Posts from 2018
Johnny West & OpenOil: Refining the Extractive Industry
by Chris McGivern & SF Team, 28 December 2018
His success is not just good news for oil-producing developing nations and their citizens, but also for openness, transparency and the balance of power. In an industry hidden behind a veil of secrecy, smoke and mirrors, Johnny and the OpenOil team use and translate existing information to increase awareness of the real value of natural resources. Johnny joined the Shuttleworth Foundation community in March, 2014 to work on OpenOil. We caught up with him to...
Esra'a Al Shafei & CrowdVoice: Amplifying the Unheard
by Chris McGivern & SF Team, 27 December 2018
As a Bahraini civil rights activist, she was our first Fellow from the Middle East, giving the Foundation an opportunity to explore the potential of open through a different lens. And the overall theme of her Fellowship - giving prominence to the important voices of dissent in regions where human rights violations are a common occurrence - gave us a new perspective on the realities of life for many people living in conflict zones or...
Daniel Lombraña González: Human Stories in Citizen Science
by Chris McGivern & SF Team, 27 December 2018
But most importantly, he has broken citizen science free from its box. Once the preserve of hard research, Daniel has taken a crowbar to open up crowdsourcing and made it accessible for a range of diverse people and fields, from researchers through to volunteer citizen scientists. The story of PYBOSSA, Crowdcrafting and, eventually, Scifabric have been told before. This time, we spoke to Daniel to hear in his own words about his inspiration, journey as...
Steve Song & Village Telco: A Foundation in Telecoms
by Chris McGivern & SF Team, 26 December 2018
Steve’s project developed into the Village Telco initiative, using open source software and low cost wireless mesh technology to build affordable community telephone networks, without the need for mobile phone towers or landlines. Village Telco remained an ongoing commercial concern until 2017, but our investment in Steve continues to provide a social return to this day. He is a Fellow at Mozilla, a research associate with the Network Startup Resource Center, and a hugely influential...
Sean Bonner: The Seismic Necessity of Safecast
by Chris McGivern & SF Team, 26 December 2018
Born 18 months earlier as a reaction to the multiple meltdowns of a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Safecast has made significant progress in enabling people to gather and view reliable, verified environmental information on a highly localised level. Over the last few years, Safecast has collected the largest ever dataset of background radiation measurements, changed thinking in the field, and empowered communities to better understand the environments they live in. Sean’s story is an...
Rory Aronson: Cultivating FarmBot
by Chris McGivern & SF Team, 24 December 2018
This was an idea that promised to be part of the solution to the problems of quality, scarcity and security of food. With corporations enjoying increasing control over our food supplies and the potential damage from climate change on crops of the future, society needs solutions. FarmBot has the potential to enable and free people to grow their own food at a local level and offer them more control over their diets. While Rory’s Fellowship...
Kathi Fletcher & OERPUB: Connecting OER
by Chris McGivern & SF Team, 24 December 2018
How can real human beings - teachers, for example - author, remix and share material with others when the OER toolset was almost impenetrable for non-technical people? In the early days of OER, anyone wanting to create and remix open textbooks needed reasonable knowledge of markup language, complicated models and coding. By making the process simple and natural to teachers and educators, OER could come closer to realising the wider benefits of open beyond sharing...
by SF Team, 26 October 2018
We are pausing applications until then to fully capture the outputs and outcomes of the fellowship programme to date and to explore potential new themes we want to support, as reflected in Fellowship forward. We will also seek out communities we have not yet reached. We invite potential applicants to take the time to reflect on the future you would like to see, and then focus your idea on the contribution you think you can...
by SF Team, 26 October 2018
Over the past 6 months we have dissected every aspect of this model, from recruitment to alumni, from Fellowship highs to Fellowship lows, to really understand the value and effect of every component. We have examined the arc of the programme over the past 10 years, Fellow by Fellow as well as cumulatively. What we learned has helped us determine how we might continue our Open Philanthropy experiment. What have we learned? The fellowship programme...
by SF Team, 12 September 2018
Shari Steele, the Honorary Steward for this round, has selected Andrew as an exceptional candidate with tremendous potential to improve people’s lives - particularly those suffering greatly in disaster relief areas. The Foundation team are delighted to offer Andrew a warm welcome to the Fellowship Programme. We look forward to learning from his contributions and experiences and supporting his journey as a Shuttleworth Fellow. Introducing: Andrew Lamb Background: A systems engineer focussed on improving the...
by Chris McGivern & SF Team, 26 August 2018
Adam Hyde began his Fellowship with a keen understanding of the problems lying at the heart of the scholarly publishing process and an idea that promised to solve them. Science and research are key to the advancement of human knowledge. But it can take months - or even years - for important studies to flow from conclusion to manuscript, and no one can benefit from research results while they languish in a production pipeline. Under...
Shari Steele: Honorary steward September 2018
by SF Team, 26 June 2018
Shari is a respected advocate for the Internet freedom movement and served as executive director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and The Tor Project. She brings decades of experience in a breadth of fields including law, education and business, and has a keen understanding of nonprofit operations and foundation-level funding. Openness is central to the Foundation’s philosophy and integral to our funding policy. But without Internet freedom, security and privacy, much of the work we...
by SF Team, 3 March 2018
We’re delighted and excited to award Jenny Molloy and Karla Córdoba-Brenes places on the Shuttleworth Foundation Fellowship Programme. Our Honorary Steward, Sunil Abraham, has chosen two exceptional candidates who offer a creative, innovative and open vision for a better world in two distinct areas: the future of the global bioeconomy, and alternative, community-driven currencies. Sunil is a social entrepreneur and policy expert, who combines a wealth of experience on funding selection panels with a keen...
by Chris McGivern & SF Team, 26 February 2018
Luka’s idea was Koruza, a 3D-printed, low-cost wireless optical network built to provide last-100m Internet connectivity to individuals and communities in high-density urban areas. As he takes the next steps in his professional career, he can look back on an extraordinary fellowship and a range of exceptional achievements. His work on Koruza has produced a viable, fast and low-cost alternative to fibre, helping people, businesses and communities get around local network bottlenecks. It is also...
by SF Team, 12 January 2018
We had such a strong intake of Fellows in March 2017 - 4 Fellows from fields new to us, doing challenging work, driven by visions much larger than their projects. The September 2017 round brought applications from individuals doing important, valuable, even groundbreaking work. We had the privilege of interviewing dozens of them, getting some insight into their thoughtful and passionate ideas for solving real problems. In the end, however, the applications fell short of...
