Welcome to Fulbrighter: Your global community

When you begin a Fulbright award, we make you a promise: that you will become part of a prestigious, global community of leading researchers, professionals and practitioners.

The Fulbrighter platform is designed to fulfil that promise. It enables you easily to connect and engage with Fulbright alumni and grantees all around the world. You can look for and share advice, discover innovative projects, collaborate on ideas, organise formal and social events, build new professional and intellectual communities, and forge global connections.

First steps: Exploring the platform

Fulbrighter blends features from other community platforms

Fulbrighter blends features from other community platforms. It lets you build a professional profile; join interest groups and post on live feeds; read and contribute long-form profiles and thinkpieces; and participate in discussion forums.

The familiarity of this functionality means Fulbrighter should be intuitive to use and explore. You can refer to our Quick start guide and full user manual, or you can straightaway start using the platform.

We would recommend you begin by:

• Completing your user profile (access your profile by clicking on your avatar in the top right hand corner)
• Discover and join relevant sub-communities
• Post on live feeds and engage with others' posts
• Explore the global directory of Fulbrighters.

You may also want to review your notification options and other settings.

The future of Fulbrighter: Get involved

The Fulbrighter project team have worked hard to build this foundational community platform. We have focused on delivering core features and a rigorous data protection regime in order to successfully open this platform up globally.

What we are launching in August 2019 is very much Fulbrighter 1.0

This means that what we are launching in August 2019 is very much Fulbrighter 1.0. We have exciting ideas about how this platform could expand and the new features we could introduce. But we want the development of this platform to be led by you. This is your global community, and you have a unique opportunity to shape this platform so that it provides rewarding and engaging content, experiences and connections.

This is your global community, and you have a unique opportunity to shape this platform so that it provides rewarding and engaging content, experiences and connections

There are a range of areas where we would value your leadership:

• Content: What types of short and long-form posts would you like to see in the platform? Do you want the focus to be on written content, or would you like to see podcasts and videos? Do you have content you would like to add to the platform - or would you be interested in curating others' content?
• Community management: Would you like to help manage an existing community in the platform - to help promote engagement and encourage community building? Or would you like to build a new community, based on an academic or professional discipline, a region, a Fulbright program, or a special interest?
• Features and functionality: How can we improve the platform's interface and features? Are there bugs or awkward experiences you would like fixed? What new functionality could we add to help you to build rich connections and to engage effectively with your peers? Would you be interested in helping us to brainstorm and test new functionality?

You can find out more about ways to get involved. And if you have ideas, questions or concerns please either leave them in the comments below - or get in touch with the Fulbrighter project team: fulbrighter@fulbright.org.uk.

Rob Ellis
Fulbrighter project team