Subject: Internet Society Fellowship Programs

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2019 17:54:20 +0000

Dear colleagues,

This is a message we have sent to our community today announcing some
changes to the way we handle fellowships.  Obviously, among these are
fellowships that affect the IETF, so I wanted to be sure to keep you
all apprised of these adjustments at the Internet Society.  I'll be in
Prague, so if you have questions for me feel free to corner me there
or else send me email.

Best regards,

A

----- Forwarded message from Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]> -----

Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2019 17:03:09 +0000
From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
To: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Subject: Fellowship Programs

Dear colleagues,

The Internet Society has been undertaking a comprehensive review of all its activities in an effort to understand how they work and whether we are contributing to the development of the Internet in the best way we could.

One of the areas we have been looking at is our various fellowship programs.  A number of these fellowship programs have grown up over time and there is scope to streamline them into a more cohesive, better connected offering.  

The design for a new fellowship program is not entirely ready, and so we do not have anything to share for public comment just yet.  We will share the new design for evaluation and comment as soon as it is ready.

10 Technical Fellows are attending the Prague IETF 104 meeting, and we are proud of these fellowship recipients and all the previous recipients.  In the midst of our Fellowship program review, the staff member who has been managing the Technical Fellows program to the IETF has decided to pursue a different opportunity.  

Considering this and the fact that we are reviewing our Fellowship program as a whole, we have decided to suspend the IETF Technical Fellows program after IETF 104.  We will not take further applications for future IETF meetings, and we will not be funding travel for Technical Fellows to those meetings under the current Program.

We believe that the Technical Fellows program as originally conceived was a good idea, and that it contributed to the development of many people in their understanding and participation of the IETF.  We are confident that our new program, defined in consultation with the community, will make still further contributions.  We look forward to our engagement in Prague,  and we look forward to engagement with the entire community when we have a proposal for evaluation for the new programs.
    
Our Policy Fellowship program to the IETF will continue; however, we are using this assessment period to refresh the content of the program so it continues to be timely and relevant.

As part of our review of our fellowship programs, we have also evaluated our IGF Fellowship Program, including our IGF Ambassadors and Youth fellowship. In response to some of the feedback that we have received from stakeholders and in light of the similarity in goals across the two programs, we will be combining the IGF Ambassadors and Youth@IGF into a single program called IGF Youth Ambassadors.  With this combined program, we intend to fund 30 highly qualified individuals to attend the IGF in 2019. Criteria and process for application and selection will be shared in due time.

When we have completed our program review, we will be sharing more information with you. We look forward to engaging with the community to define an impactful program.

Regards,

 --
Andrew Sullivan
President & CEO, Internet Society
[email-masked]
+1 517 885 3587

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
President & CEO, Internet Society
[email-masked]
+1 517 885 3587