⚡Announcing the 2023 Reboot Student Fellowship

Explore tech, humanity, and power through a guided book club, writing workshop, and community mentorship

As more technologists think seriously about the societal impact of their work, there remain few opportunities to bring theory into practice. Students are ushered into career fairs and internships with vague promises of "tech for good," but are left alone to figure out what the hell that really means.

We're excited to announce that applications are open for the 2023 Reboot Student Fellowship: a program for students to explore tech, humanity, and power through a guided book club, writing workshop, and community mentorship.

The cohort will run from January 15 to March 12, 2023. We plan to accept 42 fellows reading and writing across different interest areas such as: media, race, education, globalization, finance, business, and labor.

📕 apply!!

Applications are now open at http://bit.ly/reboot-fellowship2023 and close on November 20th.

We’re also hosting three events where you can learn more about the Fellowship: November 3rd (a Public Interest Tech Mixer), November 10th (our Values-Aligned Tech Careers Panel), and November 17th (a Q&A with Reboot Fellows). All events will take place at 6pm PT.

The fellowship is run by Reboot and sponsored by SPARC and the Omidyar Network.

📖 what will you do?

The fellowship runs from January 15 to March 12, 2023. It is stipended and fully virtual.

Each week, you'll spend around 1 hour in mentored peer groups, 1 hour in a fellowship-wide session, and 2-3 hours of external reading and writing:

• A book club among peers: Each peer group will receive a relevant book to read, discuss, and then meet the author for a private Q&A. Each peer group will focus on one book and theme. The books are as follows:

  • tech x labor: Ghost Work by Mary Gray

  • tech x finance: Cloud Money by Brett Scott

  • tech x race: The Silicon Valley of Dreams by David Naguib Pellow and Lisa Sun-Hee Park

  • tech x media: CAPS LOCK by Ruben Pater

  • tech x education: Mindstorms by Seymour Papert

  • tech x globalization: Blockchain Chicken Farm by Xiaowei Wang

  • tech x business: User Friendly by Cliff Kuang and Robert Fabricant

• Writing and workshopping an artifact: In the second half of the fellowship, peer groups will research, write, and peer-edit an artifact of their choosing. In the past, fellows have written essays, but we're expanding this to book reviews, interviews, essays, projects, zines, etc. Anything that feels substantive and hefty.

• Real-life applications: Previous fellowship-wide activities have included talks with experts in tech policy, journalism, and organizing, alongside writing workshops and mixers with other groups.

👩🏻‍💻 who's this for?

If this sounds exciting, then apply here! It'll take around 20-30 minutes, and applications are open until November 20, 2022 at 11:59pm PT.

Here's who we're looking for:

• You're passionate about issues of technology, humanity, and power and relatively new to them: You're eager to learn more and excited to connect theory and practice.

• You're a young person: a college undergrad or between the ages of 18-22.

• You're a lively and thoughtful discussion partner. You thrive in seminars and small groups. You ask lots of questions. You're comfortable pushing back (politely) on others' opinions and suggesting your own.

• You're keen to read and write, regardless of past experience. You're a self-motivated learner who actually does the readings. You're eager to put pen to paper and revise your work with others.

• You're excited to meet some incredible people: friends, mentors, and collaborators.

If your question is not answered in the FAQ below, feel free to contact us at ivanzhao8@gmail.com.

？FAQ

• What is Reboot?

  Reboot is a community that convenes book-lovers, writers, and technologists to imagine the future of tech, humanity, and power. We don’t publish platitudes on “tech for good,” and we won’t teach you to pass coding challenges or productivity-hack your day.

  To this end, we host events with researchers, technologists, authors, and more who share the same vision with us as well as a weekly newsletter featuring book reviews and short essays by Reboot community members. We've also published a magazine, Kernel, which asks what it means to understand the basis of society. Subscribe to our mailing list here.

• What will I get out of the fellowship?

  We hope fellows will come out with the following:

  1. Community: A network of friends, career peers, and mentors who you can rely on for years to come.

  2. Skill development: Improved writing, critical thinking, and understanding.

  3. Purpose: A deepened desire to shape better technological and sociological futures.

• Does the program cost anything?

  No! You will be provided a stipend of $100 to help purchase a physical book if interested. Higher stipends are available to those who would not be able to participate otherwise.

• What's the expected time commitment?

  Each week, you can expect to spend approximately 1 hour in peer groups, 1 hour in fellowship-wide sessions, and 3-4 hours reading and writing. These numbers will depend on each student’s pace of reading and writing.

  It's important to us that fellows attend all the sessions. We will adapt meeting times to maximize student availability.

• Do I need to be studying a technical or tech-related field?

  Not necessarily, but we expect fellows to demonstrate interest in exploring technology, humanity, and power. This could come from research, work experience, activism, personal learning, or anything else.

• Do I need writing experience? What type of writing will I be doing?

  Not at all! Many of our previous fellows have entered the program totally new to writing. Instead, we look for critical analysis skills, unique perspectives, and excitement about learning with others. Check out the Reboot newsletter for some essays from past fellows (Lucas on The Creator's Dilemma and Bianca on Maintenance in the Global South)

• I’m a new grad, can I still apply to this?

  Since we’re gearing this towards undergrads, we’re unfortunately not accepting applications from new grads.

• How else could I get involved?

  Don't fit the description of what we're looking for but looking to hang out, discuss, and grow with a thoughtful group of individuals? Feel free to join our Discord community waitlist here.

⚡️ testimonials

Hear from some of our past fellows on what their experience was like:

🪁 "I learned so much from the members of my small group. Our group became really close and I am so excited to maintain those friendships beyond the fellowship. I'm excited to hear about how all of us develop and implement our values in various paths inside/outside tech."

💡 "[My favorite part was] community! [It] was such an organic experience that helped me understand life beyond my college circles. I think college currently [and] the new grad experience can be very lonely, so this was a breath of fresh air. There's so much to learn from everybody, and I really treasured that experience.”

What are you waiting for? Apply now!

With great excitement and great responsibility,

The Reboot Fellowship Team (Anh, Ivan, Lucas, Matthew)