Episode 5 - Volunteer Stories #3

Project Manager Cameron Butchart on how volunteering for the Scottish Tech Army made furlough less daunting, his work with Young Enterprise Scotland and his desire to stay involved even though he's back at work. 

Transcript

Kirsty McIntosh 0:00
Hello and welcome to Episode Five of the Scottish Tech Army podcast. Thanks for joining us once again. I'm very pleased to welcome today on the podcast for Volunteer Stories number three, Cameron Butchart. Morning Cameron

Cameron Butchart 0:13
Morning Kirsty How you doing?

Kirsty McIntosh 0:15
I'm fine thank you, I'm fine, back from holiday and, and on it already for the STA so...

Cameron Butchart 0:19
Fantastic.

Kirsty McIntosh 0:22
Cameron's a project manager for the STA and was working with us originally when he was furloughed from Edinburgh Airport. Was that your role at Edinburgh Airport as well, Cameron?

Cameron Butchart
0:34 Yes. So been at Edinburgh Airport for five years. An IT project manager there, which has been a fantastic and, yeah, still with them.

Kirsty McIntosh
And there you were twiddling your thumbs, you had absolutely nothing to do and you discovered the Scottish Tech Army. How did you come across it?

Cameron Butchart
I found it on LinkedIn actually, and it was, um, I think I signed up in week two of the existence of Scottish Tech Army so signed up and yeah I got my got straight, straight in and got my hands dirty tried sign up to get a few projects and then yeah I think in a few months so worked with six charities which was..

Kirsty McIntosh 1:16
Gosh that's amazing, we'll need to give you some kind of gold medal or something some kind of Army army army colours or something like that for for so many. And have you enjoyed it? Has it been? Has it been work or has it been fun?

Cameron Butchart 1:29
It's been fun actually. It did certainly pass the time for furlough, I like to be kept busy anyway, so to kind of not really having - the thought of having not very much to do was quite a daunting thought for me during furlough, so then Scottish Tech Army kind of certainly kept me busy for a few hours a day, and which I really enjoyed. I found it really rewarding as well.

Kirsty McIntosh 1:55
Good stuff. Can you tell us a bit about some of the projects that you've worked on? Just an idea of the kind of work that you were doing and the problems that they were having.

Cameron Butchart 2:03
Yeah, so I think the main one that I worked on was with Young Enterprise Scotland. So a team of STA volunteers, went in, and originally, they wanted to kind of find...What I find a theme across all charities is that they were very used to kind of face to face interactions with their clients or service users or customers, and, and pretty much overnight, they weren't able to do that. They had to quickly scramble around and figure out how to kind of move to an online kind of offering. But a lot of third sector charities have struggled with that, and don't have the knowledge and skill set and to kind of define that kind of strategy to kind of get into that space. So, yeah, so with Young Enterprise Scotland, they kind of came to us and kinda really needed help on how do they deliver their programmes and the courses to young people in Scotland. And, and so yeah, so we went in, took a look at their 'as is' essentially and then went through a process of I think it was about four to six weeks in total, various different kind of techniques and helped them understand how they will transition from what their used to can as this new new way of life of digital offering digital strategy thinking.

Kirsty McIntosh 3:40
That's wonderful because that must be the most terrifying thing of all I think for any organisation actually, when they don't, we they don't really know what's possible when they certainly don't don't know how to work out how to get there.

Cameron Butchart 3:50
Yeah, absolutely. Certainly in the third sector they don't necessarily have that technical kind of business, kind of strategic type thinking. And you know, normally you can tap into that and go kind of in to your consultancies or your contract kind of workers and you can be £500 plus a day, you know for that type of thing. And so it's great to be able to get community together with that kind of some resource and allow the third sector to tap into that skill set. And it's been hugely benefit for them.

Kirsty McIntosh 4:28
That's fantastic. I mean, they certainly they, they seem very pleased with what's what's happened. And it's wonderful that they were kind of up for it as well, that they were that they were they recognised that they were ready to, you know, to take that step. And I think one of the, as you say, one of the things that most charities do is that sort of face to face interaction. That's where the empathy and the sympathy and the care sort of almost comes from is that being able to look somebody in the eye and, you know, and let them know that you're you can see and understand, you know, what they're going through and it must have been really difficult for so many of these organisations to switch to a digital alternative for that. But I think it's great that we've been able to prove that all of that is still possible. Even through, you know, even through a webcam on a on a laptop, I think that's, that's absolutely brilliant.

Cameron Butchart 5:14
Yeah, absolutely. And being able to demonstrate the way, you know, you would approach a different, a particular subject or problem or issue or opportunity. And the way we've kind of approached that they've kind of seen how to approach it and we've never, I've never met any of these charities so and so they'll hopefully be able to see that and take some of these kind of tools or approaches and, you know, put that into their line of work on an everyday basis.

Kirsty McIntosh 5:43
So was there quite a big team from the STA that worked on that with you, or was it quite a small?

Cameron Butchart
5:47 Had about four or five people working on that project, which was good.

Kirsty McIntosh 5:51
And did you run it? Did you run it as a, as a professional project for want of a better expression, you know, structure, etc?

Cameron Butchart 5:57
Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. We, we had had some sort of kind of lean, kind of agile kind of structure kind of latterly towards the end of the project that kind of the STA team kind of moved away. And it was kind of just left with myself to kind of finish off a few things. Interestingly, run that as a design sprint, so something that was brought to my attention at the very early of early stages of STA about design sprints. I'd never heard of that kind of methodology approach, liked it quite late. I did some studying into it and ran the latter part of the Young Enterprise Scotland project in a design, design sprint methodology, which is good fun.

Kirsty McIntosh 6:39
Yeah, that's fantastic. It's fantastic. And so you and I have also worked on a couple of projects for a charity, charity up north, which has been really interesting. Those are still ongoing. And the thing that strikes me about them is that actually, although the four projects are the one organisation one of them is completely, completely different. And the other three are, you know, technological problems, if you like that require a resolution, which I think is quite interesting, but one of them is sort of completely it's about digitising an entire sort of service offering almost, which I think is really interesting. And I don't know about you, but I've really enjoyed it. I think it's, it's sort of, it's taking its time to kind of get up and off the ground and finalise but really, it's quite nice to, to see that our ideas and our advice is being considered seriously, it's really good, isn't it?

Cameron Butchart 7:31
Yeah, it's good to connect, provide that idea generation. And it's such a, such an early stage of the project. And so, so yeah, it'd be interesting to see how that progresses over the next few weeks or months.

Kirsty McIntosh 7:45
Yeah, be nice to be able to look forward to sort of seeing the outcomes of that. And it's been it's been really, really good. And actually, it's quite interesting that that's, that's an organisation that it's an organisation that doesn't care for people in need, but actually, it provides some really vital services, you know, within a very, very large sort of community. And so it's actually quite interesting that the experience that you get of all these different organisations that have sort of charitable status, they don't just they don't just cover sort of emergency services, if you like that there are other things kind of going on there as well. And they're also learning the hard way that digitization would have been really useful during lockdown. So and it's good that they're so receptive to that and that they're willing to make the necessary changes. So you're back of furlough, congratulations. And, and what's it like being back at work? And sort of, I don't know, what's it like being back at work? How does it feel? Are you enjoying it?

Cameron Butchart 8:42
Yes. Yes, as I said, it kind of kept me really busy with STA over furlough, so it's wasn't too difficult getting back into work, but no, it's been good to get back to the airport and and hopefully, get things will get busy and from a passenger perspective. And we'll get back in the community back at the airport, which will be good fun, but still continuing with the STA I've got a few projects, I just want to get over the line. And and certainly would be interested not running six projects at once. But I'm certainly very interested in you know, can I keep into one project a monster, one charity and focus on them going forward.

Kirsty McIntosh 9:29
As you said already about design sprints, so you can really feel it sort of contributed to your own personal development as well?

Cameron Butchart 9:36
Oh yeah, 100% so new kind of agile techniques to run projects or to kind of .... So which is, which I can apply back to, to my line of work at the airport. And have you made some good connections within the STA, it really kind of kind of helped introduce you to new people within the tech community in Scotland Yeah there's been quite a few people up new connections that are gonna keep in touch over LinkedIn and and kind of just on on WhatsApp and stuff so it's it's has been.. I'm yet to meet them but

Kirsty McIntosh 10:17
Oh I hope their not a big disappointment

Cameron Butchart 10:20
Hopefully will be soon once it's safe to do so. Yeah

Kirsty McIntosh 10:24
Did you get Did you get much involvement or did you do much of the virtual watercooler donut calls?

Cameron Butchart 10:29
Yeah, yeah on Slack so that was quite, I really quite like that term, the virtual watercooler.

Kirsty McIntosh 10:36
I think it's great. I think the future

Cameron Butchart 10:40
Oh yeah, definitely is you know, going in an office you always bump into somebody while going to the kitchen or the water cooler or something and

Kirsty McIntosh 10:49
Yeah, its the bit you miss actually doesn't it's the bit you miss, you know from a physical or work environment is quite nice to be able to sort of try and find an alternative and actually I find, I work for myself and networking is all part of, you know, my whole business development and of course it disappeared in the process of the lockdown, but actually I find that kind of networking much more efficient because people are on a call or on the Donut Call they have something in common which for us on the on the virtual water cooler was the Tech Army. So you've already got some kind of conversation that you can kind of kick, kick off with. But actually, I don't know somehow, somehow it's much easier to find out about people and it's much easier to talk about the things that interest you, I think on these water coolers, so long may it continue. I think it's absolutely you

Cameron Butchart 11:36 I
think you were actually one of my first people I met on the watercooler

Kirsty McIntosh 11:40
No they're good and we're actually using them for the not the virtual watercooler, we have hosting orientations, so any volunteer that's that's either joining new or just feels a bit kind of lost in the slack workspace, which is a bit busy at the moment can join an orientation session. One on a Monday, one on the Thursday and and just kind of come in and, and have a chat with people and just basically ask questions. Where do I find this? Where do I go for that? How do I do this? I mean, we have a new intranet page that sits on top of the confluence platform, which is really fantastic. It's a really good way of kind of finding your way around the system now, but but we still like those calls. It's really nice to meet people as they come into the space. And it's really nice to watch other people introduce themselves to each other. And you just kind of feel that, you know, right that's them, it's like first day at primary school. Here's your new friends, off you go, and I know that they'll they'll kind of come across one another at some point or other in the next few weeks, probably on the Donut Call actually, which is which is really quite nice. It's quite good.

Cameron Butchart 12:40
No, it's good. I really like that kind of idea. Excellent. Especially, you know, as most businesses kind of have to work from home, I think, you know, quite quite a few businesses should be adopting that type of idea. Yeah.

Kirsty McIntosh 12:54
That's good. That's good. Well, we'll be coming back to you, Cameron, because we're going to be doing some round table discussions with some of the organisations that we're helping and and your input would be really welcome with that.

Cameron Butchart 13:05
I'd love it. Kirsty McIntosh 13:06 So for the time being, thank you very much. Cameron Butchart 13:10 You're very welcome.

Kirsty McIntosh 13:13
Short and sweet this week. But I really enjoyed that conversation with Cameron. And he throws up some really interesting topics that definitely beg for greater investigation in the future, whether it's somebody with even his level of experience being open and willing to learn new things through the Tech Army, to his observations about the third sector and their approach to digitization. So thanks very much for listening. Catch you next time. Bye for now.