Posts in 'ANNOUNCEMENTS'
Reclaiming Our Digital Sovereignty: The Ins & Outs
by Chris McGivern & Jason Hudson, 10 August 2021
As a small and independent organisation, we have a lot of flexibility regarding the digital architecture we use for our day-to-day operations. But over the years, our choices have been based increasingly around convenience, while accepting the privacy trade-off in the process. On reflection, this has taken us away from our open source roots and our unshakeable belief in safeguarding the human right of privacy. We are philosophically adamant about the importance of a free...
(Re)Opening For Business: Reclaiming Digital Sovereignty
by Chris McGivern & Jason Hudson, 1 June 2021
The Shuttleworth Foundation subscribes to the spirit of open source software and supports individuals who apply it to new and exciting spheres. We believe open creates the optimal conditions for community, innovation, and sustainable social change. Open is our default, and we require the same from our fellows. As a community, we work openly, think openly and share openly where ethically and feasibly possible. But how open are we in practical terms? Prompted by Shuttleworth...
IP Is Killing People, Your Government Can Stop It
by Helen Turvey, Chris McGivern & Karien Bezuidenhout, 11 May 2021
“These extraordinary times and circumstances call for extraordinary measures. The US supports the waiver of IP protections on COVID-19 vaccines to help end the pandemic… ” – US Trade Representative Katherine Tai Joe Biden’s decision to support India and South Africa’s patent waiver proposal is a monumental moment in more ways than one. These are extraordinary times and this is an extraordinary message from a nation that built its constitution, economy and way of life...
New Alumni - Nelson, Karla and Jenny
by Chris McGivern, 2 March 2021
It is difficult to reflect on the past without acknowledging the impacts of the pandemic. It has had a profound impact on everyone; for some, it has caused tragedy. Uncertainty and disruption have affected everyone in the fellowship community. However, chaos and catastrophe often bring about significant change. Our fellows focus on issues the world may not yet see and the pandemic brings many of their challenges to the fore. It has been hugely encouraging...
Welcome Cecília, Delphine and Zo!
by Chris McGivern & SF Team, 1 March 2021
Anil Dash, our Honorary Steward for this round, selected a trio of outstanding individuals from a shortlist full of compelling candidates and ideas. Anil is CEO of Glitch and an entrepreneur and writer who works to ensure technology transforms society for the better and serves those who are most vulnerable. His selections are very much in spirit with these aims. Cecília, Delphine and Uzoma are illuminating defective, self-defeating characteristics in the world’s justice systems and...
by Chris McGivern & SF Team, 28 February 2021
Introducing: Uzoma Orchingwa Background: Social entrepreneur and law student using technology to solve society’s most challenging problems. Idea: Building free-to-use communications technology to disrupt the prison telecommunications duopoly and create a more humane and rehabilitative corrections system. The Problem The U.S. criminal justice system is broken. In the “land of the free”, more people are incarcerated than anywhere else on the planet, and for most, it is not a one-time visit: 76.6% return within five...
Introducing: Delphine Halgand-Mishra
by Chris McGivern & SF Team, 28 February 2021
Introducing: Delphine Halgand-Mishra Background: An expert on press freedom and advocate for journalists and media rights. Idea: Support whistleblowers, hold power to account, and increase public knowledge of tech industry wrongdoing. The Problem We rely on journalists to break stories and expose issues that influential people and organisations would rather keep under wraps. Yet without whistleblowers - ordinary people who risk their reputation, career and freedom to expose injustices - journalism loses much of its...
Introducing: Cecília Olliveira
by Chris McGivern & SF Team, 28 February 2021
Introducing: Cecília Oliveira Background: A Brazilian investigative journalist, researcher and activist. Idea: Solve the persistent problem of armed violence with Fogo Cruzado, a community-driven open data platform that saves lives and creates accountability. The Problem Gun crime plagues Brazilian society. At least 40,000 people lose their lives from gun violence each year. Much of this brutality clusters around specific areas, where drug trafficking rivals, hawkish police, and masked militias wage war and trap innocent citizens...
Shuttleworth Foundation Application FAQs
by Chris McGivern & SF Team, 23 October 2020
Thank you to everyone who joined us for our first ever application information webinars. We found it a very useful process and hope you got as much out of it as we did. Recordings of each session are here if you need to recap or missed out entirely. Session 1: 23 September 2020 Session 2: 14 October 2020 Below, we have created an FAQ to refine and explain more about the application process and include...
Anil Dash: Honorary Steward, March 2021
by Chris McGivern & SF Team, 15 October 2020
Anil Dash is an American entrepreneur, activist and blogging pioneer. He is currently engaged as CEO of Glitch and serves on the board of a diverse range of ethics-oriented organisations. This work includes defending our digital rights with Electronic Frontier Foundation, measuring technology’s societal impact with the Data & Society Research Institute, and protecting vulnerable girls and families from New York with the Lower East Side Girls Club. He is also a board member at...
Fellowship Application Info Session
by Chris McGivern & SF Team, 9 September 2020
This is your opportunity to meet the team, learn about our criteria, and alleviate any of your fears, concerns or confusions you have around the application process. It is not a chance to pitch your idea – please save that for your application! – but a session where we will explain our procedures, give you examples of successful applications, and answer as many of your questions as we possibly can. Find out who and what...
The Shuttleworth Foundation: An Open Book
by Chris McGivern & SF Team, 9 June 2020
As a small organisation operating at a fraction of the budget enjoyed by many other funders, we must continuously and closely scrutinise our work. Our philosophy remains the same, but new fellows, ideas and experiences contribute to our knowledge pool and influence where we go next - and how. We adapt our methods accordingly, weaving in best practices and weeding out roadblocks to our fellows’ mission progress. Just as our views on systemic shifts are...
Next Fellowship Intake: March 2021
by SF Team, 8 June 2020
Our application rhythm is changing. As a small foundation with a single source of capped funding, we continuously strive to protect the integrity and value of our fellowship programme. Occasionally, we make adjustments to keep costs in check. We must also adapt our model in response to the global challenges of our times. A mixture of both these elements means we are moving to one application round per year, with the first new cohort starting...
Welcome Julia, Shannon and Nelson
by Chris McGivern & SF Team, 27 February 2020
Our Honorary Steward, Beth Simone Noveck, has selected three exceptional fellows from a highly compelling shortlist. We thank Beth for her work and input to our process and are delighted with the choices she has made. Each new fellow holds openness at the heart of their ideas and is breaking new ground in their respective fields: Julia is working to make European copyright laws better-suited to the modern, open Internet; Shannon is improving interoperability of...
Ronaldo Lemos: Honorary steward September 2019
by SF Team, 4 October 2019
The Shuttleworth Foundation would like to express our sincerest thanks and gratitude to the Brazilian academic Ronaldo Lemos, our Honorary Steward for this September’s fellowship round. Ronaldo is a Professor at the Rio de Janeiro State University, a lawyer and commentator in several fields we know well: intellectual property, technology and culture. He is renowned for being a co-creator of the Marco Civil da Internet: the 2014 Brazilian law establishing comprehensive Internet rights defending freedom...
by SF Team, 2 October 2019
The Shuttleworth Foundation is delighted to welcome Chris Hartgerink and Sean Jacobs to the fellowship community. Many thanks to our Honorary Steward Ronaldo Lemos, a Brazilian academic and lawyer with expertise in intellectual property, open culture and technology. He has chosen two outstanding individuals for our September 2019 intake. Both come with important ideas with the potential to improve the world, and that push the boundaries of how open can be applied. Both Chris and...
Simone Noveck: Honorary Steward, March 2020
by SF Team, 20 September 2019
Beth is director of The GovLab, where she advises public institutions and public entrepreneurs on improving people’s lives through better governance with technology. She is also a professor at the Technology, Culture and Society department of New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering, and a Senior Fellow at Rutgers University and the Yale Law School Information Society Project. Beth has been a hugely influential voice in evolving governmental thinking to break away from closed bureaucracies...
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...
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...
Progress is more than just innovation - The Copenhagen Letter
by SF Team, 19 September 2017
It is time to take responsibility for the world we are creating. This is the call to action at the Copenhagen letter, published in September 2017, in which a group of tech practitioners start a conversation on the interface between humanity and technology. This letter really resonates with us. It is made up of 5 simple statements that encourage us as designers, users, humans to shift perspective, perhaps regain perspective, on the role of technology...
by SF Team, 14 September 2017
This is not an easy Fellowship to get, the process may be simple, but the competition is stiff. Approximately 1% of applicants are offered a fellowship. The personal investment you have to make in contemplating this fellowship is substantial - you have to really, honestly and purposefully think through what your contribution to positive social change will be and that is tough. However, it could be the first step towards realising your big vision. We...
Thinking of applying? It could be you
by SF Team, 13 September 2017
When thinking about applying for this fellowship, one of the first questions you might ask yourself is will I get in? Do I fit their profile? Am I who they are looking for? Someone might suggest you apply for a Shuttleworth Fellowship. Even if they are a Fellow, Alum or member of staff, there is no guarantee that your application will be successful. But you have to be in it to win it. Anyone can...
Thinking of applying? Be different
by SF Team, 12 September 2017
We do not have a list of topics we are interested in funding or a call for proposals around a specific theme. Of course we have a sense of what critical problems could be addressed in the world. But an important part of the openness we practice is being open to ideas. Below are areas in which we have already made substantial investments. If we were to invest in these further, we would look for...
Sean Bonner - fellowship review
by SF Team, 1 September 2017
Sean Bonner leads Safecast, an initiative focused on enabling anyone to measure and share environmental data. Born out of the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in March 2011, they started by monitoring radiation levels in the affected areas, but the specific domain is not the point. Nor do they have any political agenda. Their priority has always been the data - gathering it first-hand and sharing it openly. The Safecast data...
Seamus Kraft - fellowship review
by SF Team, 1 September 2017
Seamus Kraft is the co-founder of The OpenGov Foundation, a Washington, DC, organisation that boosts collaboration and openness in governments and communities. When Seamus first joined our fellowship, had a big vision for bringing citizens and government together using 21st century digital technology. Having worked for the US House Oversight Committee, he was familiar with the challenges, opportunities and obstacles that exist within federal government decision-making processes. He believed he could help, along with The...
Peter Bloom - fellowship review
by SF Team, 1 September 2017
Peter Bloom is addressing a social justice issue he has experienced first hand. Mountain villages in the province of Oaxaca, Mexico, were all but cut off from the world, having no mobile phone connections and relying on 2 or 3 fixed telephone lines servicing an entire village. For mainstream telecoms providers it is not worth their while to incur infrastructure costs to reach these isolated communities. Living and working in the area, Peter founded Rhizomatica...
No fellowships awarded for September 2017
by SF Team, 4 July 2017
While it was a difficult conclusion to come to, we have always been prepared not to offer fellowships if we did not find any applications we felt truly met our criteria. In communicating the decision, we want to be honest, open and transparent in order to find future Fellows we do feel we can support and would benefit from our help. We would like to live in an open knowledge society with limitless possibilities for...
Sunil Abraham: Honorary steward September 2017
by SF Team, 19 April 2017
At the Shuttleworth Foundation we support individuals to bring about positive change in the world. Individuals carry their learnings, experiences, passions and hopes for the future with them throughout their lives. Investing in and supporting them to work on what is broken in their world, equips them to continue to affect change far beyond the life of a specific project or organisation. Similarly we seek out individuals who are bold and brave in re-imagining the...
Aaron, Jesse and Johnny - new alumni
by SF Team, 3 March 2017
Aaron Makaruk Something has got to give in how we produce, distribute and consume food. The current system requires too much natural resource while creating pockets of feast and famine, sometimes even within the same city. While large scale systemic change is needed, we believe targeted individual action can make a difference. This lead us to Aaron Makaruk and his work on easy to do, affordable urban farming. He had 2 objectives - eliminating urban...
Welcome Alasdair, Anasuya, Mad & Tarek
by SF Team, 3 February 2017
We are delighted to welcome four new Fellows into the Shuttleworth Fellowship Programme: Alasdair Davies, Anasuya Sengupta, Mad Ball and Tarek Loubani. The wonderful Cory Doctorow acted as the Honorary Steward for this round of fellowship, making the final selection from the short-list. In the world, the new cohort brings openness to conversation technology, inclusivity on the web, genetic research and medical devices. We are excited to learn with them as they progress upon their...
Cory Doctorow selects new Shuttleworth Fellows
by SF Team, 3 February 2017
“It was an honour and a conundrum to serve as steward: an honour, because (obviously), I was in a position to help some remarkable people do transformative work; a conundrum because we were so spoilt for choice with remarkable projects and people.” For our March 2017 fellowship round we have been working with the journalist, science fiction author, EFF Special Advisor and co-editor of Boing Boing, the wonderful Cory Doctorow. Cory took stewardship of our...
Doctorow/Shuttleworth collaboration
by SF Team, 5 October 2016
The September 2016 Fellowship round was the first for which we invited an Honorary Steward to make the final decision on new Fellows. We had a brilliant experience with Joi Ito. He brought his individual experience and perspective. He also invested considerable time and energy in thoughtful review and reflection on the applications and their contextual environments. The result is three new Fellows working in wildly different fields, challenging our thinking as much as the...
Welcome to new alumni - Daniel and Waldo
by SF Team, 1 September 2016
Daniel Lombraña González has had the maximum of 3 consecutive fellowship years and is ready to take on the world. Waldo Jaquith is moving on after 1 year, having achieved what he set out to do in this year, to take up an opportunity that will expand the reach of his work exponentially. Daniel Lombraña González Daniel has come a long way with the Shuttleworth Foundation. We first met him as a recent PhD graduate...
Eating our own dogfood - individuals
by SF Team, 14 July 2016
Individuals carry their learnings, experiences, passions and hopes for the future with them throughout their lives. Supporting them to work on what is broken in their world and share their approach openly, equips them to continue to affect change far beyond the life of a specific grant. Mark Shuttleworth has given the Foundation a clear mandate: Continue to re-imagine the way we work, based on openness and innovation, using the money we have in a...
by SF Team, 13 July 2016
This round saw the addition of an Honorary Steward, Joi Ito, making the final selection from the short-list. We are very excited to now announce the three new Fellows who will be joining the Shuttleworth Foundation fellowship programme in September: Achal Prabhala, Isha Datar and Ugo Vallauri. Joi brought his unique perspective on openness and technology for social impact, along with his experience as Director of the MIT Media Lab. He has chosen Fellows that...
Ito/Shuttleworth collaboration
by SF Team, 17 March 2016
At the heart of the Shuttleworth Foundation Fellowship Programme are two key values - openness, and supporting individuals. Inspired by the programme itself, we are evolving how we award Fellowships. Not only will we be selecting individuals to support, we have selected an individual to help us make that decision for the coming round. We are excited to announce that Joi Ito will be the honorary steward of the September 2016 fellowship intake. Joi, who...
by SF Team, 1 March 2016
Dan Whaley Dan is the founder of Hypothes.is, developing an open, interoperable conversation layer over the web. During Dan’s 3 years of fellowship, Hypothesis has grown from an early stage idea to a fully fledged organisation. They develop essential annotation tools and support annotation efforts in journalism, education and science. Hypothesis is also the hub of a coalition to Annotate All Knowledge. Coalition members have agreed to begin the exploration and experimentation required to understand...
Welcome Aaron, Peter and Tiffiniy!
by SF Team, 29 February 2016
Aaron Makaruk The World Food Summit of 1996 defined food security as existing “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life” WHO, 2016, with both physical and economic access being considered. With increasing urbanisation comes greater distance between the consumers and producers of food. Along with growing demand, this has lead to trade-offs between volume, shelf life and nutritional value. Costs have gone...
Welcome Adam, Astra and Waldo!
by SF Team, 3 August 2015
Adam Hyde has a particular talent for helping experts codify processes into manuals for the benefit of a wider audience. His started with technologists through Booksprints and has now turned his attention to academics. As someone familiar with, but not ingrained in, the way academic output is captured and shared, he is questioning the journal publishing process at both the conceptual and practical level. How can we increase the value of scientific output to benefit...
by SF Team, 5 March 2015
Luka’s fellowship is centred around the development of Koruza, a 3D printable wireless optical system for connecting buildings up to 100m apart with internet access. Internet connectivity in urban areas is reliant on fibre or wifi. Where neither of these are viable, there are few other options available. Luka’s work could offer a viable low-cost alternative in these environments. This would empower individuals to build last-mile connectivity with their own hands through the organic growth...
Catharina, David, Jonas & Rory - new alumni
by SF Team, 5 March 2015
Catharina Maracke took on the issue of contributor agreements for free and open source software (FOSS) projects through the Harmony project in March 2012. Where Fellows typically bring their own project into the Fellowship, Catharina was in the unusual position of taking on an existing project with various and varying role players. Hers was a very nuanced role, having to be sensitive to industry and community dynamics. Catharina is a strong legal mind committed to...
by SF Team, 1 September 2014
During his three years as a Shuttleworth Fellow, Arthur Attwell worked on Paperight, a rights clearance house for literary and educational works to allow distributed, local, on-demand book printing. Access to reading materials is critical to learning in its broadest sense. Arthur’s passion is to ensure universal access, with access including at least legal and physical dimensions. Digital is showing promise, but has not yet resulted in the scale needed, and never will if legal...
by SF Team, 26 August 2014
We are excited about Sean’s work as he is literally putting the tools in the hands of the people who need them, localising the measure-report-decide cycle around environmental risk factors such as radiation and noise pollution. There are may questions around the quality, reliability and cost-effectiveness of open hardware in general, and specifically open sensing tools. Sean has shown that he can address these questions critically and engage relevant stakeholders and experts. We look forward...
by SF Team, 26 August 2014
Seamus applied to the Foundation to expand his work on the Madison Project which aims to open up government by increasing transparency and citizen participation in policy-making. We have seen a lot of open government applications in the past, and Seamus’ is the most practical one by far. He is starting off by focusing on a small scope in a very specific context and is uniquely positioned to implement these first steps thanks to his...
by SF Team, 26 August 2014
Through Rhizomatica, Peter is setting up affordable local mobile phone networks in under-served areas in Mexico. We have invested in telecommunication initiatives before, as communication is absolutely key to be part of society as we know it. As long as you are not connected to the global communication network, you are excluded from participating in human development beyond the limitations of time and distance. Access to telecommunication is a matter of cost, infrastructure, hardware and...
September 2014 fellowship intake
by SF Team, 26 August 2014
We had submissions from all over the world, exploring areas of science, education, culture, health, privacy and many many more. We spoke to people working on issues from personal safety to universal access to knowledge, from designing open hardware to alleviating poverty. All of the applications showed passion and personal commitment. We continue to be impressed. We were drawn to initiatives that are at the early stages of development and not yet widely funded, to...
by SF Team, 20 February 2014
Prospective applicants often ask us to narrow down the parameters for applications and be more specific about what we’re looking for. We are not planning on doing that, as we want to be surprised and intrigued by applicants, no matter how unconventional the idea may be. However, we can provide some thoughts on what to keep in mind while developing your application for our fellowship. We hope these are useful, for applying for the Fellowship,...
From Traditional Funder to Today
by SF Team, 16 February 2014
Our main goal was to improve the quality of education in South Africa. We invested in projects that offered unique and innovative solutions to educational challenges in a developing society, focused on the areas of science, technology, entrepreneurship and maths in education, as well as propagating the use of open source software. The Foundation operated as a traditional funding agency – we accepted proposals and funded them. Grantees implemented their projects and came back with...
