Net2Akl held their most recent meet-up on Tuesday 30 October at the Amnesty NZ offices. The group of 15 or so people who gathered were treated to an inside look at how Amnesty International worked with advertising agency Colenso, to dream up and create a clever, engaging, and technology centric idea to bring awareness to human rights and teach New Zealanders the realities of their actions.

The campaign titled ‘Trial by Timeline' analyses the users facebook timeline, showing their crimes and punishments if they were to live in other, less tolerable countries.

Simple things that we take for granted such as being female, having freedom of speech, being in a relationship, taking part in protests, having an affiliation with a media organisation or even an alcohol company, all show up as serious crimes. These are all chargeable offences across the world. And yet in New Zealand we are free to do all of these things without punishment.

The campaign sees everyday people putting their own timelines on trial, to find that they could have been convicted hundreds of times for dozens of crimes in a number of countries around the world. Their crimes would have resulted in multiple tortures, imprisonment, and death by stoning, hanging and shooting.

The campaign aims to bring the realities of other countries into a relatable context for people in New Zealand, by incorporating social media.

Attendees at the Net2Akl meet-up were lucky enough to hear from Amnesty International about their campaign process, covering how they came up with the campaign, building the campaign concept and all the necessary nuts and bolts of making a large campaign happen.

Lindsey Talerico, of Net2Akl, said the meet-up was a success and a great learning experience.

"I'm really appreciative to Amnesty and think they've got heaps to show us in the charity business what it means to go out with a campaign that utilises social media. I'd encourage anyone to give the campaign a go and catch learnings of their own."

Give it a go yourself, on www.trialbytimeline.org.nz, and see how your timeline does in trial. 

The next Net2Akl event will be held on 29 November at World Vision's NZ Office in Penrose. The event will be part of an internationally streamed meet-up; in which Will Watterson from Global Poverty Project will share a new application that the team are working on.

If you'd like to find out more, contribute to the conversation or be part of future events simply sign up via Meetup or follow Lindsey on Twitter and look out for the hashtag #Net2Akl.