Tech for Good Summit 2022 - a review
The second Tech for Good Summit organised by the Scottish Tech Army took place on the 28th April 2022, the second anniversary of the launch of the Scottish Tech Army itself. The inaugural event on the same date in 2021 had a strong theme of what had happened during the pandemic and how organisations and individuals were emerging from it and looking forward to what a recovery would look like. Of course, with hindsight now, there was still a lot more to come in relation to COVID but nevertheless, the focus for us was about addressing a much wider tech for good agenda across a number of areas.
This year’s Summit again gave us an opportunity to explore several areas of the developing tech for good ecosystem and the attendees heard from a wide range of speakers and panellists who shared their experience and insights from a wide range of perspectives. It also provided the platform for the launch of the Tech for Good Alliance, an initiative of the Scottish Tech Army that is designed to provide a mobilising framework for organisations in the tech and tech-related sectors – the discussions throughout the day highlighted the potential that exists for companies in these sectors to join together to create positive change and the Tech for Good Alliance will be focussed on capturing that potential and directing it to deliver high-value outcomes.
The event started and finished with keynote sessions, the first featuring Celia Tennent, CEO of Inspiring Scotland, who addressed the evolving challenges faced by the third sector and how technology has been seen to make a difference, and the second featuring Ali Marano, the founder and Global Managing Director of JPMorgan Chase’s Tech for Social Good organisation, a leading example of such programmes in the corporate world that has been operating for over 10 years. These perspectives from leading practitioners in their areas gave fascinating insights into both the need that exists and how organisations can organise to have impact that addresses that need.
On the theme of creating impact, the Tech for Good Titans panel discussion, chaired by Raymond O’Hare, formerly of Microsoft and now CIO of Enable Scotland, featured representation from four organisations that have made substantial and sustained investments in Tech for Good programmes – Microsoft, IBM, Salesforce and JP Morgan. The discussion covered a great deal of ground and for many us was summarised in the words of Vikki Bradney-Spencer, UK Corporate Social Responsibility Leader at IBM, who said “We mustn’t be thinking of each other as competitors. We need to be collaborating together. We’ve got so many of the same goals. We should all be working together not trying to do all of our own things.”
The theme of collaboration and combining to create impact at scale was at the heart of the discussion amongst our Tech for Good Ambassadors, four leading figures from the third, tech, corporate and education sectors. The wide-ranging discussion explored how we can lower the barriers to effective collaboration between sectors and work together to develop a stronger ecosystem that draws on the diverse thinking and talents of the people working in them.
Our panel discussions again focussed around three themes – Agents of Change, the experiences of the volunteers that have worked together to provide digital solutions to real-world problems across the country, The Art of the Possible, examples of some of the approaches and solutions that have been delivered, and the tech for good ecosystem, with examples of collaborations that have already been established across organisations and sectors. The recording of all of these discussions can be seen on our YouTube playlist of recordings from the day.
In addition to the discussion sessions, our Volunteers!, Assemble challenge introduced an interactive element to the day with three teams from AND Digital, Aegon Asset Management and the Scottish Tech Army being given 2.5 hours to generate ideas for solutions to challenges submitted to the Scottish Tech Army. The teams were highly creative and productive and all three of the projects are going to be taken forward for delivery by the teams that worked on them on the day.
The next year will mark another stage of the evolution of the Scottish Tech Army as we work to develop the Tech for Good Alliance as a UK-wide initiative, recruiting as members the more forward-looking and enlightened organisations in the tech industry. If that sounds like your company, please register your interest at http://sta.ngo/alliance - we will be delighted to explain in more detail and help you take the next step on your tech for good journey as an organisation.