Meet the people behind
Patchwork
At the heart of Patchwork is our highly experienced Ruby on Rails team. Binary Labs have been running a large charity website on Ruby for many years, and have been working on Mastodon since the end of 2022.
The development team are supported by Lawrence, our Hong Kong based Project Manager, Michael, the Project Leader, and our Community Team.
Patchwork is a spin off from Newsmast, a content curation and community building initiative in the social web. Like Newsmast we’re part of a UK charitable foundation, The Newsmast Foundation.
We are always looking for code contributors and allies who are interested in helping our mission. If you’re interested in joining our cause, please reach out to us here.
Trustees
Michael Foster
@michael@newsmast.social
Ex-director of Reuters New Media and FT.com, Michael’s decades of experience at the intersection of news media and tech during the height of the dot com boom has helped shape the Newsmast project and ethos. When he’s not finding ways to improve social media for all of us, he’s usually looking after a lively dog, watching movies and enjoying the countryside.
Artur Ekert
@artek@newsmast.social
As a professor of quantum physics at Merton College, University of Oxford and founding director of CQT, Artur joined the project to help ensure we stay on track to deliver a platform where academia is at the forefront of what we do. He’s a self-proclaimed aviation, water sport, and scuba diving addict who can often be found enjoying South African wine.
Jeff Streeter
@JeffreyStreeter@newsmast.social
As a British Council Director, Jeff spent years travelling the world sharing culture, language and education with people from different countries and cities. Now based in Tokyo, he spends most of his time looking introspectively at literature and language on his thought provoking blog, English Republic of Letters.
The Newsmast Community Team
Freddie
@FreddieJ@newsmast.social
Freddie focuses on building partnerships and collaborations with external organisations, and bringing Newsmast to a wider audience. He reads, writes and draws when he can, or schemes in the kitchen.
Saskia
@saskia@newsmast.social
After joining the team as an intern, Saskia has gone on to help lead Newsmast’s curation, communications and marketing. An avid writer and reader, when she’s not got her head in a book she’s out walking in the Yorkshire Dales with her dogs.
Andy
@Andy@newsmast.social
As our Digital Outreach Manager, Andy oversees our data, analytics and CRM systems. He has been a supporter and key member of the Newsmast team since our founding. In his spare time you’ll find him with his family, running the occasional marathon or cycling cross-country.
Delivering Patchwork
Binary Lab
Based in Myanmar, the team at Binary Lab are vital in the development and maintenance of the Newsmast apps. Their experience with transformative tech startup projects has helped turn Newsmast into an easy-to-use and sleek app experience.
Think Studio
Helping out from the get-go, the team at Think Studio have helped us build our brand, website, and more. With their support, we’ve been able to turn the Newsmast idea into something real.
Web Link
Lawrence has been a key part of the Newsmast project from the outset, project managing our DevOps activity, testing apps and most recently creating the Community Feeds.
