Tech For Good Live

We’re talking about International Day of the Girl - and there’s some unpleasant stats we’ll be dealing with. DSC gave the Charity Commission a proper hammering in the press. It’s just like those design twitter fights, but everyone is more polite, and we’re looking into a new DfE report on the effect social media has on mental health. And we have a guest with us today! Dinah Turner - Director of Stepping into Business which aims to empower every child to succeed in the 21st century through innovations such as Entreprenaws, their 5 star rated educational app.  Find Dinah on Twitter @dinahturner Find out more about Stepping into Business here. This weeks topics: Stat of the week:  Some stats from International Day of the Girl (Oct 11th): 1 in 6 girls have missed school because of their appearance 1 in 4 have not left the house because of their appearance 1 in 5 have avoided public speaking because of their appearance Source: https://bit.ly/2J7u3n0 130 million still not in s

Nesta have announced the finalists for the “Tech to Connect” competition. Fake accounts are lobbying the US government to destroy the internet. Facebook have done something again. It's probably awful? That’s normally how it goes, we can’t keep track anymore! We’ll also be talking about My Little Ponies. FINALLY. This is why Bex got into podcasting. And we have the return of a guest, Phil Lennon! Phil is a Freelance Lead Frontend, UI & Hybrid App Consultant, and part of the GROUP OF HUMANS. A curated network of the best designers, strategists, technologists and creatives in the world. You can find him online here This week’s topics: Stat of the week:  9.6 million fake comments made to US government by lobbyists in support of scraping net neutrality: https://bit.ly/2AGX97Q Charity news of the week:   Nesta announce finalists for Tech to Connect competition: Charity News announcement: https://bit.ly/32bu3tr  Full list: https://techtoconnect.challenges.org/finalists/

t’s October! Which means it is officially autumn. October, as you all know, is officially the greatest month of the year. A season of mist and mellow fruitfulness.   As the golden leaves slowly tumble from their branches, we’ll be covering a range of fascinating stories. The ongoing NHS privatisation is on our agenda. The CharityComms survey results are out, and as you’d imagine, everything is not ok.   We have a guest with us! Hera Hussain - Feminist and founder of award winning tech project, ChaynHQ, helping survivors of abuse get the information and support they need. She also finds time to help the Open Contracting Partnership to make government contracting more open. Find her on Twitter @herahussain This week’s topics: Stat of the week:  40% of small value NHS contracts were given to private firms following section 75 of the 2012 NHS act equating to £9.3billion in funding for 2018 - but the good news is this might be on the way out: https://bit.ly/2lKhOUZ  Charity news o

Welcome back to a brand new season of the Tech for Good Live podcast. That’s right - we got renewed for another season. That’s how popular we are! Either that, or we all just made a collective decision to stay onboard this sinking ship. We’ll see it out to the bitter, bloody end. We have lots to talk about this week, including a report that Facebook seem to be doing something about privacy concerns of 3rd party apps - whaaaat? European charities are lagging behind the rest of the world with online donations, and tech thinks it can stop your neighbour from being an absolute knobber. Host Bex, Producer Paul and this weeks researcher Harry Bailey are joined by trustee, journalist and all round tech for good allstar, Pauline Roche! You can find Pauline on Twitter @paulineroche And you can find Ellie Hale's 'collating climate tech for good' post here: https://bit.ly/2n9Ua4q Stories mentioned on this weeks pod: Stat of the week:  “Tens of thousands”. Facebook suspends tens of thousands of app

It’s the season finale, so that means it’s time for something a little bit special. For this episode Bex travelled to London and sat down with the exceptional Ellie Hale, Dama Sathianathan, Nissa Ramsey and Sarah Drummond.  It’s not often you get such a formidable group of experts around the same table, so we dive straight in and debate the very state of tech for good in the UK and beyond. Sit back, enjoy, send us thoughts, questions, complaints on twitter @techforgoodlive. You know the drill. Things mentioned: James Plunkett article - https://medium.com/@jamestplunkett/the-good-future-d154eac8473c  Tech vs Abuse - https://www.techvsabuse.info/  NetSquared Meetups - https://www.meetup.com/topics/netsquared/  Climate-KIC Innovation Fund - https://www.climate-kic.org/  Nesta DSI4EU - https://www.nesta.org.uk/project/digital-social-innovation/   Impact.Tech - https://impact.tech/  Everyone on the pod can be found on Twitter: Sarah - @rufflemuffin Nissa - @nissaramsay Dama - @dama_yanthy Ellie - @eg

Welcome to another episode of “Making Friends With…” - a special series where the Tech for Good Live team sit down for an in-depth interview with someone who is doing exceptional work in the tech industry. In this episode, Jonny and Fay chat with Laura Klein, Principal at Users Know & Author of UX for Lean Startups and Build Better Products. Laura also hosts the What is Wrong with UX podcast. We talk about UX, and how to actually build products that work, and chat about all things Silicon Valley. We hope you enjoy the episode. Please drop us a review on iTunes, and if you’d like to hear more interviews and conversations like this, let us know who you’d recommend we interview. Send thoughts, suggestions and feedback on Twitter @techforgoodlive.

This week we are talking about Ecosia and the Amazon being on fire. The hashtag #CharitySoWhite was trending on Twitter - we talk about that. And there’s a new food-sharing platform that we should probably tuck into. Pun 100% intended.  And we have a great guest with us today! Michal Wisniewski from Flock, a #HR #tech #startup that recently completed the #LisbonChallengeAccelerator. Flock’s mission is to help people find their calling at work. They help businesses to raise performance by aligning core values and motivations within organisations. Find out more here: https://yourflock.co.uk/ This week’s topics: Stat of the week: Ecosia search engine sees a 1,150% spike in users following Amazon fires: https://bit.ly/2NHm4A8 EU offers £16million to help fight Amazon fires: https://bbc.in/2PkFQ6D Which Brazil are turning down: https://bbc.in/2Loofpx But is the situation worse in Africa: https://bbc.in/2MOKHLh Charity news of the week: #charitySoWhite:  https://bit.l

On this week’s show we talk about digital maturity in the charity sector. We’ll also find out more about some awesome new Girl Scout badges, such as coding for good and Tom is going to rant about recycling.  Our guest this week is Nissa Ramsay. Nissa is a freelance research consultant working in the tech for good space. You can find her on Twitter @NissaRamsay In her own words, it’s pretty niche, but if what you do sounds like what Nissa does - i.e. you work in UK charity sector, freelance, in the tech for good space, but basically you are not a tech person - then join their community. Or send them info on projects you need (paid) help for and want to advertise to freelancers: http://www.thinksocialtech.org/community On Digital Maturity - if you’d like to take part in the next phase of the research, please get in touch with nissa@thinksocialtech.org  You can hear more about the findings from the Digital Maturity research via the Catalyst network at the end of August, via their Medium blog

In this weeks episode, Producer Paul chats to Dsposal's Sophie Walker and Tom Passmore about what they got up to at last months Bluedot festival, a music, science and culture event held at Jodrell Bank Observatory, combining music, live science experiments, expert talks and immersive artworks. They discuss their attempts to demystify data in a fun and informative way with Open Data Manchester and of course, their special interest in the on-site bins. We also had Harry Bailey out in the field, inverviewing Matthew Cobb. Matthew studies the sense of smell in maggots, as part of his job as Professor of Zoology at the University of Manchester. He is also interested in the history of science, and his most recent book, Life’s Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code, was shortlisted for the 2015 Royal Society Winton Book Prize. He discusses what insights we have gained from robots down the centuries, in particular how we think about the brain, and explores what tomorrow holds. Further reading:

There’s lots to talk about this week, including a new charity social network that aims to connect charities with volunteers and the fact Carole Cadwalladr has launched a crowd funder to fight back against the enemy of everything and everyone that is decent...Arron Banks. We have a wonderful guest to mull all this over with, Gemma McCall, Co-Founder of Culture Shift. (https://culture-shift.co.uk/) Culture Shift is a Tech For Good business whose mission is to positively change culture. You can find out more about their first product Report + Support at reportandsupport.co.uk And you can find Gemma on Twitter @Gezzabelle This weeks stories: Stat of the week:  84% of rape claims in London are classified as a crime by the police but only 6% make it to court. https://www.theguardian.com/law/2019/jul/31/only-3-of-rape-claims-london-result-convictions-study-says Charity news of the week: Smiley Network aims to connect volunteers and charities: https://www.charitydigitalnews.co.uk/20

We're back in the studio this week and Sophie Walker from Dsposal is in the hosting hotseat, sitting in for Bex who is currently drowning in a sea of foster kittens (no, really!) She's joined by podcast regulars Greg Ashton and Paul Jakubowski from Reason Digital. And we have a special guest, Alex Alexandrescu. Alex is Co-Founder of Dicey Tech, helping companies prototype and develop smart products, using that same knowledge to create future-proof educational experiences. You can find out more about Dicey Tech at https://diceytech.co.uk/ and you can find Alex on Twitter Topics this week include: Stat of the week: 24% of people in the UK now use digital payment apps and NSPCC have taken advantage of this: https://www.charitydigitalnews.co.uk/2019/07/29/digital-wallet-donations-lead-to-increase-in-giving-for-nspcc/  Charity news of the week: Instagram launch donation stickers in Europe: https://medium.com/@NicolaGeeTweets/instagram-donate-3f679bf4ac74  Quick mention... £2 million available from Ne

In this special episode of Tech For Good Live, the team embarked on a trip to a wonderfully sunny Leeds, to meet the team from The Digital Cooperative Development Consortium (DCDC) while they ran the Coop Hack, a two day ethical tech hackathon as part of Cooperative Fortnight 2019. DCDC is a cooperative body built with technology at its heart (a platform coop). They dream of a future where software is created collaboratively and distributed frictionlessly, a future where tech companies operate fairly and transparently, and a future where technology empowers individuals, by protecting the privacy and self-sovereignity of their data. On the podcast we're joined by Benjamin Babik, Co-Founder & Technical Architect at DCDC. He talks to us about what happened at the hack, how DCDC got started, and his hopes for cooperative technology in the future. You can find out more about DCDC at https://dcdc.io and on Twitter @dcdcio Find more from the Tech For Good Live team @ techforgood.live Get in

We have an action packed episode of greatness for you this week. Amazon have teamed up with the NHS. What could go wrong? Stanford are doing something around facial recognition. There is also something in the agenda about “Giving a Shit for Good”. That seems on brand. We have a smaller team this time out, small but mighty. Like poorly diluted Vimto. It’s too syrupy. Too strong. Everyone regrets it. But it is powerful. Host Bex Rae-Evans is joined by Reason Digital's Greg Ashton, and Head of Design at Snook, Jonny Rae-Evans. Topics discussed in the episode: Stat of the week: 10,000 images and 82,000 annotated heads is just one data set created by Stanford university for facial recognition datasets https://nyti.ms/2Lho8hT Charity news of the week: Give a shit for good: https://giveashitforgood.org/ Tech news of the week: Quick mention for the Facebook record fine: https://bit.ly/2XRrNcM Main story - Amazon to team up with NHS: https://bit.ly/30OEUbV Related: https://bit.ly/

Welcome back to the Tech for Good Live podcast. Season Two ended in a big way - with live podcasts brought to you from Camp Digital. It was fun. Such guests. Much podcasting. But we are back now in the Manchester studio, that means it must be time for 2019 Season Three.  On today’s agenda…  we talk about Charity whistleblowing, Facebook trying to create a global currency and there's a cathartic rant about the term 'diversity & inclusion'. Our guest this week is Kirsty Devlin. Kirsty is Founder and Programme Director at coding school, Recode UK. Recode believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn to code, regardless of their postcode. They provide a free coding education for individuals who belong to under represented groups within the technology industry and to anyone for whom adversity or financial hardship acts as a barrier to entry. Find out more about them at https://recode.org.uk/ This weeks topics: Stat of the week: Charity whistleblowing has increased by 83

We're back at Camp Digital and here is the final episode of our three special podcasts recorded live in Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre. Hosted by Rebecca Rae-Evans, Activist, strategist, commentator & account manager at Sigma. She's joined by podcast regular Ben White , Director at social enterprise Reason Digital. Joining them for a deep dive into some of the topics raised throughout Camp Digital 2019 are Cennydd Bowles and Matt Edgar. They discuss the latest news, trends and controversies in ethical tech. Cennydd Bowles is a London-based designer and writer with fifteen years of experience advising clients including Twitter, Ford, Cisco, and the BBC. His focus today is the ethics of emerging technology. He has lectured on the topic at Facebook, Stanford University, and Google, and is a sought-after speaker at technology and design events worldwide. His second book, Future Ethics, was published in 2018. You can find him on Twitter @Cennydd Matt Edgar is head of design for NHS Digita

We're back at Camp Digital and here is the second of three episodes recorded live in Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre. In this episode we are joined for a chat by the fireside by Robin Christopherson from AbilityNet. Now globally acclaimed as leading experts in the field, AbilityNet specialises in advising individuals on adaptive and assistive technology, as well as helping clients design attractive websites that are easy to use by all.  A member of the Guild of Accessible Web Designers, Robin has a first-hand appreciation of the importance of good web design and its impact on accessibility. In 2017, Robin was awarded with an MBE in the new year's honours list, for his services to digital inclusion.  Robin's projects have included raising awareness through a busy public speaking schedule in Europe and the US, and co-hosting AbilityNet's Tech for All podcast.  Robin is also very active in advising government and organisations in the area of digital strategy. He serves on both parliamentary

We're back at Camp Digital and here is the first of three episodes recorded live in Manchester's Royal Exchange Theatre. In this episode we are joined for a chat by the fireside by Gavin Neate, founder of Neatebox. After serving with The RAF in the Military Police, Gavin began an 18-year career with Guide Dogs for the Blind as a Guide Dog Mobility Instructor. His comprehensive knowledge of visual impairment and routine experience of poorly installed pedestrian crossings led him to design a unique system, with which any person living with reduced mobility, could safely and automatically operate a pedestrian crossing using their smartphone. The ‘Button’ system has been winning innovation awards and is now installed in the entire town of Largs and increasingly available across the UK. This success has led to a range of smart solutions based on the challenges disabled people face every day and the latest release, “Welcome”, has provided a smart platform which connects disabled shoppers to customer se

This week we are talking about the exceptional turnover of socially responsible tech companies in the UK, a startup has launched an AI to help detect parkinsons and Twitter is doing research to work out if Nazis are bad. Yep. 2019 everyone. It’s 2019. (definitely not 2009) We have a guest! Co-Founder and design partner at Hactar, Jonty Sharples. Find out more about Hactar at http://hactar.is/ SPONSOR ALERT: OneSub is our June sponsor and is also super interesting. OneSub is a brand new startup that’s on a bit of a mission to break the “echo chamber” - that thing we’re all stuck in where Facebook and Google and Twitter only show us more of the same. OneSub’s trying to change all that. By training an AI to read the news for you, OneSub is able to show you an alternative perspective to any news story in seconds. It learns what you’ve read so that each day it can highlight just a few important stories to help you build a balanced view of the world… and to put your phone down when you’re all caugh

Voice assistants are well sexist. We talk about that. We talk about a massive overhaul of the process of booking a breast and cervical cancer screening. Apparently it should be as simple as booking a plane ticket. Nancy Pelosi isn’t drunk - but Facebook is indifferent either way. And we have a rant about how doing good things with tech is turning into a pissing contest. Eyerolls all round. And we have a special guest! Seren, Creative Awareness Lead for the CATS campaign. You can find her on Twitter https://twitter.com/Seren_AHJ CATS (Cancer Awareness in Teenagers Society) are all about making sure young people know the common signs and symptoms of cancer - Find out more about their fantastic work at http://www.thecatscampaign.org/ This weeks stories... Stat of the week: 5% of voice assistant interactions were “unambiguously sexually explicit”: https://bit.ly/2Wg6lN3 and https://bit.ly/2Mu07FM UNESCO report “Think Piece 2”: https://bit.ly/2YZm154 Charity news of the week: Making a

The law and facial recognition software collide, the charity digital skills survey is out and you *just* have a bit of time left it to complete it. And is Google news feed biased or is it just the news? Our guest this week is Lisa Murgatroyd from One Million Mentors, a national online platform to recruit, train, and deploy mentors to organisations working with young people. You can find her on Twitter - https://twitter.com/lisamurgatroyd Reminder that we're still in full crowdfunder mode! You may not know this, but we’re a team of volunteers and we survive off favours, late nights and lunch times so some cash would help us reach more people and help us champion using tech for social good. There’s only a week left and if we don’t reach the a target we get nothing so if you want to contribute to the work we’re doing, show us some love! On this weeks show... Stat of the week: Google news search results left leaning by 62% and many other stats: https://bit.ly/2LOAjDZ Charity news of the week: