Warm greetings to our global community of friends and colleagues, 

This year marks a major milestone: our 10th anniversary! 

In these challenging times, we find strength in the incredible strides our global community is making to combat injustice and build a more equitable world. As we celebrate OpenArchive’s 10th anniversary, we reflect on a decade of our evolution and impact - made possible by you, our inspiring and resilient community. 

This milestone, however, comes at a time of great uncertainty. We’ve seldom asked for help to support OpenArchive and our flagship tool - Save (Secure, Archive, Verify, Encrypt) - the first (and only!) mobile app enabling people to securely preserve their historical records on decentralized storage. Save is free and open source because we are committed to accessibility, usability, and accountability. However, this means that our work cannot exist without your support.

We are now seeking to raise at least $40,000 for 2025 to cover operating costs, publish timely guides and articles, and keep our community training workshops free and accessible. Can you help us continue to do this critical memory work? Support us by making a tax-deductible donation to us via our fiscal sponsor Media Alliance - every bit helps

We are truly grateful, the stakes have never been higher.

2024 In Review

New, Decentralized Ways to Securely
Archive, Verify, and Encrypt Your Media

Unlike most platforms that are the single points of failure, decentralized technologies can better safeguard our media for the long-term and are more aligned with our human rights-centered design approach. This is why we have collaborated with Hypha Cooperative to create the first ever mobile decentralized web (DWeb) storage backend for Save with the support of the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web (FFDW). This groundbreaking development will allow users to store media securely and resiliently on decentralized networks, ensuring accessibility and protection from tampering or erasure.

Learn about how we did it. Once released, this will be the first-ever mobile DWeb storage backend ever created! 

We also refreshed the Save app through a deep collaboration with our global partner communities to improve its usability and stability. Over the next year, we will be making the app even more secure through our co-research and co-design work with our partners.

We’ve Updated Our Guides

MOBILE MEDIA PRESERVATION GUIDE 

Learn how to safely archive and manage media while minimizing risks.

CITIZEN JOURNALIST SURVIVAL GUIDE

Essential tips for frontline reporters to document events securely and effectively.

Stay tuned for more updates in the new year! In the meantime, subscribe to get Save updates and check out our recent research mapping risks and mitigation tactics for frontline archivists. 

OpenArchive in the Wild

Where We’re Going:

We want to connect with you! Here’s where you can find us:
December 4 - 6, 2024 at Association of Moving Image Archivists, Milwaukee, WI
December 9 - 11, 2024 at Splintercon, Berlin, Germany
February 24 - 27, 2025 at RightsCon, Taipei, Taiwan 

Where We’ve Been in 2024:

Social Impact Summit at the Center for Law, Tech, and Social Good (watch the full discussion here) in San Francisco, CA - February 2024
Funding the Commons in Berkeley, CA - April 2024
WITNESS live huddle, Video Archiving: Sharing Community-Based Approaches - A Learning & Sharing Huddle remote - June 2024
DWeb Camp hosting Harm Reduction for History’s First Responders in August 2024 - Camp Navarro, CA
Global Gathering in Estoril, Portugal - September 2024

Get Involved

1. Download Save: Be ready to securely archive important media the moment you most need to. Download it for iOS or Android and learn more.

2. Partner with us: Collaborate on creating robust evidentiary archives with communities worldwide. Contact us to learn more.

3. Work with us: We're seeking to fill a few technical positions in the new year —  stay tuned!

4. Find us at conferences: Connect with us at: RightsCon, DWeb Camp, Global Gathering Feira, AMIA, and more in 2025. Email us at [email protected] to connect virtually or in person.

5. Follow us Join the conversation on Bluesky, Mastodon, Instagram, LinkedIn or Github. 

   Most importantly, we need your help to sustain our work. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation today.

   Support OpenArchive

   If you can’t donate, you can still make a difference—forward this email to others or advocate for us on on social media by tagging us and re-sharing Save and our guides. Every bit of support helps!