Digital Scotland Festival, Glasgow Edition

What a difference a year makes. At last year's Third Sector Summit in Edinburgh we officially launched SCVO's digital participation programme, with much fanfare and some great guest speakers. It was early days for the team so most of what we talked about was the why: why digital inclusion matters, why it's about more than broadband, why charities need to get to grips with digital. If you fancy a blast from the past then you can take a look at the slides I used to set it all out. One year on, and at this year's Third Sector Summit in Glasgow we were firmly into the what: what we're doing to build a national movement, what we're doing to get funding and support out to local partners, what we're doing to help boost digital skills in Scottish charities. It's all very exciting, and a tangible follow-up to the Scottish Government strategy on digital participation that we helped to launch earlier this year. We also managed to squeeze in some one-to-one surgeries for people to pick the team's brains on all sorts of practical questions, from using online video and building mobile websites to finding out what works when it comes to helping people take their first steps online. Of course, the really fun bits are still ahead of us. Applications for the first round of funding and support from our digital participation challenge closed earlier this month, and we're expecting to start making awards this side of Christmas. It won't surprise you to hear that we've been inundated with applications, so we're expecting to be able to support all sorts of innovative community projects across the country. And on the charity skills side our first digital internships will be advertised shortly, with posts themselves starting early in the New Year. None of this would have been possible without the generous support we have received from Scottish Government, and from all of our partners across the public sector, businesses and civil society in Scotland. If your organisation is one of the many that has signed our digital participation charter then thank you - we're thrilled to have you on board. If your organisation would like to join the party then we'd love to welcome you. We're taking Digital Scotland Festival around the country over the next few months, and will be back in Glasgow again in February for a day of digital participation activity at The Gathering. In the meantime if you'd like to know more then drop an email to digital@scvo.scot or find me and all of the team on Twitter.