Back from summer, but prototyping all along...

💚 Dear colleagues, friends, and supporters,
 

We’re back with Tech for (the Social and/or Common) Good — and ready to test our early prototypes with you👇👏✨: 

On September 18, the Prototype Fund Switzerland and the Swiss Future Institute are joining forces, mind- and heart-power to co-host a very special evening at the Swiss Future Symposium: Prototype Fund’s first-ever publicly accessible User Testing Night.

Image: Prototype Fund (Gabriel Alber)

This is where early-stage, open, and public-good prototypes meet real-world testers and decision-maker communities — and YOU?!

It’s a moment to help shape tomorrow’s tech or data-based breakthroughs with simultaneous social impact by testing them today.
 

📍 Impact Hub Zurich – Viadukt (Bogen D)
🕓 From 16:00 until late
🎟️ RSVP via Eventfrog (directly through Swiss Future Institute) or via our website

Why Prototype Fund meets Future Thinking

We’re proud to join forces with the Swiss Future Institute at the Swiss Future Symposium: Bridging AI to Human Impact, where we gather leading thinkers, top managers, policy makers, and innovators - plus users - simultaneously, to explore how we make technology serve society. 
 

This partnership matters:
 

• Prototype Fund empowers people to build technologies for the public good — open, sufficiency-aiming, and human-centered.

• Swiss Future Institute shapes tomorrow’s leaders in an age defined by AI, complexity, and ethical urgency.
   

Together, we’re creating a space where tech-for-good isn’t just a concept — it’s tested live, with real users, and embedded in larger concepts and keynotes presented by major industry experts, university professors, and practitioners in the field. 

The Prototypes You’ll Test

In our last newsletter, we introduced the exciting projects in this year’s cohort. They range from tools for biodiversity tracking to behavioral-change systems at institutional (over purely individual) level, or actual digital sufficiency in data queries or device psychology.
 

Now you’ll get the chance to try them hands-on, meet the makers, and share your feedback.

👉 See the full project overview here: Project Prototypes Overview

Tickets & Access
 

To make this event accessible for a selected audience and Prototype Fund internal members, we’re offering:
 

🎟️ 10 reduced-price tickets at 49 CHF through our Prototype Fund x Futures Symposium Lottery. Spots are limited. For our members only.
 

To enter the lottery and apply for such a spot, simply send an email to info@prototypefund.ch and tell us by 4 September 5pm:
 

1. Why you’d like to join the user-testing of the Prototype Fund cohort projects?
2. What are your ideas about a future that bridges AI with Human Impact?
    

This way, we make sure the reduced tickets go to people who are eager to engage both with our prototypes and with the Symposium’s big ideas.
 
 

👥 10 x Prototype Fund Friends & Family tickets: 

49 CHF covered by the Prototype Fund and Swiss Future Institute, provided you are truly friends or family of one of our cohort members and join them to test their prototypes. Just get in touch with the this year's cohort members of the Fund to access the ticket. They'll reach out to us.

GIVEN OUR SPECIAL PARTNERSHIP BOTH REDUCED-PRICE AND FRIENDS & FAMILY TICKET HOLDERS HAVE THE CHANCE TO JOIN DAY 2 OF THE SYMPOSIUM AT NO EXTRA COST.

Why You Should Join

• Futures, Friction & Feedback: from data and AI to human-centered and ethical tech.
• Live Testing Zones: open prototypes solving real people-technical and governance challenges.
• Talks & Sparks: keynote insights from AI Future Council of the Swiss Future Institute, Swiss engineering leaders, and more.
• Food, Music & Meaning: flying dinner, topical input, Business Speed Dating and network.
   

Because the most important innovations don’t happen in closed labs — but in open conversations and laying ideas open,

Verena
Lead I Prototype Fund CH 💚

✨ Be part of shaping tomorrow.
🎟️ Register now: Eventfrog | Prototype Fund Events

The Prototype Fund is a program by Opendata.ch and supported by the Mercator Foundation Switzerland and the Christoph Merian Foundation.