Episode 12 - Checking in with Alistair Forbes
Transcript
Graham Johnston 0:00
Hello, and welcome to episode number 12 of the Scottish Tech Army podcast and today is a special episode. Absolutely delighted to welcome the co founder of the Scottish Tech Army. Alistair Forbes. Hi, Alistair. How are you?
Alistair Forbes 0:13
Hello Graham, I'm well thank you. Loving the big build up. So let's see how we go.
Graham Johnston 0:17
I'm sure you'll live up to it. We've got a lot of great stuff to cover today. And hello also to my co host, Kirsty McIntosh. Hello, Kirsty.
Kirsty McIntosh 0:25
Hi, Graham, how you doing?
Graham Johnston 0:28
Very good. Thank you, very good. So like I said, today is a big episode, we've got a number of things to cover. There's three key areas actually that we're going to cover with today's Scottish Tech Army podcast. So without further ado, Alistair, I know you've been back to back on media commitments. And I know that this is definitely your favourite media commitment of them all. And a lot of big news. So let's start with the first one, shall we? Because there was a bit of a, an award that was handed out to you and Peter, on behalf of the Scottish Tech Army. Do you want to just explain a little bit about that?
Alistair Forbes 1:06
Yeah, thank you. Um, it was something that was announced last week. And it's under a scheme called the Points of Light Award. And this is something which originally actually was set up in the States by George Bush Senior as an award to recognise volunteers who make a contribution in various different fields. And it was - the UK version was established in 2014. So it's been going for some time now. And basically, it's managed by the Cabinet Office, and the UK Prime Minister awards these Points of Light awards. And, and so we were contacted a week before to say we'd been put forward for this and they were "minded to do it" as they say, and so yeah, that was a surprise. And it was it was great. So that was announced on the Monday and Peter and I were obviously delighted about that. But the most important thing for us really was it's a recognition of the amazing work that the volunteer community has done in the Scottish Tech Army. You know, I mean, there was this possibility at the outset that we might throw a party and nobody would come, you know, in which case we'd have just been too crazy guys with an idea that never went anywhere. But thankfully, people have turned up in their hundreds as we know, and done amazing work. So this is really all about the work the Tech Army has done. And you know, it's useful, obviously, to give us an opportunity to highlight that. So we're thrilled by that.
Graham Johnston 2:34
That's amazing. Yeah. And as you say, you know, this was over 1000 volunteers now, as part of the Scottish Tech Army.
Alistair Forbes 2:41
Yeah, last time I looked, it was about 1,130. And so yeah, we're still, you know, one of the nice things is that we are seeing a continuing stream of volunteers signing up. And so, you know, we're continuing to swell the ranks. And, you know, we see some people who have gone back off, furlough and some people are getting new jobs, which is fantastic. That's definitely part of what we're trying to support. And so, you know, that inflow of new volunteers helps us to, to make sure that we've got the capacity to, to keep on doing what we're doing.
Graham Johnston 3:11
Amazing. And, you know, totally and utterly deserved in terms of getting the award, I think from you know, what I've seen everybody's just committed so much to the project. And, you know, from commencement to where we are now, it's an unbelievable achievement, really, and support a number of different charities.
Kirsty McIntosh 3:29
Yeah. And I think also, it's probably worth pointing out to that we need those volunteers. You know, we have, we have lots of projects that are coming through where, where those volunteers are still needed, they're still very much a requirement for what the Tech Army is doing out there. Definitely.
Alistair Forbes 3:45
Yeah, absolutely. So as well as, as well as a stream of volunteers continuing to sign up, we're, we're getting continued new project ideas that are coming through. So it's definitely not a case that things are tailing off in any way, it's still going very much going strong,
Graham Johnston 3:59
Brilliant. And when we, when we - at the end of this podcast, you'll hear lots of ways in which you can get in touch with the Scottish Tech Army if you would like to either volunteer or you have an idea of a project. So right at the end of this podcast, you'll have all of those, all those bits of details. One of the big things that the Scottish Tech Army has done and actually has had a lot of press recently. Alistair is the dashboard that's been created for the COVID-19 stats. So we covered this on one of our previous episodes, where we had a couple of the volunteers who were heavily involved in creating that dashboard, but over the last few weeks, it's grown and grown in terms of its visibility. And, and this week, there was a huge amount of press around it so would you like to just explain a little bit about that because it is specifically around a particular element that's quite unique to the dashboard.
Alistair Forbes 4:55
Absolutely, yes, we've been working on this - or the team has been working on this ever since the initial homebrew project, the homebrew challenge that we set out, which was back in June, and they delivered the first version of the dashboard in double-quick time. So you know, two weeks for the first sprint of that, and another two weeks for the combined effort across all the teams that had organised to do it. And that culminated in a presentation to quite a number of senior people from Scottish Government, who were very impressed by the work the team had done. One of the people who was on the call is the Chief Design Officer of the Scottish Government. And she asked the question, in that call about what have we done about accessibility of the dashboard. And it was things that the team had thought about in building it. So the idea was, it was conforming to accessibility guidelines as much as possible. But that conversation triggered the thinking around you know, graphs are great way of visualising things if you are sighted. But if you're not, they're not so good. And so that was what triggered the thought of how could we extend the accessibility of this and make it available to people who have visual impairments of one sort or another? And one of our volunteers, Eirini (Kominou), who had been active in the project already has impaired vision. And so she took the impetus initially to prototype a solution using a technique called sonification, which is where dataset is represented using audio tones. So she had had a look at that, researched it a bit and worked with a number of the others in the DataSTAr star team. Donal Stewart in particular, was very heavily involved in it on the development side and Luke (Woollett) on the project management side of it. And so the team worked to integrate that into the dashboard. And so where it is now is that every time series chart that we have in the dashboard can be played as an audio file. And it uses a sequence of tones to represent, you know a higher pitch represents higher numbers. And so it's an affordable way of people getting a feel for how the evolution of the data has gone. And as you say, it's a novel technique in this space, as far as we know, it's the first time it's been applied to a public health type of dataset. And so, yeah, we've had a lot of interest from various media outlets, following the press release, we put out debated. And, you know, on the day that we made that announcement, we saw a really big spike in terms of people accessing the dashboard, lots of interest online, you know, the Twitter response from lots of people, both those who work with people who've got visual impairment and others in the tech community and broader, really interested to see the application of this technology to this dataset. So, of course, as soon as you do something like that, you get lots more ideas of other things you could and should be doing so that the team continue to, to look at what improvements they can make us it's, it's be very well received. But there's more to come. And so you know, the team is still busily working away on it.
Graham Johnston 8:07
That's absolutely incredible. And as you were talking there, I've, you will have heard if you listen to the podcast, you'll have heard what the sonification behind what Alistair was saying. And we'll place a demo, there's a link to that demo elsewhere as well. And we'll communicate that link too. Kirsty.
Kirsty McIntosh 8:26
Yeah, I was just gonna say that I found it as a sighted person, I actually find that sonification really, really interesting. It makes you think about the data in a very, very different way. And I really, you know, I'm really looking forward to sort of seeing what else comes out of the, the ideas that come out of that, I think, it would be brilliant for kids to kind of hear that - em you can make data sound interesting instead of just look interesting. It's not just about numbers and statistics. It's actually there's a story being told when you listen to that sonification I think it's really, really interesting. And I'd like to see a lot more of it. I think it's great.
Alistair Forbes 9:02
Well, in fact, the journalist on the BBC, who covered it, she posted later in the day on Twitter saying, ever wonder what a coronavirus outbreak sounds like, well, now you can find out. Yeah, so yeah, it's a whole different perspective on absolutely,
Kirsty McIntosh 9:16
You know, you kind of get a greater sense of the speed at which the disease is moving and I think that's one of the really interesting things that you hear you maybe don't quite pick it up quite so dramatically if you like when you look at it, but you do and you hear it so it's Yeah, well worth a listen.
Graham Johnston 9:30
Definitely. And I think that's it when you see the dashboards, you know, and the graphs that are there it is dramatic. And that is, as you say, a really important part of being able to make sure that that information is being able to be played to everybody and I think this is a great way of being able to do that. So, you know, hats off to the team that that did it and you know, it's getting the type of press that it deserves, and great to hear that there's lots of different innovations that have been driven from this as well and I'm sure we'll be able to communicate what they are on their on future podcast episodes forthcoming. Great. And then the sort of the the other thing that we wanted to talk to you about today Alistair is the announcement that was made last week . For those that missed the announcement just cover what that announcement was?
Alistair Forbes 10:20
Absolutely. Yes. One of the things that has been really important to us in increasing awareness of what we've been doing and to thereby to, to generate impact has been working with organisations who can introduce us to particular communities that we want to engage with. And so, last Thursday, was the annual conference of ScotlandIS the trade body for the tech industry in Scotland. And it was the first time they've done it wholly online, so it was a new adventure for them. And we have agreed to formalise our partnership with ScotlandIS, as one of the the key organisations that we'll be working with going forwards. The tech industry in Scotland, obviously, is very well developed. And there's lots of organisations who are part of that. ScotlandIS is very much the kind of the nexus, the concentration point for all those organisations in terms of the industry as a whole. And one of the things that is part of what we've been doing, and will certainly be part of an important part of it going forwards is how can we help people who are at the early stage of their career in the tech industry, develop their experience and and help them to find those roles in the tech industry. And we formed the view very early on that it would be really valuable to us to have a relationship with ScotlandIS in order that we can get feedback from the industry as to what we most valuable in terms of we could offer as experience to new graduates be they from further and higher education, or from the likes of Codeclan, the Digital Skills Academy to round out the skills they've already acquired through their training, and to give them the practical experience that would help them in terms of delivering real world projects, interacting with client organisations, working with more experienced people to get some guidance and some mentoring from them. And so that's why ScotlandIS was very much one of the organisations that we were keen to engage with early on. And they've been really receptive, really supportive. And they're 100%, behind what they've seen the Tech Army doing, and the opportunities to partner up with them, in order to continue to develop that is really exciting. So we're delighted that first of all that the we're up for doing that. And secondly, obviously, that we got the visibility at their conference. So it's really great news for us.
Graham Johnston 12:42
Very, very exciting. And so what, what would do you think the next step is going to be as to what are we going to see next from that relationship?
Alistair Forbes 12:50
So, the intention is to structure a programme with them whereby we can offer companies in the tech sector, a way that they can engage in the work that we're doing. And, and there will be a number of ways that we envisage that can happen. Certainly, it's in terms of helping to inform what we do as as I was outlining there. But also, many of the companies in the sector have got programmes whereby, as part of their community engagement, the give their staff the opportunity to volunteer, to do work in company time, you know, that ranges anywhere from a couple of days a year, some companies have got you know, six or more days a year that the offered staff as a benefit to the staff and the community. So we see that there's quite a Tech Army should be a very natural home for a lot of people who are in the tech sector who want to volunteer, more specifically, because it gives them a real opportunity to use their specialist skills. You know, lots of people volunteer in many different ways already but you know, it doesn't always make use of the specialist skills that they've got. So by providing an opportunity for them to apply those skills to tech projects, we think there's a really natural synergy there. So that's part of the way that we intend to work with ScotlandIS going forwards. One of the things that we've seen in the course of the pandemic has been that the gulf between the world of education and training and the world of work has definitely widened. And so, you know, fresh graduates coming out of education, are finding it much harder to get that first role. And so, what we're aiming to do working with ScotlandIS and other organisations is to help build the bridge between those two worlds to to ease that transition. And so that's, that's the ultimate objective or we're trying to do, part of the work that we're doing.
Graham Johnston 14:40
Fantastic. Yeah, because we can see I mean, from speaking to the some of the volunteers that we've had on this, even on this podcast, the opportunity that they've had to be able to come on and gain experience and even on last week's episode, I think it was last week's episode where we had you know, we had Agenor Technology, you know, exactly that. People that were able to come in gain experience in an industry that they would never have really had an opportunity to gain experience in and actually develops them as an individual, but also helps to broaden the range of their experience to take back to the business. So it's, yeah, fantastic double win, isn't it?
Alistair Forbes 15:12
It's a really great example. In fact, you know, it's kind of the case study almost of what we would like to do. And it was really heartening that Agenor, really, from the outset, as a company bought into this and really encouraged their, their staff who were on furlough to, to get involved, and really put the backing of their company behind it, as well as the individuals. And what was tremendous to hear in that episode of the podcast was, the benefits that were coming back into the company as a result of it, you know, so it was genuinely something that everybody benefited from. And that's, that's ultimately what we'd like to do with as many organisations as possible. So it's, as well as being a good thing in its own right, it delivers benefits back to those companies. And, you know, you had some of the volunteers from Agenor on the podcast who were talking about exactly that. So yeah, it was a great example.
Graham Johnston 16:00
So, um, we wouldn't be right to have you on the podcast and talk about all these things without sort of talking about, you know, looking back over the, the sort of last few months. What have been your kind of big highlights, we've obviously just spoken about some there, which are pretty massive, I'm sure. But thinking back to when you first had the idea, when you first set up the Scottish Tech Army, what are your sort of biggest highlights from those last few months?
Alistair Forbes 16:24
Gosh, there are quite a lot. I think, you know, if you take the big picture, it's just been the response that we've had from the tech community, you know the hundreds of individuals who didn't hesitate to step forwards as we talked about, you know, the original intention was to target people who were in furlough, who may have been made redundant. And we've had lots of them. But you know, we've had so many people coming in - at one end of the spectrum, graduates who are just at the start of their careers getting involved, and people in full time employment who have jumped in and have made amazing contributions. So that that, I guess, is the biggest thing in terms of the experience of being in the Tech Army. The other key thing, and again, you featured it on the podcast before is just some of the stories about the organisations that the volunteers have worked with, you know, the, the impact that the organisations and the volunteers working with them have seen has been truly amazing. And, you know, a very wide range of scales, things that for a tech experienced person are relatively straightforward, can make a massive difference to organisations that just don't know where to start with some of this sort of stuff. And at the other end of the spectrum, we've got organisations who, while they are a lot more experienced, they were really struggling to cope with the impacts of what was happening around them. And, you know, so many great case studies and quotes from those organisations. So, you know, right at the very outset, we explicitly set out to do three things really, one was to provide that capability to the organisations to help them get their jobs done, you know, a consequential benefit of that, obviously, is the impact that the what they're doing has is is amplified. And the third was very much about providing that sense of meaning and purpose to the volunteers. So, you know, we had no idea how it was going to work. But the fact that I think, you know, all three of those have materialised has been really fantastic
Kirsty McIntosh 18:31
I think that one of the really nice things that I've experienced in the Tech Army is sort of how exciting it is for all of these people within the tech community to arrive in the Tech Army space and realise there are so many of them, they've all just sort of kind of worked out that the tech community in Scotland is much bigger, much broader than they actually realised. And, you know, it's really nice to kind of addressed sort of some of those isolation fears that people had about not having anything to do when they were on furlough or while they were job hunting and, and that the Tech Army is somewhere where they can, can arrive and get some great experience and actually make a difference at the same time. I think that's certainly a highlight for me, anyway, I know you didn't ask me, but I thought I'd tell you that anyway.
Graham Johnston 19:15
(Laughter) Brilliant, and a great addition. Thank you. Finally, before we, before we wrap up, it's been great chatting to you. What's next as far as you're concerned with the Scottish Tech Army, what's your hopes and dreams for the next phase?
Alistair Forbes 19:35
Well, and I've got lots. So you know, when we first started out, this was very much a rapid response kind of initiative. And what's become really clear is the fact that there is a huge opportunity to create longer term contribution to so many organisations around Scotland. So where we're at at the moment is just defining exactly what that is going to look like but you know, there's no question in our minds that this is no longer a project, it's now an organisation then, you know, kind of without wishing to sound overly grandiose, it's a movement actually, it really is something that is catalysing something that I think can have a really massive impact on the communities in which we all live in Scotland. And so, you know, that that's something which we're just framing up at the moment and we'll be sharing more detail of that within the next couple of weeks in terms of exactly what that looks like, but it is definitely around continuing to, to harness the potential of the tech community in Scotland for for good across Scotland as a whole.
Graham Johnston 20:41
Yeah, it makes you very proud. It says certainly, it certainly is and sounds like the the next phase is going to be incredibly exciting. And that sounds like a future podcast episode in itself.
Kirsty McIntosh 20:52
Definitely
Alistair Forbes 20:54
Might have to make a video podcast for that.
Graham Johnston 20:57
Yeah, well, this is this could be the next phase.
Alistair Forbes 21:01
Oooh. Ooh.
Graham Johnston 21:01
There we go. The vlog has been born. Alastair, thank you very much indeed for joining us today some great highlights some brilliant information I'm sure everybody listening is going to want to - if they've not already been in touch with the Scottish Tech Army and wants to then the details of how to do that is coming up next. But thank you very much indeed for your time.
Alistair Forbes 21:24
Absolutely. And thanks to both of you, Kirsty and Graham. The podcast is something that you know has really kind of taken off and it's now very much part of the STA firmament. So it's great to, to have that. So thank you very much for all the hard work that goes into making it
Graham Johnston 21:40
You're welcome.
Kirsty McIntosh 21:41
That's good.
Graham Johnston 22:10
Well that's it for this week's Tech Army Podcast. I hope you enjoyed listening and here's all the information you need about getting in touch.
Wendy Stubbs 22.15
Our podcast music is by Whisky Kiss, our logo is by Helen Davies and Porridge Design. If you'd like to know more about us and what we do you'll find us at www.scottishtecharmy.org or on LinkedIn and on Twitter @ScotTechArmy