and global open tech communities, it is clear that strengthening multi-stakeholder alliances and networks for the promotion of digital rights is a key function of the organization. This mandate directly aligns OCF with the core priorities of RightsCon, a trusted space for participants from different sectors to advance shared priorities and shape the agenda for the digital future.
Our partnership with OCF for RightsCon 2025
OCF has been a key local partner for international summits and convenings similar to RightsCon, and has extensive experience collaborating with international offices and multilateral institutions to deepen Taiwan’s connection to the global open culture community.
OCF’s support will help make it possible for RightsCon to organize a successful multi-stakeholder space for global leaders across sectors to convene. Specifically, OCF will support in issue visa invitation letters for trusted partners from visa-required countries, as well as partner with Access Now to facilitate the eCode eVisa process, an important pathway to ensure RightsCon participants’ access to the summit, especially for those in the Global Majority that do not have a Taiwanese diplomatic mission in their country of residence, and face additional barriers to international travel. OCF will play a pivotal role in helping make RightsCon the dynamic and vibrant summit it aims to be, and ensure diverse voices are included in the dialogue.
As a local ambassador for the open tech community, OCF’s leadership will be influential in defining our network-building strategy and expanding and deepening the participation of key partners in Taiwan and East Asia more broadly. OCF will also be an invaluable resource to help our team understand the local context, including civil society interests, challenges, and considerations so that we are able to take the necessary steps to ensure that everyone, especially marginalized and high-risk groups, are able to access and participate in our summit safely.
Join us in celebrating a decade of OCF
To celebrate their tenth anniversary, OCF will be hosting an Open Culture Festival on September 14, 2024. OCF invites all supporters and community partners to join them in celebration of the open-source community in Taiwan. You can learn more about this anniversary event on their website.
Plan your travel
Visit our website for helpful visa and travel information for Taiwan. And stay tuned as we launch the eVisa through eCode process and invitation letter request form in the coming weeks!
If you have any questions about visas to Taiwan, reach out to us at [email protected]. If you have general questions about your participation, reach out to us at [email protected].
