Session Transcript - Opening Address

Excellent. Thank you for that very generous introduction, Graham. Thank you to the Barclays team for the opportunity to use the space here today, fantastic venue. Graham's joking about making me emotional, I actually genuinely do feel quite emotional standing up here today because of all the work that has been done by so many people who've given their time and their talents to be part of this. And what I'm going to talk to you today about, is a little bit about that but more about how do we take this forwards. I have to say it's great to be able to stand up here on stage, actually, and speak to everybody. The Tech for Good Summit last year was all virtual and I gave an opening address to that session and one of my colleagues said to me in our debrief afterwards, and I'm sure he said it was love, you look like you'd be taken hostage. Sitting with a white wall behind me, you know, there's the kind of the square video thing. And he said, You know, that's not the guy we know. So hopefully today you're gonna get, you know, the full gas experience. So obviously, as Graham said, you know, this all came out of the pandemic originally and the initial concept was very much something that was a product of its time. So, as Graham said, we are hoping you're going to find today both interesting and inspiring and we're really keen to talk to as many of you as possible about how we take this forwards, we're already working with a number of people in the room to that effect. And we're really keen to start building this as an ecosystem because, you know, Graham talked about the Cisco programme which is massive, it's hugely impressive but even something the size of Cisco, you know, you compare that to the size of the tech industry as a whole and all those industries that have got digital expertise, the potential is enormous. So I'm going to use the classic narrative structure of the 3 act play for this presentation. So setup confrontation and resolution, so hopefully, we're gonna get a happy ending. So we'll all leave into the rest of the day in a good frame of mind. So just to take you back a little bit in time, obviously, it's still pretty fresh in people's mind. What happened in March and April of 2020, just so happens, I live in Edinburgh, when have you ever seen the Royal Mile looking like that? Completely deserted. And the original idea for the Tech for Good Summit came about as a result of me doing my permitted one hour of daily exercise, literally on this corner of my street, coming across somebody who was coming the other direction and we had a conversation two metres apart but that was where the genesis of the idea came from. And what is it that creates change? Well, there needs to be some stimulus for change. At the time of the pandemic, it didn't look like it was gonna be a three act play, it looked like it was even a one act disaster because it was something on a scale we'd never experienced before. Nobody was prepared for it and it took everybody completely by surprise. So this idea of you know, how do you create something that's going to be different is going to be new. You need the classic burning platform and boy was this ever the burning platform. It thrust so many people in so many organisations into a situation that they were completely unprepared to cope with and so people had to act, people had to react and respond. But within all of that, you know, the massive conflagration, lots of little sparks started to appear. And we've seen so many things that are impacts of the pandemic that have been beneficial long term impacts and, you know, obviously, we will not be sitting here having this conversation, were it not for that, because that was the initial stimulus. So hopefully one of these little sparks up here that we can fan into a really strong flame that will help us to achieve collectively massive impact in the world. So the first act of our three act play was that initial rapid reaction so this was on the day we launched, The Scotsman, was kind enough to publish a press release which said that Scotland software development community has formed a Scottish Tech Army so that was quite generous of them to print that because there was two of us at that point. So, you know, we had ambition, give us that much at least. But what happened was that, you know, I'm gonna tell you this story is a logo, actually, because when we were getting all this ready, I spoke to some people to see, you know, can you help us, one of whom was a designer, and she came up with the logo that hopefully you're all familiar with and this is where it came from. Because she'd read this book, and it said, anybody can break a matchstick but if you put seven matchsticks together, nobody is strong enough to break that. So that is the power of collective action, that's the power of a team, it's the power of an ecosystem and so hence the seven matchsticks up here. The idea, obviously, rainbow colours, we want to be as inclusive as we possibly can. And the reaction we got was amazing. You know, in the first month, we had 700 volunteers who signed up, it really tapped into the desire that people had at the time, what can I do to help, I want to do something practical. So a huge response from people in the tech community, including you and other people who are here in this room, and many more have joined since then so that was very much the trigger. And it's what got the whole thing going. But it was very much around dealing with the circumstances at the time, you know, how do we respond to the challenges that all these organisations and individuals are facing as a result of the pandemic? The challenge, then, is, how do you make that last? How do you sustain it? And it's, you know, across the whole of the third sector, more than three quarters of the organisations in the third sector changed how they use digital technology or started to use digital technology in some cases over the course of the pandemic. It's not something that the sector has a huge amount of experience in historically, but everybody was thrust into the situation of having to make it work having to find tools to help them to do the massively important work that they were doing. And so, the question for us at that point was, is this something that has a long term role? Is there something we can do that will make a long term contribution? Or is this just a creation of its time? If you look at that same study the NCVO survey in 2021. There's a number of interesting points, which I'm not going to read, obviously but it talks about the kinds of things that people were trying to get to grips with and a lot of it is fairly standard stuff for people in the tech industry. It's how do you use remote conferencing tools? How do you carry your business out remotely? And how do you use the basic plumbing and the infrastructure to be able to do that? And so that was something that people were forced to adopt pretty quickly. You look at some of the challenges that people said that they were having was people having to acquire new skills but the barriers were the skills of the current volunteers or the cost of equipment or software, the skills of service users, and access to service users to equipment. So those are not short term things, those are long term challenges. They just got unmasked in a very obvious and transparent way during the pandemic. So that was really what encouraged us to think in the first instance, that this is something that did have a longer term role, there was an opportunity for us to do something that would would be valuable in the long term. There's another study I saw, which was published in January, which talked about tech trends for charities in 2022 just finished and you see kind of things that people are talking about here and I'm deliberately not putting the name of the organisation on this because I'm not trying to embarrass anybody. But to me, that looks like a pretty massive gulf between the capability that currently exists and the technology that potentially could be used. But it's actually, it's out of reach, for so many of these organisations and that's the role of the Tech for Good movement as a whole, in my opinion. It's how do we start to bridge that gap? So good news, you're not going to get another 20 minutes of me hanging up here about woe is us. It's all about what are we going to do that's going to make a difference, and we'll make a positive impact to close that gap.

So I'm going to give you a few examples, deliberately only one of them is from the work of the Scottish Tech Army because this is a movement. It didn't just start in the pandemic, but I think it's given us a tremendous impetus that will help us to accelerate the rate of change. So this is an organisation called Changes East Lothian. They came to the Tech Army quite early on, asking for some help with developing their brand and their online presence and we have, there's a video of Caitlin, who is the CEO of Changes, we were hoping to have one of our colleagues here today unfortunately, she's not able to make it but in the video Caitlin talks about the impact that this had over a sustained period of time. So this was a number of different activities that we engaged with different volunteers from the Tech Army who helped with different aspects of this. And she talks about the real world impact that this has so it's not a nice to have. And she talked about things like, they're able to get more financial support from local businesses because they're able to communicate better what they were doing in their local communities. And as you all know, raising funds in the third sector is an ongoing challenge for everybody. So using technology to help them to gain support from local businesses. This is not from charitable funders, the number of whom we have in the room and who are absolutely essential in the whole ecosystem. But this is actually tapping into local businesses as well, which is great, you know, because that's scalable, that sustainable over time. She also talked about the fact that they had more requests for support from younger people. So there are a charity that exists to promote good mental health and provide support to people. Historically, the people who use their services were older in years, they were people who had been introduced to the organisation, through primarily in person means originally. Their ability to engage more directly through digital and online media meant that they've been able to reach a population of their community they had not been able to before. So they were able to increase the reach that they had and the impact that they had in their community. And finally, Caitlin talks about the fact that by working with these volunteers, they were able to put themselves in a position where, as an organisation and their individual members of staff, they felt a lot more confident about cybersecurity, because that's obviously a big challenge for a lot of these organisations. Again, they don't have a lot of in house expertise to be able to do this. So giving them the confidence that the systems that they were using were secure and that they were able to use them with confidence and share information with their service users was a really valuable contribution. It doesn't always have to be very complicated. This is an organisation. And thanks to Beth sitting at the back here, who shared this with us at a meeting recently. This is an organisation called Depaul, so based in Bristol and they are an organisation that seeks to address youth homelessness. And this case study video and I should say we're going to be gathering all the information that we share and putting it into show notes on our website so you'll be able to go and find all these links. They have a system whereby they recruit volunteers who will give emergency short term accommodation to young people who find themselves on the streets. And the big challenge for them is knowing who's available to host young people when because these are emergency situations they happen within a day. So they put together a system which was really simple. Once a week all their volunteers could indicate, yes I can host somebody on this night, no I can't on that night or I'm not sure but if it's a real real emergency contact me and I'll tell you. So they did that and so you can see, the staff in the organisation can see who's available. If they can't find somebody who says that available, they just use text messaging to contact the people who say, you know, contact me in an emergency. So actually, technically really simple stuff but massively impactful. They said they were able to house 800 more young people in the course of a year by using this kind of technology so it doesn't have to be massively complicated and it can have a massive impact. That said, you can use really exciting bits of technology and this is another ecosystem examples. So this is one which we were contacted by an organisation called the Teapot Trust which is an art therapy organisation and they entered a competition to have a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show and they won. And so some garden designers have designed the garden for them which will be in Chelsea in May. So they're building it now I guess. And so there'll be a physical installation and when the Chelsea Flower show is finished, they're going to relocate that physical installation to the Children's Hospital in Glasgow because they want to give kids who are in hospital the opportunity to benefit from this art therapy, immersive sensory experience that they can access that will help them on their road to recovery or in you know, if it's terminal, it will help them to feel supported and more engaged. We were able to introduce them to an organisation called Edify, I'm not sure if Fergus in the room yet? No, okay? So, Edify produces virtual reality, a platform that provides virtual reality experiences. So we were able to connect them up and you know, that's all we've done in this case, we've connected them up and they're taking this forward themselves. So again, this is an ecosystem story. So what's going to happen is they're going to digitise the garden environment, first of all in Chelsea and then in Glasgow, because some of these kids literally cannot get out of the bed, they're so ill, they cannot go to bed. So this is a way that they can have the same kind of experience as the other children that are in the children's hospital to give them that emotional mental health support at what is a horrible time for them. So tremendous example of the power of the ecosystem. So again, big part of what we're trying to do is to play our part in helping to build that ecosystem and to create impact over the long term and at scale. So, act three, we're now at the stage of looking at how do we scale it up? And how do we scale it out? So at the Tech For Good Summit last year, put this slide up, which was the first time we started talking about the Tech for Good Alliance, anybody who doesn't know what that is, or hasn't heard of it, please leave the room. We came up with a concept and it was inspired very much by a lot of the organisations that have very active Tech For Good programmes already. So if you look at a lot of the major tech companies, Cisco being one example, but last year, we had the managing director for Tech for Good from JP Morgan. We've got people from Microsoft here today, Microsoft has a massive investment in tech for social good. Lots of the big organisations do have that. But the challenge is, you know, that's something that requires a substantial sustained investment. Typically, it requires a team on staff who are going to manage a programme at that, because it's everything from sourcing opportunities for projects to work on, through onboarding the organisation's into those programmes, to execution of the programmes and to deliver the solutions. So any of the people who are from organisations that have the programmes will confirm that it is a huge commitment. The challenge for organisations that are not of that scale is how do you make an impact at scale but do it in a way that's manageable and achievable for you. And that's very much the motivation behind the Tech for Good Alliance. Over the last three years, we've had over 2500 individual volunteers who have signed up, about half of which have actively worked on a project. We've supported over 300 organisations. So in the course of doing that we've gained a lot of experience in, you know, what are the challenges? What are the pitfalls? How do we make these things work? And so what we're aiming to do is to encapsulate that within the framework of the Tech for Good Alliance, so that companies can engage in this in a much faster, a much more cost effective and ultimately more impactful manner. And delighted that, since that time, we've got a number of organisations that have signed up some which are in the room. So thank you very much, I'll pick on Fiona, particularly as the Club Exec for one of the AND Digital clubs, who was literally the first person who signed up and bought into this concept, leading the way for what we're starting to see is becoming a real snowball gathering speed going down the hill. So it's really great to be able to welcome the AND team and the others who are here from those organisations that have already committed to this. So just a little bit more about you know how this is all supposed to work. If you look at the background of Tech For Good in the UK, this a report from the dear departed Tech Nation. So maybe we shouldn't talk about that here because that contract went to Barclays Eagle labs. So oops. Anyway, the data is still interesting and still relevant. They did an analysis of the Tech for Good sector in the UK. And they came up with an estimate of about 1000 tech for social good companies in the UK, about half of which are profit and purpose companies, as they call it. So they're commercial enterprises, but inherent in what they do is intended to deliver social benefit. Half of them are nonprofits. But if you look at the number of employees in those companies they are typically very small. So you know, there's about 50% of them employing less than 10 people. So they're doing fantastic work, but they're doing it in smaller organisations and the challenge is scaling. And you know, all of us who come from a tech sector background, that's the first thing you think about when you're talking about growing a business, how do you scale it? How do you make it repeatable? How do you make it something that can be scaled out to many, many people? And that's the foundation of success of all successful tech companies, it's that ability to take a bit of technology, develop it and deploy it across many use cases in many organisations. So if you add it all up, it's about 30,000 people who directly were employed in the Tech for Good sector by a glorious accident of circumstance. The estimate was that there is about 3 million people employed in the tech sector in the UK. There's a movement called pledge 1%, which was started by Salesforce and Atlassian. And it is intended to encourage companies to commit 1% of their time, their technology, their profits or other equity, any one of those to supporting social benefit. So if you take 1% of 3 million, guess what, it's 30,000 people so we could double the size of the tech for goods sector in the UK just by every company in the sector giving 1% of the resources that they have at their disposal. That's doable, that's achievable. We're not asking companies to say, right, you know, we're going to hive off half of our of team to do this sort of stuff, it's got to be something that is manageable and sustainable for those businesses, if it's going to be done over the long term. So the whole idea is this, decide, we want to make something where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. So even if you take a Cisco, even if you take a Microsoft, if you add those together, and you add together all the other companies in the tech sector, the opportunity is enormous. The impact that we can have collectively is so much greater than any individual organisation can have, however impressive that is. So the idea here is to harness the human technical and financial resources of those companies, to apply them to Tech for Good in a structured way, to give them a framework within which they can do that. That means that it makes it so much easier for them to get started with it. If you look at most of the organisations who support good causes, and many organisations do they have volunteering programmes within their organisations, they offer their staff time to do this kind of stuff, they make the resources available but so often that goes on things that are not really utilising the skills of those people. So it's painting something or it's litter picking or it's whatever. And you know that's a valuable thing to do. But you know, next year, you're gonna have to go and pick up some more litter. And it doesn't actually address a problem at source, the whole idea of Tech for Good is to do something that has a meaningful impact over time. So you're not having to keep coming back and do the same thing over and over again. It's really important, I was talking to somebody outside earlier about the importance of being able to capture to evaluate, to recognise the work that people do. If you're asking people to contribute their specialist skills, it's important to recognise that and do it in a way that is consistent and cohesive, so that we can start to say across this ecosystem, what is the aggregate contribution, so for any individual company, you know, all the work that people do, how do we aggregate that up to say, Company X has made this contribution, as part of this larger contribution from the ecosystem as a whole. Great quote from somebody from one of the big four consulting firms that we spoke to said, we encourage our people to do social impact things, they go and paint a classroom in an inner city school, all that happens in these classrooms is that they are getting smaller and smaller every year with every layer of corporate paint that goes on and nothing changes. So that's the difference, we want to do things that are going to make a meaningful impact and actually create long term change. The model that we've developed, is based around the six P's. So first of all, is what are we going to do. So a vast array of different areas of activity that people could get involved with, we think it's really critically important that people are given the opportunity to work on things that are personally important to them, that they care about that matter to them, because they're going to get far more satisfaction out of doing it. And frankly, they're going to put far more into doing it because it's something that really resonates with them. So there are three pillars, which I'll cover in a slide in a moment. Within each of those pillars, there will be a number of projects that any organisation can pick to work on. So part of the role that we have is to curate those project opportunities, and to match them up with the organization's based on what their ESG goals are, what their teams feel is important to them so creating the project opportunities, the menu card, if you like that people can choose from. The partners, as we call them, are the organisations that are going to be on the receiving end of these projects. So they're the organisations that are looking for help to use technology at all or more effectively within their organisations to increase their reach, their impact and their effectiveness. The participants in the Alliance are those companies that sign up to become part of it and the other ones who will be bringing the time and talents of their people, their technology were appropriate to create these solutions that will be made available to that organisation. We also have a pool, so I talked earlier about we've had 2500 individuals who are signed up to work on Tech for Good projects through the Scottish Tech Army. The Tech for Good Alliance is a UK scope initiative so we are looking to address the UK as a whole. But you know, we even within the Scottish Tech Army, we've had quite a lot of volunteers who have signed up from other parts of the UK. So you know, again, we're trying to bring together as much across the ecosystem as we can. So it'd be a great opportunity for a lot of these people to come in as volunteers to work with some of the teams from some of these tech organisations. So you know, we're bringing in highly skilled people who have got tremendous experience in the industry and especially for people who are early in their careers, the opportunity to work alongside them, do something meaningful, gain some experience, put themselves in a short window, we think you will really valuable. And then ultimately, what we're seeking to build is a platform that will underpin all of this. So this will be taking all the outputs of all these different projects, things like the way we recognise volunteer contribution, the components that get built as part of this to create a platform that can then be something that will be the basis for scale. So I'm not gonna read through all these here, you can read them for yourselves. But basically, it's all about how do we create that, that ecosystem around Tech for Good in Scotland and the UK as a whole. There are lots of benefits, we would research companies that do that. And we've got some case study examples and we've got people in the room who are involved in doing work within the Tech Good for Alliance who are happy to talk to anybody who wants to hear about it. The benefits to these organisations we would suggest are, it's a very tangible and evidence based way of showing delivery against ESG goals for the organisation. So pretty much every organisation nowadays has a set of ESG goals, this is an opportunity to show we're making a positive contribution of practical contribution to realising that. So you can really tie into the messaging that's been used within the company and to all the stakeholders of the company as these are the things that are important and this is what we're doing about it. We can quantify it and we can show you and over time it's getting better, and we're doing more of it. There's a tremendous impact across the organisation itself, in terms of talent, attraction, development and retention. Again, the people that we've spoken to who take part in these projects, they all have a very positive thing to say about the fact that our organisation not only allows them, but also encourages them to do this, it's something that they see as being part of a company that has purpose is doing things that are meaningful, and it helps to give them both pride and purpose in what they're doing through this mechanism. But also for those individuals, it can give them the opportunity to try out new things that they don't get to do in their normal day jobs. You know, we're here in the Barclays campus today. We've been working with the Barclays team on site here, over the last few months, talking to them about the possibility of them becoming involved in this. And we had a session with them just recently over in Eagle labs there with the people from lower impact living who are with us today. And the team from Barclays, were just overflowing with enthusiasm for the opportunity to get involved in doing something that was meaningful, that was giving them the opportunity to try different tools and different technologies that they wouldn't normally be able to use it in the corporate environment, so much so that they actually said to us, the productivity that we get doing this is so much higher than we get on the stuff we do internally, we're really interested in seeing, can we take some of those tools back into the organisation. So that's a massive potential benefit for the organisation. If you can say, we can improve the way that we work as an organisation, through the learning that we do through this Tech for Good activity. That is absolutely huge, it's massive. So lots of potential benefits for companies getting involved in this, not the least of which being that rather than feeling that they're having to pathfind for themselves in this if they're not already doing this kind of stuff. It's an opportunity to say, actually, there's a mechanism here that's been proved to work, we can get involved, we can benefit from all of that, and we can contribute to making it even better.

So, the picture that puts all that together, these are the pillars so the social justice, inclusion and equality, skills and talent development which which also takes in equality of opportunity to high quality employment and environment climate change. If you look at the ESG statements of pretty much every company, at least one of those things will appear on that. So this is part of the attempt to present opportunities that really resonate for those organisations that mean that they can get involved in something that is meaningful to them. Obviously, within that, I talked earlier about the opportunity to select the projects that are impactful to you. Some organisations are really keen to work with organisations that are in the same community which they all live and work. Others are looking more theme based so they might be talking about asylum seekers and refugees is important to them. So it's flexible to accommodate all of that. The partner organisations to charities, one of the things that we've learned and certainly other organisations that have technical programmes have learned is that you need to be very careful in selecting the organisations that you work with to do this kind of stuff because not all organisations actually have the capacity to commit to this. So that's a very important learning point because the worst thing that could happen is if if we get an organisation that says we'd like some help, we find a company that would like to support that organisation, we put them together and nothing happens. Because people are too busy, they don't have the time, they can't make the commitment. And actually, you just lost both parties out of the ecosystem, because it's a really bad experience for them. So really important that we we have this access to the right kind of partners. And we're working with a number of organisations, including some of the funding organisations as a way to see how can we tap into their knowledge of these organisations already to help to prequalify if you like, the organisations that are going to be supported with projects and The Tech for Alliance. The partners contribute the projects in each of these pillars, the companies then get to choose which projects they want to work on. We've got the pool of independent volunteers, which can come from a variety of sources so I've given some examples there. We work a lot with CodeClan here in Scotland, the Digital Skills Academy, lots of volunteers have come through CodeClan into the Tech Army to get involved as a way of helping them to gain experience and to gain exposure within the tech industry. So many great stories of how that's benefited them in their early career search for new opportunities and access to employment with really, really great companies. So potential exists for them to get involved in some of these projects as well. You know, there's a lot of news in the press, obviously, about layoffs in the tech industry. So companies are downsizing, but there's still a shortage of talent, there's still a real competition for the best people. So there's an opportunity for companies to start getting visibility of some of the emerging talent that's coming through. And you know, a lot of them are genuinely very enthusiastic about the idea of growing their own talent. So this is an opportunity to help them to access that pool. And it tells you something about the people that they're dealing with, because they've stepped forward as volunteers of their own free will, in their own free time, because of their own personal commitment. So that tells you something about these people as well, in terms of you know, their approach to their life and work. And then finally, I talked about the platform. So this is the idea of how do we how do we encapsulate all this into a structure, that means that we can take it forward sustainably that we can scale it, and that we can have greater impact. So if you take the example of charities and sport, asylum seekers and refugees, there are lots of them across the country, they tend to do pretty much the same thing. They're doing it in different communities in different parts of the UK, depending on where people end up when they first arrive in the UK or where they should move to. But what they're trying to do to support these people is pretty much the same. So that's a great opportunity to say, can we build something that helps one of those charities to do that better? And can we then say, right, we're gonna go and see if we can find another ten charities that do the same thing, offer them the same solution. So they don't have to go through the process of the build of the solution, they can just access it, it's available to them as an open source solution that they can adopt. And they can take take on board much, much more easily than if they had to go through the whole process of creating it for themselves. We have a number of strategic partners that are involved in this with us, delighted to say that they're in the room with us already. So BCS the chartered institute for IT, is the body for I'm not sure if I'm gonna get the quote right here, guys. So bear with me, basically it's about increasing the standards of professionalism, increasing the professionalism in the industry and best practice in the industry and how do you develop the industry for the benefit of society as a whole. Glasgow Caledonian University, just up the road there, been a longtime supporter of the Tech Army in a number of different ways. So they give us access to academic expertise and excellence in things like how do we recognise contribution, and we're going to have a session that we're gonna be talking about that later on today. Inspiring Scotland here in the room, we've been talking with them as one of the examples of the companies that can help us to identify these organisations that will have the scalable solutions and will then help us to take them to other organisations. And finally, delighted to announce and Roddy is in the room today. Thank you very much. Community Fund has committed to supporting the Tech for Good Alliance through a really innovative mechanism, which is match funding. So the companies that join The Tech for Good Alliance, we ask them to make a financial contribution. National Lottery has stepped up to say we will match pound for pound the contribution of those tech companies. So everything that these companies commit to will be doubled, and therefore the impact gets doubled. And it's a huge and massive acceleration to what we can do with the target Alliance. So, key elements of the day Graham's already given you a pretty good rundown of that and I reckon I'm at 10:15 so I'm going to stop there. But thank you so much for the opportunity to talk to you today. Thank you for your interest in the topic, the contribution that so many of you are already making. Look forward to speaking to you all throughout the day, thank you very much.