Fellows' Guide
This guide is for current Fellows, and is a mix of definitions, reflections, practical considerations and recorded experience.
The Aim of the Fellowship
Fellowship is a duty of service to the political technology community, performed by developing the network and discovering new insights by engaging and exploring across many communities and disciplines.
What is a Fellow?
Fellows benefit from:
- the title of "Fellow of Newspeak House"
- advice and assistance from the Dean
- six months of lodgings in Newspeak House, at a rate of £800pcm all included. Assistance is available for those that may not be able to afford this.
Fellows commit to:
- be active organisers in the field of political technology
- Reside at Newspeak House and attend events held there
- engage in a wide selection of community channels
As a Fellow, you commit to spending a lot of time making new friends. You’ll have the chance to meet lots of people in your time here; some may be peers, others may be more senior or more junior to you, and others may be working on something far outside of your area of interest. Deliberate attention to these weak ties is what will make this network powerful.
For example, fellows will be approached by members for all kinds of advice. You may not have any answers for them, but if you can introduce them to someone who probably will, then you’re correctly playing your part as a fellow.
Get to know the other Fellows well. You might not agree with them on everything, or even like them, but think of them as access to another part of the network. Working together, you can be formidable.
The staff are here to support the fellows. If there’s something you want to achieve, don’t be afraid to ask for things. We balance what you ask against protecting the institution (physically and financially) and our experience of initiatives of past fellows and the needs of future fellows.
How to be a good fellow
1/ Engage with the community
Subscribe to the channels on the Community Map. You can unsubscribe from them gradually if you find them overwhelming, however most are very low traffic.
2/ Go to Ration Club every week (Wednesday night), invite others, and occasionally host.
This is your chance to meet regularly with the other fellows and greet new members.
3/ Attend events. Subscribe to the calendar: [iCal] [gCal].
You will have the chance to go to about 100 events during your tenure. It’s easy for this to become overwhelming - instead of working the room each time, try and make a couple of new friends at each one. Ideally Fellows should go to every event hosted at Newspeak.
There are many meetings and discussions that happen at Newspeak, both large and small, formal and informal. It’s impossible for a member to attend all of them - part of the role of the fellowship is to witness what happens here and disseminate that knowledge.
4/ Host an event, at least once a month.
These don’t have to be large - often the best events are only a handful of people - but it must be something that we can put into the public calendar (www.nwspk.com/events). You have a space that you can use easily, without pressure to sell tickets or fill seats. Events don’t have to be planned far in advance. However, events are important ways of providing opportunities for members to engage with each other, and with you.
ideas:
help people meet people they couldn’t easily find
help people learn about how opaque institutions function
help people learn about projects / tools / standards / techniques they might not know about
give people a place to talk about a topical event
You can promote your events via the community map, the other fellows and the people you meet in the space. The staff can support you with logistics. If you want to use the ground Newspeak Hall, you must book it with the staff in advance.
5/ Automated Introductions
A system is being developed that makes introductions between members. Please use it and help me improve it!
6/ Abide by and enforce the House Rules
7/ Be open and active on social media
8/ Record new groups you find in the Community Map
Alternative:
The goal of the fellowship is to develop your network amongst technologists across the public sector and civil society.
There's no project, research or publishing requirement - purely networking - and it's designed to fit around a job. These are the activities that you're expected to take part in as best as you can:
1/ Fellows' Dinner
Every Sunday evening, a chance to eat together with the other fellows, past and present, and reflect on the week past and the week ahead. In general, you're expected to engage with and support the other fellows as best you can, as are they to you.
2/ Ration Club
Every Wednesday evening, a purely social event that gives you a chance to meet a wide selection of community members in an informal environment. You'll be expected to help host, and you're encouraged to invite everyone interesting you meet to come.
3/ Newspeak House Events
If a fellowship was a course, the events would be the lectures. There are usually one or two a week, sometimes more, sometimes less, hosted on the ground floor. This is a chance to observe very diverse communities come together to discuss how they understand the world and try and act on it. You're encouraged to go to as many as you can, particularly ones that you wouldn't go to under normal circumstances, to try and understand the motivations and experiences of the other attendees. You can see examples here www.nwspk.com/events - there are also sometimes private roundtables that are not included in the public calendar.
4/ Member emails
You'll be sent the contact details of a random member every day, and you're encouraged to spend 10 minutes investigating them and reaching out. They'll be expecting this and be interested to hear from you as a Newspeak Fellow; you act as their connection to all the things happening across the community.
5/ App
You agree to give up one space on your home screen for the Newspeak House app. This is a mattermost instance (like Slack but open source) only for fellows, past and present.
At the start of your fellowship
- Fellow stuff
- Add name to blackboard in the lounge
- Update database
- Member reminders
- Unmailing list
- Review calendar
- Github repo
- Tenancy contract
- Resident IM group
House stuff
- House & room key
- Pantry cupboard
- Fridge
- Pigeonhole
- Bin schedule
Fire Training
Wifi code
Washing Machines
Recommended Reading
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Systems-Bible-Beginners-Guide-Large/dp/0961825170
https://medium.com/@joshuatauberer/so-you-want-to-reform-democracy-7f3b1ef10597#.v2qrakbwd
Useful Lessons From Experience
The purpose of Newspeak House is to foster conversation. While housemates have a reasonable right to ask you to turn music down if the sound is disturbing them, they don’t have the right to ask you to stop a conversation because the sound is disturbing them.
You may be offered sponsorship $$$ for an event you run. There is no fixed policy on this yet - generally we spend it on catering for the event, and any surplus goes to supporting the venue.
There are rules around how the Newspeak Brand may be used; you may call yourself a "Fellow of Newspeak House", and events held here are "Hosted by Newspeak House", but beyond that, use this as an opportunity to develop your own brand rather than use the Newspeak House one.
No member may use the kitchen without the supervision of a fellow or staff member. Keep the hatch closed when using heat or knives in the kitchen.
Fire is painful. Do not touch it.
If you wish to do laundry, there are two washer dryers in the scullery.
Upon moving in, please speak to Declan to arrange fire training. The fire alarm is located on the ground floor. If you hear this alarm, first ascertain if there is a fire in the building. If there is a fire, please follow the evacuation procedure, displayed on each floor of the building. If there is no fire, but the alarm is going off anyway, please follow the instructions to switch it off, which are attached to the control unit on the ground floor. If you are unable to switch it off, please contact Declan. Please familiarise yourself with the locations of fire extinguishers.