Lucy Paine talks to us about what to expect from this year's Bath Digital Festival. We discuss the digital divide, which is this year's Tech for Good theme at the festival and we talk more widely about her work with TechSpark to strenthen the tech community.

Transcript

Arielle 0:00

Welcome to the Tech for Good southwest podcast. I'm your host, Arielle tie, and today I'm joined by Lucy pain. Good morning, Lucy. Good morning. How are you doing? I'm doing well. It is a Monday morning, but I'm feeling pretty good. How about you? If early, isn't it Whose idea was this?

Lucy 0:18

Sounded like a good idea when we planned it, as it always does. You're saying I got Brighton earlier, which feels like a great idea until you have to do it. But now it's good. This is good. It's fresh. We can't think too much this earlier the day. Yeah, that's true. So today, Lucy, we're going to be speaking about the bath digital Festival, which starts on the 10th of July, which is very exciting. But before that, it'd be really great to hear a bit more about you and your work. That's a very broad question.

So I'm a freelancer, which accidentally happened four years ago, I moved back to bath and around here and I moved back out back for a role that I was really excited about, which didn't quite work out for various reasons. And I threw my net out to all my people I know. And I ended up working for tech Spark, signing up tech, Swindon, which was the tech community for just when at the time it's now textbox, when the Wiltshire I also for three years was doing social media for adjustable tripod ladder company as you do tripod ladders, who knew how much you needed them. But I've also since done work for the University of West of England for an innovation for growth project and taken on tech sparks bath community, which is where it all started over 12 years ago, as well as doing some consultancy work back in Brighton where I was for 10 years. I do lots of random things, but it's all about helping people really, the key thing for me is having spent five years at Sussex Innovation Centre.

I love helping business owners on their journey, just being a small part of that. I was doing power panels at NatWest last week. And I really love listening to people who run their own businesses and finding out why they do it and what they're doing. And being a little part of that journey and supporting them in whatever ever way they might need bounds grey, and what inspired you to get into your area? Well, we were chatting a little bit about this before. I mean, I think the word career is quite amusing, isn't it, I've just done lots of jobs, and I've taken left or right turns and done different things across across the years. And it all came together at Sussex innovation that actually I realised I've got quite a good playbook in terms of how to help those businesses. But I'm also programmed slightly differently.

Having done five years of managing 12 people having 6070 Live projects, I couldn't go back to a job that was like one thing at a time. And so I love having almost too much to do having almost too much buzzing around my head. It's a it feels like a form of masochism. But it really gets gives me that buzz in the morning that I have that variety. So I know you do a lot around the region around bringing together the tech community and sort of building these collaborative networks. Can you tell us a little bit about some of these projects you've worked on to give us a flavour of what all of this means? Yeah, this is one of the key questions is like what does tech spark do and as you write, it kind of gets a igloos. Everyone together, and it amplifies. There are loads of people doing amazing things everywhere. And the problems with busy founders is going to come out and talk about it.

So when I started with tech, Swindon four years ago, it's like, is there actually a tech community in Swindon, Wiltshire? Yeah, there's loads, but you don't know about it. And it seems it's the same imbalance. There's loads of wonderful little creative agencies that will take startups but they don't come out and engage because they don't think traditional networking, communities are quite right for them. So one of my key challenges is getting them to come out and, and tell us about the really cool stuff. They're building the apps, they're creating the platforms. This is I mean, we'll get on to the vessel in a minute. But that's a great platform for it. So the projects that I work on, we have events like Third Thursdays and a project called Tech for growth, which connected those organisations who really need to help with technology, which started in 2021, a lot of companies just didn't know what to do with social media websites, with our community.

We've been a lovely sort of middleman, supporting those asks, into our community, who then work with businesses who normally wouldn't be able to afford them. It's been funded by the West of England Combined Authority. My role is basically to go out there and be curious and find out who's doing what, where and grab their information and share it tech spark gets huge number of visitors like 52,000 unique visitors to the website every month, you know, our reach is huge, and we're not for profit. And we're funded by lots of people sponsoring and supporting us in different ways through projects or direct sponsorship. So we have the ability to be very neutral in our engagement and support this community.

I feel really empowered that we can help support and mentor these organisations without any agenda. And what we say to people is pay it forward, you know, right at the very beginning when you've got no money when you're a startup when you're bootstrapping it, we'll do all we can to help you. And then when you get big and successful don't forget how we helped you come on be a part of the journey which is what all the original founders of TechSpark do. And the Rocketmakers, Storm, all these guys are still all involved, and they help in the next generations. It's pretty special.It sounds special and so unique, like, I'm not sure people realise, you know, that sort of thing exists.

Arielle 5:13

And I think, you know, working for Tech for Good southwest, there really is a power in convening isn't there just getting people together to talk. And sometimes that sort of work is underfunded, because it's like an add on, it's a nice to have. But actually, by building those connections, it can really strengthen work that's going on in all of these different organisations, just facilitating those conversations. So you say it sounds so simple, just getting people together.

Lucy 5:38

TechSpark was formed when a group of founders wanted to get together and compare experiences, you know, time money, people or the regular challenge of being a founder was just a dozen of them initially, and it's grown from there. So when you see South Pass when the watch of founders and 13, Southwest founders, which we have in Swindon, you just see the magic happening, just people taking a couple of hours out having a beer and a pizza meetings, really interesting people. And you'll say, you'll hear later Oh, yeah, we started on this project together, or I'll give them a shout out. And suddenly they've got people engaging on their project. It doesn't, it feels like it's really simple. But as you say, it's not seen as it's not funded. Because it's very difficult to put the exact measurements on what the impact was.

We saw the impact of it not existing in lockdown. It wasn't the same on a screen. You couldn't build those those strategic relationships, you could do transactional work, and you online, we all did it. But you couldn't really build the energy that you have. At Third Thursday, we get 60-70 people every month is great. And the energy is amazing.

Arielle 6:35

Wow. And you're you know, you're you're definitely out and about, aren't you because you are also on the steering group of Tech for Good South West. And I know you've you know, you've been to a lot of those events and really supported Annie and that network as well. And the bath digital festival, I think that's what we're gonna go to get on to now. I mean, what an exciting thing that happens once a year, it'd be really great if you could tell us a bit about this year's bath digital festival and what we can expect.

Lucy 7:04

Oh my gosh, it's intense at the moment. That pretty few weeks away, there's so much to do so much you could do period of it. So Bath Digital Festival has been going for a few years, I think about again about 1011 years. And a lot of the original founders of BathSpark have also been involved in the bath digital festival. But this is the first year of tech spark curating it. So we do Bristol tech festival every October, and Bath Digital Festival used to be very near to Bristol tech festival, we've completely split it away. So it can have its own space to breathe. So it's in July rather than the autumn. And we'll also put the Sparkies which is our big awards party in the middle of it, which will be 500 people at Parade Gardens, it will be very, very fun, hopefully hot, that'd be good as well, wouldn't it but trying to explain to people it's the opposite of a black tie do it's a big party in a park with street stalls, but bathrooms. So festival, we're both kind of we're trying to be very careful with the brand. It's our first year looking after it, but also bring our own flavour to it.

It will be very different to previous years, it will be our community showcasing we've got an emerging tech showcase on the Monday because lots of people came to me and said, I've got a really cool thing. Can I do a half an hour slot and talk about my cool thing. And they said they would have been like 20 or 30 little half an hour slots of people. And I thought well, that's really no one's gonna go with all due respect, because you know, it's difficult isn't it to find time to go to these sorts of events. So we put them all together in the Monday morning, start with the bacon butty and go and explore, and meet all these people who are doing amazing things. And we've got a similar version of that on the Wednesday, which is immersive tech. So basically, on the Monday emerging, if it's small, an app or platform, it's going to be on the Monday morning and if it's big and experiential, because we're taking over new at work. So we have loads of space, it's gonna be on the Wednesday morning. So I've been trying to glue again back to this sort of thing glue themes together glue ideas together. And we put the five themes of the day or beginning with see just to give people a bit of a hook. But it's very loose, we want to talk about everything, the collaboration, critical thinking climate, and climate being from your mind, the planet, everything's very broad. But we have been working with people to really make their event strong and be very defined on the audience you don't it's like if an event isn't really clear who it's for, and is it being for nobody.

Unknown Speaker 9:13

But we've had an amazing support. So SETsquared have lent us Carpenters House for the week, Newark Works, which is an amazing space by the river. It only opened a few months ago. So it's got some big spaces which aren't rented just yet they will be next year. But TCN have led us use them for free to just take over these big immersive pieces and pop a caravan of innovation at the farm which is going to be totally random. Yeah, it's been really good fun it it is very tasteful almost there in terms of the schedule. But it's everybody who's interested in tech or working in tech. We want people to come again that the word curious. Come and see what's going on come and learn what AI could do for you Come meet Google garish come and see Dr. Nicola Maillard from BT talking about the future of work but everything could be very tangible. Not too many panels not too many Talking Heads, more workshops, very engaging. It's going to be really intense. It's gonna be a good week.

Arielle 10:03

Wow, it sounds brilliant. And remind us of the dates again. And I suppose how people can actually find out more and book to come.

Lucy 10:12

That's a good point that would be helpful. Yeah, so 10th to 14th of July. And it's all in central bath, we said to universities bring bring your content into the town, everything's going to be a 10-15 minute walk. And basically, you can find it, we've just got some wonderful new pages up to it every single day has its own page, because we had this one scroller, and it's getting too long. So if you go to the website, or if you google Bath Digital festival, you will find all the schedule and you book, each individual event. It's all free. And each individual event has its own registration page.

But I'll be really honest, if on the day you fancy coming, just come, you know, we're not strict we want the more the merrier. We've also going to have my world having a bit of space in Middletown at 15 Gay Street. Annie is going to have her hackathon there as well. So that's our one kind of in the town presence. But it's not specifically designed for tourists. So for few kind of tech savvy, intrigued ones come along, that's all good. But we want our community to come along.

Annie has done a great job of putting a whole stream of of tech for good conversations into the week. Because we felt that that wasn't specific to any one day. It's just a conversation. It's essential to have across the whole the whole week. And you know, beyond obviously, of course, but we wanted to, as you say, I love working with Annie and I wanted to make sure that that was really high profile for our festival. Yeah.

Arielle 11:34

And so moving to the Tech for Good stuff at the festival, that Tech for Good southwest a leading on it starting the week, my understanding is the week is starting with a mapping session mapping the digital divide. So asking those questions about what's actually happening now, what those challenges are, what do we already know about the problem and what already exists. And then mid week, there'll be a hackathon, where actually we can work together to try and address some of those challenges.

Lucy 12:05

But again, having impact, you know, not just talking about as well, I love so you're on the Monday, it's like, let's lay out the challenge. And then let's address the challenge. And on the Friday, let's review it and reflect. So I want it's going to have momentum to it, which I think is really important, because we've all sat in meetings where you just feel that nothing's gonna happen off the back of it. I've sat in presentations with people just talking about the state of the world. So I love Annie's idea of putting these pieces together. So that we want, I want this time next year to look at how we've moved forward.

And it dovetails lovely, really well rather into all of the steering group conversations that we were on of. We don't want to sit there and assume everyone's and just talk about what we could do. We want to see what we have done and who we can involve. And I think this is a great for me, the Bath Digital festival is a really good platform to give this conversation another amplification. Because I think people might not know how they could help or what Tech for Good means for them. And I think this is what we can do on these sessions.

Arielle 13:08

Yeah, absolutely. And I think so many different people working in tech are, you know, interested in doing something for good, aren't they. So even if their organisation isn't socially focused, so many people working in tech want to use their skills, to put them to good use. And the digital divide is such an important and relevant topic right now, I think is easy, particularly for people working in tech to see the benefits of moving services online. There are huge positive developments happening in health care and education, etc. But actually, that divide is deepening. And so people who don't have access to technology, whether that's due to kit, or connectivity, or skills, they are losing access to these very basic and fundamental things that we need in life. Some massive domino effect, isn't it?

Lucy 14:08

That's I'm really excited about a product called Meshii, which is coming out this year, which is from Bath, and it just allows you this is a very dummies guide to it. It allows someone like who lives in bath to share their internet into the machine network to allow people who don't you can't afford internet to access it. I'm not gonna pretend to understand how that works. From technical perspective. It doesn't have any impact on me. But that's it's like a really simple way of me being to make a difference to somebody without having to do a thing. It's like really lazy Tech for Good. But I think that's that's really important because other people feel if people don't know what they could do, they end up doing nothing quite often. It's overwhelming, like climate change isn't I don't know where to start. It's like we just start doing recycling. Just start turning the, you know, the light off to the heating down. And Meshii was about when you go away on holiday and just give my internet 100% into that network to help somebody.

You don't realise all the little nuances of the relationship we have with the Internet. As you say education, health, lockdown really highlight that didn't all those kids who were supposed to be working from home, what happens if you can't happen if you've got one really old laptop that the whole family needs? The amount of poverty in Bath? Again, there's something that's not really spoken about enough. We focus on Romans and Jane Austen. But actually, there's a real challenge and how St. John's are involved in this week as well. And obviously, with the Tech for Good, again, what can we do with our community to help those people who need it most that connecting which is what obviously, what Tech for Good is all about?

Arielle 15:38

Yeah, such a such a brilliant topic, and really looking forward to coming to the festival and talking about it and see if, through that hackathon, we can actually come up with some ways of you know, some solutions, and actually things like you said, tangible things, actions that were that we can actually take.

We have been talking now a bit about tech for good. And I'd be really interested to hear Lucy, what Tech for Good means to you.

Lucy 16:05

We've talked about this question about I feel like it's a test that I'm gonna get wrong. But I thought about this. And to me, it's all about using technology to make the world a better place, which is a massive sentence, isn't it. And that's why I like to mesh because it gives me a real kind of hook. But whether it's addressing the climate change to the digital divide education information,

I'm old enough to have lived before the internet before technology was really a major part of our lives before mobile phones. And it can have such an amazing positive impact on all of us. There's the negative side to it as well. But it's how we can use technology to make everyone's lives better in whatever flavour that might mean. It's exciting, but it's also fast, isn't it as a topic? Yes, it is. And I struggle with that question myself. But I think I moved to Bristol about five years ago. And I'm just so amazed by the amount of the tech companies in this area. So across like Bristol, and bath is just mind blowing. And actually the amount of good the amount of tech for good work that's going on, and that so many of these companies, particularly like the startups, they do want to do things to help the environment to help the planet, you know, as well as they're running their businesses, whatever that aim is of that business.

It just feels like there's so much more of a connection now, between, you know, actually wanting to run a business have a great career, but also make sure that you're having you're making some sort of positive impact. I don't know if you feel that with a lot of the tech companies that you're that you work with. Oh, absolutely. And as you say, they start like that from day one. That's how their business is gonna run. And it's not. We had a big debate at Third Thursday, the day about B corps. And it's not done all obsessed with that. It isn't all about box ticking. It's being it's running a good business, isn't it looking after their people? Well, considering their environment, physical as a space as well, as you know, mental health wise, those the founders, the new startups are running businesses that are revolutionary compared to like the world of work when I started, when, you know, there was no consideration for what your business's impact wasn't any level other than bottom line.

I know that feels very cliche, but it's true, isn't it? We, the world of work has changed so much. And that the what we want from our technology and the discussion we want to have about the provenance of the items we're buying, or the carbon footprint of the organisation we're working with. We as consumers care about that now, which we never did before. Because we now have the power to find the data. We didn't know where our clothes were made. We didn't know. I mean, it we talked about, there's a great thing about hybrid working, it's not going to save the world. You know, there's still the carbon footprint of us working from home. But we are now asking all these questions which we never could before. We just accepted. That's the way it was.

Arielle 18:57

Yeah, I think it's it's so refreshing. It's so exciting to see these new founders. It's really hard for some of the old legacy organisations to go through this journey, though.

Lucy 19:07

They've got the massive offices, and they're very Yeah, they're kind of the old school way of working. This really uncomfortable for them.

Arielle 19:15

Yeah, it's, it feels like, you know, yeah, the things are hopefully changing in the right direction. Before you go, is there anything any sort of last plugs about the festival or you know, anything you want to share? Where do we want to point people to?

Lucy 19:33

anyone listening to this who has a tech business or digital business, which basically, it's a very broad sentence, isn't it? Get in touch, I want you to be a part of our community. I want your story. I want you to come along to our events. I want to share your news, your updates your stories, and just help be a part of the energy of our community. And definitely come along and have fun 10th The 14th of July grab one of those days come and spend a day in Bath and meet loads of lovely people. That's one of the best thing about our community is that all the tech has absorbed the ones you've met as well. There's just a really great energy for getting together and collaborating. And as he said earlier, that's where the magic happens. Because most people actually want to help each other.

And I just think most of us don't know quite how and take for Good is a good route into that. But even as a founder, it can be really lonely. And getting together and being part of the textbook. Community and energies I think makes it but we know it makes a massive difference to people. So get involved. Now, so exciting. And how can people get in touch with you, Lucy? Do they go on to the textbook website? Or can they contact you directly? takes my website. Yeah. textbook.co I'm just lucy@textbook.co they're very welcome to drop me an email. I'm on Twitter as well. Just get in touch. Send me send me your ideas, your thoughts, your plans. And I love ideas as well. I love that prestart I've got it's really your idea. I love working through that.

Arielle 20:57

Wow. So good to talk to you this morning. Such a brilliant energy. I'm really looking forward to the festival. So thank you so much. I look forward to seeing you there. Thank you