Gathering into the One Digital Zone

What do you get when you cross a Raspberry Pi fruit keyboard with a virtual reality snowman?  A 3D fruit salad slush puppy would be a good guess, but not quite the right answer. It was, however, one small part of One Digital at the Gathering 2017 which proved to be a fantastic opportunity for staff and volunteers from across the third sector to get involved in digital activity during the two day event. With half of all charities and one in five people in Scotland lacking basic digital skills, SCVO’s Digital Team wanted to ensure attendees got the chance to develop their skills, make connections with others doing digital and head back to their local communities feeling digitally inspired. We kicked off with our ‘Leadership in a digital world’ session, where people had the chance to hear from a range of leaders covering the public, private and third sectors. We also heard from third sector digital innovators who are using technologies to improve services and outcomes in our ‘Showcasing innovation & tech for good’ session. Next up was our practical roundtable sessions where attendees could grab a seat with experts to find out more about digital tools and ‘how to’ tips and support for getting the best from being online.  The tables were full and no wonder with a stellar line up like Appear.in, Ross McCulloch, Slack, Texthelp, RNIB, Technology Trust, Young Scot, Paisley YMCA, Scottish Government and SCVO. Our final digital session was all about ‘Inspiring Growth’ with Google Digital Garage sharing hints, tips and tricks for third sector organisations to get the best out of their free tools. Supporting all these great sessions was the Digital Zone stand in the main exhibition space. It was hard to miss and there was a great buzz across both days. There was so much for attendees to get involved with, including:

• user testing of SCVO’s Good HQ, Good Moves and Funding Scotland
• assessing their digital skills levels
• finding out more about Scotland Digital Participation Charter
• cracking the Raspberry Pi coded fruit keyboard song as part of our digital treasure hunt
• having a drop-in session with a digital expert to having a go at creating digital art with our Virtual Reality (VR) kit.

There was also a strong digital presence from our stand neighbours. We particularly enjoyed hearing more from the Alzheimer’s Scotland Tech Team about how innovative tools are helping to make living with Dementia more manageable, with some interesting future developments in how VR could help this further. It was also great to see SQA promoting their free Digital Learner Guides for all to access to help build their own confidence and those they support to get digital. No sooner has the Gathering 2017 finished than the planning for 2018's event has begun. So what’s up our digital sleeves for next year? More fruit keyboards? Maybe. More 3D snowmen? Possibly.  More digital inspiration for the third sector? Definitely! Let us know what digital content you’d like to see for 2018 by Tweeting @digiscot. #OneDigital