Reporting meaningfully

The Shuttleworth Foundation’s mission is to drive innovation in education and technology. Philosophically, we do that by: accelerating great ideas and removing barriers. Practically that means we pilot projects and pedagogies, and back excellent people to drive help drive our agenda.

The way we do business, entertain and educate has changed due to the communication afforded through technology. Shouldn’t everyone, including those that have the least (and hence the most to gain) be able to benefit?

Open is a very important word to us at the Foundation. Open source, open standards, open licenses, open access. Ultimately all of these things allow the developing world to participate in the wonderful knowledge economy that has transformed the worlds of those with access.

Currently we are focused on: telecommunications (everyone must have access to be able to participate), intellectual property (everyone must be able to participate legally and freely), open and collaborative educational resources (learners need to have access on their terms, and in their context) and communication and analytical skills (new skills that are needed to be able to participate meaningfully).

We believe that innovation happens within these areas quicker and more efficiently if we share. Regularly, those that are at our offices in Cape Town have lunch together to discuss an article, watch a TED talk (a recent and welcome addition), review books and ideas in these areas. We also use this time to debrief and solicit ideas from the team about particular issues. One such lunchtime concentrated on the first in a series of papers we are going to release about how we work. We will be highlighting our successful (and not so successful) processes and practises and inviting you to learn and help us learn in the process.

Out of that meeting, we began to focus on how we report on the activities within the Foundation. We report on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis (to internal stakeholders, trustees, and publicly, respectively). This involves a lot of thought about what has happened and some thought on what we have learnt from it – but not enough and not shared widely enough for anyone else to benefit.

With this in mind, I am going to start blogging the monthly reports. These reports are made up from all within the Foundation and is simply re-purposed to ensure they are readable. We hope you enjoy!