Digital participation: what's next

So as well as disappearing off on our summer holidays, we've also been doing a lot of work behind the scenes for a big push on digital participation this autumn. Here's a sneak peek at what's coming up, and a quick tour through who's who as the team continues to grow.

Coming up

Over the coming months our practical support for digital participation will ramp up significantly. Look out for:

• Let's Get Digital, a new business growth project to boost the digital capability of charities and voluntary organisations in Scotland
• The official relaunch of Scotland's Digital Participation Charter (you can sign early if you don't mind using our work-in-progress page)
• The first tranche of awards from a new digital participation Challenge Fund that we will be using to support community projects
• A new searchable directory to help people in Scotland to find find local face-to-face support to learn basic online skills
• A new set of consistent, accredited resources for people in Scotland learning basic online skills
• Our first steps toward making it easier for developers to link to and work with data about the third sector in Scotland
• Our next major digital participation event, #DigiScotFest North in Inverness this October

We're working closely with the Scottish Government to support their wider ambitions for a Digital Scotland, and are very excited about the difference that our programme will make for people and communities across the country. Stay tuned for more info on when different initiatives will go live and how you can get involved.

Who you gonna call?

To make sure we can deliver all of this we've brought some great new talent into the team. We love to talk so please feel free to get in touch if you'd like to support our work. To help you find the right person here's where people are and what they are (mostly!) up to:

• Chris Yiu (Edinburgh): developing our future strategy and the SCVO director responsible for our work on digital
• Sally Dyson (Edinburgh): managing our overall digital participation programme
• Lynne Swan (Glasgow): leading our work to evaluate digital participation interventions and track their impact
• Mary Sinclair (Glasgow): leading our work on the digital participation charter and challenge fund
• Bev Maclean (Inverness): leading our Highlands & Islands digital business growth project
• Alastair Watson (Edinburgh): leading our Lowlands & Uplands digital business growth project
• Gavin Bell (Glasgow): managing our Milo third sector data programme
• Kevin Bradley (Glasgow): leading our technical support for Milo users
• Rebecca Stafford (Edinburgh): helping out across the team and looking after our upcoming digital participation directory and online learning resources

That's it for now. The weeks and months ahead are going to be jam-packed so don't forget to join our mailing list if you want to be first to hear about what's going on.