In November 2023, we had the pleasure of supporting the annual ACOSVO conference for charity leaders which was held in Edinburgh. ACOSVO is the membership organisation that supports Scottish charity CEOs, senior management and Chairs. The focus this year on data, digital and AI was responding to the membership’s need for more information and an opportunity for open discussion.

The Digital Skills Gap is a major challenge in the UK, both in terms of individual skills for life and in terms of skills to be effective and productive in a work setting. We attended two events in November that highlighted initiatives designed to help address these challenges.

The Tech for Good Alliance, the UK-wide skilled tech volunteering framework programme created by the Scottish Tech Army, has announced a strategic partnership with GoCodeGreen, the UK’s leading carbon diagnosis and decisioning platform for software and related technology,

The Scottish Tech Army has today announced the launch of its Soundscape service, providing a ground-breaking audio experience built on extensive development carried out by Microsoft Research and released under an open-source licence. The service will provide a replacement for the current service, which will not be available beyond the end of August 2023.

This year’s Tech for Good Summit was good for many reasons, most of which you might expect, perhaps. Great networking opportunities, fascinating discussions and expert contributions from across the tech and third sectors. An unexpected outcome was an opportunity to partner with PwC on its One Firm One Day volunteering initiative, using their skills to conduct a feasibility assessment on using code released by Microsoft to create an enduring service to support the visually-impaired community.

The Scottish Tech Army has been awarded funding support of up to £350,000 over a two-year period by The National Lottery Community Fund., made possible by National Lottery players. The award provides for match funding of subscriptions from companies that sign up as participating members of the Tech for Good Alliance.

At our third Tech for Good Summit on 20th April we were delighted to welcome Philanthropy expert, Rhodri Davies to deliver our morning keynote presentation. In a wide-ranging talk, Rhodri set the context of the many challenges facing the charity sector post pandemic. In many ways the sector is facing a perfect storm of reduced financial reserves, shrinking income, higher wage bills and energy costs, all happening at the same time as a big increase in demand for the services and help it provides.

ISEE’s Journey to Establishing a Digital Presence with the Scottish Tech Army’s Expertise. As a new charitable organisation, ISEE is dedicated to achieving its mission of raising awareness of Irlen Syndrome. Irlen syndrome is a difficulty with visual perceptual processing and is not an 'eye' problem. A key part of the charity’s strategy is establishing a digital presence to help raise awareness.

Last week I joined an online session hosted by Social Enterprise Scotland discussing the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on volunteering. Attendees were a mix of SES members and organisations like the Scottish Tech Army which work to support social enterprises.

The context for the event was a report from Volunteer Scotland issued in September looking ahead to the impact of this crisis on both third sector organisations and volunteers.

AND Digital and the Scottish Tech Army are delighted to report on the successful completion of the first project to be delivered within the framework of the Tech for Good Alliance. This new initiative was launched by the Scottish Tech Army to drive the development of the Tech for Good ecosystem in the UK by building a bridge to connect the resources of leading companies in the tech sector with the digital needs of organisations in the third sector.

In September the Scottish Tech Army (STA) team was invited to our first in-person event at Codeclan - ‘The Road To Sustainable Software Engineering'. The event was held at CodeClan’s Edinburgh base at the foot of the castle rock. As always, we were warmly welcomed by the CodeClan team.

Eric Zie is theFounder and CEO of GoCodeGreen, an independent climate tech company that is dedicated to measuring the carbon efficiency of software products

Last week the Scottish Tech Army was given the opportunity to be part of Data Summit 2022, the flagship event of Data Fest, organised by The Data Lab. All the members of the management team have been part of big industry events over the years, but this was the first time that we had been at one as the Scottish Tech Army.

It’s Trustees Week so I thought I tell you about my own experience as a Trustee over the last three years.

I have been a trustee for Seescape, a Fife-based charity that supports people with visual impairment, for nearly 3 years. It provides a range of services from that include home assessments, sight support services, equipment support and provision and befriending.

As the criticality of the coronavirus pandemic has receded, we took the decision recently to retire the COVID dashboard that was created early in the pandemic by a very committed group of volunteers in the Scottish Tech Army. The project that created the dashboard was interesting for a number of reasons and we wanted to reflect on the project, what it delivered and what we learned from it.

Not long after the Scottish Tech Army started in April 2020, we were contacted by a new organisation, Social Good Connect, a not-for-profit volunteer matching enterprise based in Dundee. They had been planning to launch their new organisation later in 2020 but, seeing the urgency of the situation as we had when forming the STA, they brought forward their plans when the lockdown started, in order to help funnel help to where it was needed.

In the first step back into the non-virtual conference world, I attended The Gathering 2022 at the SEC in Glasgow last month. This was a return to a physical space for the first time in three years for the annual third sector conference and my first time attending an event dedicated to a world I’ve only come to know since the Scottish Tech Army launched.

Over the last 18 months, one of the major projects that the Scottish Tech Army has been working on is SOLE Scotland, the online community platform designed to support the wide range of civic, business, and organisational activities in Scotland’s towns and cities. Having run a pilot in Dunbar in 2021, funding was secured from the UK Community Renewal Fund, alongside continued support from East Lothian Council, to roll the platform out across the whole of East Lothian.

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.

This year’s Summit again gave us an opportunity to explore several areas of the developing tech for good ecosystem and provided the platform for the launch of the Tech for Good Alliance.

Collaboration and the development and promotion of the tech for good ecosystem are key themes for us in the Scottish Tech Army. We believe that, while there are many great programmes and projects being carried out under the banner of tech for good, the landscape remains fragmented and that as a result, the impact is less than it could be.

In the face of the ongoing humanitarian disaster in Ukraine, local communities continue to mobilise to great effect. Despite the daily horror stories, there are many examples of personal efforts to help support the war efforts, groups of friends driving across Europe to deliver much needed goods and food, van owners relocating from Edinburgh to Poland to feed the queues of refugees at the Polish borders and countless other inspiring stories of people rallying to support the people of Ukraine.