Fellowship

What is the ThingsCon Fellowship?

The ThingsCon Fellowship recognizes achievements and commitment that advance the ThingsCon mission of fostering the creation of a responsible and human-centric IoT generally, and support for the ThingsCon community specifically.

The fellowship aims to amplify the fellows’ work in this area and to promote knowledge transfer and networking between fellows and the larger ThingsCon network.

Note: In 2020, we are in the process of evaluating our fellowship; in the meantime we do not onboard new fellows. We will be sharing updates as soon as we have them.

Learning together

The first round of fellows was onboarded in 2017/2018 and consisted of a small cohort of ThingsCon allies. These individuals have over the past years put tremendous effort into advancing and promoting the ThingsCon mission. Together with them we will develop and evolve the ThingsCon Fellowship program through a collaborative process of mutual exchange and shared learning.

We’re humbled, proud, and excited to call these smart, committed and kind people our fellows.

Meet the inaugural cohort of ThingsCon Fellows:

Ricardo Brito

Ricardo Brito is a Service and UX Designer with Futurice Germany. He is developing successful digital services and is pushing the boundaries with new concepts in the design domain and outside of it. His current focus is on the future of IoT, Digital Disruption, Hyper Local Services and Smart Cities. Ricardo is one of the Inventors of Futurice’s IoT Service Design Kit that enables teams to test-drive IoT concepts in the real world, and one of the hosts of The ThingCast. Learn more at toastedpixels.com.

Dries de Roeck

Dries is a designer, researcher and leads all things research at the creative agency Studio Dott (Belgium). In his research work, he questions how design processes change when digital and physical products become increasingly intertwined. His interest generally lies in the way technology is being embedded and used throughout the everyday life of people. He is the creator of the IOT ideation cards and sporadically hosts local Thingscon events. Learn more at roeckoe.be.

Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino

Alexandra is an interaction designer, product designer, entrepreneur and public speaker based in London. She’s the director of design consultancy Designswarm and founder of IoT startup The Good Night Lamp. She was named 1st in a list of 100 Internet of Things Influencers (Postscapes, 2016), 2nd in Top 100 Internet of Things Thought Leaders (Onalytica, 2014) and in the Top 100 Influencial Tech Women on Twitter (Business Insider, 2014). Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the London Design Museum and galleries around the world. Learn more at designswarm.com.

Ame Elliott

Ame (sounds like “Amy”) Elliott is Design Director for Simply Secure, a nonprofit service organization that helps practitioners build skills in privacy, security, and ethics. Her work focuses on the role of experience design in making technology understandable to a broad audience. Previously, Ame was a senior design leader at IDEO San Francisco, delivering tech strategy for global companies. Prior to IDEO, Ame was a research scientist at Xerox PARC and Ricoh Innovations working on ubiquitous computing applications. Learn more at ameelliott.com.

Iohanna Nicenboim

Iohanna Nicenboim is a design researcher, focused on connected objects and their interactions in everyday life. Inspired by complex socio-technical systems and scientific imaginary, she explores poetical interactions with technology. She creates speculative futures and alternative presents in different scales and formats. Her practice often overlaps design, social science, and data; showing a critical and provocative approach towards technology, and the way it relates to society. She is currently working as a researcher at the TU Delft at the Connected Everyday Lab with Elisa Giaccardi. Learn more at iohanna.com.

Michelle Thorne

Michelle Thorne (@thornet) leads Mozilla’s Open Internet of Things Studio, a professional learning network committed to making IoT more open. She’s published Understanding the Connected Home and regularly facilitates programs that advocate for equality through digital empowerment and innovation through open, collaborative practices. She’s based in Berlin, Germany. Learn more at michellethorne.cc.