Whatever your background – tech ethicist, designer, engineer, business consultant, student – we all find ourselves in situations where we have the potential to shape the development of technology toward more positive societal impact. However, it’s often difficult to seize these moments.
Tech Stewardship is a professional identity, orientation and practice that supports us to find opportunities within our day-to-day work to help bend the arc of technology towards good. It’s about supporting each other to better navigate the socio-ethical tensions we all face.
The concept of Tech Stewardship and the “shared infrastructure” that is being created to support it has been co-created by a diverse community of leaders and organizations.
What’s currently available?
- Tech Stewardship Practice Program (TSPP) – a 12 hour asynchronous online “base” program to help you launch your practice. The program is offered free for Centre for Social Impact Technology Registrants. Click here for more information and to register (when you check-out you can pick Centre for Social Impact Technology from a list of partners to access your free registration).
- Tech Stewardship Drop-In Practice Sessions – we hold weekly 30min drop-in practice calls which are an opportunity to take a pause in your week and connect with others to help explore the tensions we are feeling in our work or environments. Here is a short video introducing the session and the standard session deck, which includes a summary of the TS core commitments and practice cycle questions that you can use to inspire what question you want to explore. Keep an eye on the Slack channel for notifications about upcoming sessions.
- Tech Stewardship Slack Channel – offers a space for us to share our examples and requests for support as we navigate the tensions we each face in our day-to-day work.
These items and the other shared infrastructure we are working to create are being designed so that you can leverage them in your own efforts to work towards “tipping points” where Tech Stewardship practice becomes the new normal within your:
- Post-Secondary Institutions – weave tech stewardship practice into the journey of your students.
- Non-Profits – introduce tech stewardship practice to your change focused community
- Companies & Government – introduce tech stewardship practice as an investment in your organization’s tech culture.
- Consultants – opportunities to build new offerings based on tech stewardship.
- Professional Associations – introduce tech stewardship practice as a new ethical standard
Please contact programs@techstewardship.com if you would like more information about how to get involved in any of these opportunities.