TFGL2021 - S2 Ep 7 - Targeting a Goth Barista
Welcome to this episode of the Tech For Good Live podcast.
Joining Ben (Tired Professional Dad) is Greg Ashton (Angry Food Obsessed Dog Dad) and our special guest Zoe Amar (Knackered Tech Nerd)
Transcript
Ben: They say that necessity is the mother of invention, so strap yourselves in for Hackathon of Creativity. Yes, the tech for good bat signal has been beamed into the sky, where you’ll need your standard host to solve and moodily perch on a guardrail somewhere and try and get a good Soom connection. However, we do know that times of great adversity can lead to great breakthroughs. Everyone knows the story of how the American spent hundreds of thousands of dollars inventing the biro, whereas in space the Russians use pencils. But do you know what the Russians used for the epicentre to show when they reached orbit? They literally had a toy dog suspended from a string in the spaceship. [laughs]
Greg: Wowzer.
Ben: So joining me today, we got Greg Ashton. Greg, can you think of any great examples of using low-fi tech to solve problems?
Greg: I was trying to think of this today, actually but I can't, I'm sure there's things that I probably cobbled together in uni. You know, when you're like, that thing, like the VHS is broken. So you're like, using a spatula or something to like, get them back out that kind of stuff. But yeah, nothing, nothing that cool.
Ben: Nothing that cool [laughs] I gave you like a good three hours to prepare a story. And then I've got a VHS’ and spatulas. Zoe, have you got any good examples of lo-fi tech?
Zoe: [laughs] I’d say the one that immediately comes to mind in the context of the pandemic is where you see someone looking all swish when they're presenting an online conference, and then they show you that their laptop is just propped up on a load of books and magazines and just random shoe boxes. So yeah, don't, never believe what you see on Instagram is my main takeaway from that.
Greg: [laughs]
Ben: [laughs] I may have mentioned this before, but I won't reveal the identity, but one person in my organisation has bookshelf wallpaper. So as you say [laughs] always be careful with what the camera is telling you. So obviously, Greg, Greg, we all know as a longtime guest, frequent researcher, member of Tech of Good. Zoe, just give you a quick introduction. You are the Chair of charity, Digicode. You are the author of the charity, Digital Skills Report, writer, and general third sector digital guru. What have you been up to lately? Have you got any big news or any exciting announcements for us?
Zoe: Well, the big thing that we're working on at the moment is we are mapping how things have changed in terms of how charities use digital has changed during the pandemic in the charity digital skills report. So those of you who may have taken the survey to build the report over the last few years, will be quite familiar with some of the key areas that we explore and that, around things like how you're approaching digital strategically or not. What you're confident about? Where there are areas where you might like a bit of extra support, whether that's through funding or skills, or just your leadership team really getting on board with digital. And this year, we're including all that and more. And obviously, we've seen some big changes in how charities have used digital differently during this time. So whether that's the rise of remote working, whether it's more charities using online service delivery, we're really, really keen to find out more from charities about how they use a digital has changed, but also what the underlying attitudes and behaviour shifts are as well. So be much appreciated if you guys were able to share the link to the report in the show notes because we are really keen to hear from as many people as possible.
Ben: Yeah, absolutely. So obviously, you can google Zoe, so navigate your way to that if you are lazy like me and you only listen to podcasts, but we'll also share the link in the notes to make sure we can get it straight through. Greg, you kind of pulled out, there’s loads to discuss here so we'll probably delve into this a little bit at the start. But you pulled out a kind of really interesting stat for me, which was 83% of staff in the third sector have felt supported during lockdown, but almost half still feel the wellbeing has deteriorated significantly.
Greg: So this is the Stat of the week and it comes direct from Zoe's own blog. And I was looking through and I thought it was really, really interesting. So this is a report from Blackboard called The Future Of Work. And yeah, I think it echoes specifically focused on the third sector rise, Zoe. And I think it echoes a lot of things that we've heard from across work in general, I think, but really looking at like there's been a focus on well being, but yet, people are still feeling the effects of working from home.
Zoe: Yeah, that's right. So we were lucky enough to talk to Sandy Falvey from Blackboard about their report and any organisation that's been working remotely during this time, which is probably everyone, and those who are planning to involve remote work in some way in their future. Again, probably a lot of organisations, this report is a really, really good read, which I think sets out some of the challenges, and then also the opportunities around remote working. And I think that stat that you highlight that Greg is so interesting, because it shows this dichotomy that's emerging in remote work, in that people are clearly finding that, yes, they've had some support from their employers, but at the same time, there is obviously something that needs to be improved, because otherwise there wouldn't be this gap that's been reported in wellbeing.
Ben: Yeah, I think it's really, we've had exactly the same kind of experience where we've been really conscious to try and support people, you know, in a working environment sense, during lockdown, but also kind of reaching a point where, you know, you feel that the team is telling you work is okay, we're doing what we can, but I still feel, you know, pretty, pretty bad. And I'm missing a load of things that work provides, but also family provide and kind of just just general kind of, you know, opportunities to get outside and sort of feel comfortable socialising or kind of even be in the same space as people. And it's, I suppose, on the flip side, Zoe, and this is just off the top of my head, but I've also personally found that work has kind of filled the gap and it's always been talked about in a negative sense, like, work’s kind of creeped into the evenings or I’ll start early in the mornings, because there’s not much else to do, which is true, but it's definitely kind of kept me kind of stimulated. I don't know if there's anything that’s similar to that that came out in the report. Like, if I hadn't been working, I really think I would’ve struggled more than I am doing by working.
Greg: So yeah, I was gonna say, can we just call out the cat in the room, just in the background? One of your cat’s going crazy.
Ben: I'm gonna mute it. I don't even hear him anymore. [laughs]
Greg: [laughs} So if you hear that in the background, that's one of Ben's cats going crazy in the background, Yeah, I was gonna say, I think part of this though is lockdown. Like I do, I do worry that people will rush to say, okay, complete working from home isn't great. But we’ve got to remember as well, it wasn't just working from home, we were working from home and also not allowed to meet any other people. So I think there does need to be some level of balance, when we're looking at that and thinking about how we factor that in to the changes that we make, when we start going back to the workplace.
Zoe: There are some really interesting choices ahead, aren't there, I think? Right there. So I was talking to a charity CEO recently about how absolutely offering people more choice in how they work, where they work, why they work is obviously a very, very good thing. At the same time, to offer people complete and very open choice is quite cost prohibitive. So to give you an example of that, you might be paying for employees broadband at home, and also at work, you might be paying for them to have a really nice desk, in the office and also at home. And you're never going to have either those things that complete 100% utilisation because obviously no one could be in two places at once. And so I'm not saying we shouldn't offer people choice, we should. I think that is really important. But there's some really interesting questions ahead I think for employers about the amount of choice they offer people and also how they're going to resource that as well.
Greg: I think the wellbeing aspects has been great, though. Like so many people I've spoken to places that I just wouldn't have expected to be good at wellbeing of really like, I think it's, you know, it's just made a lot of managers a lot more attuned to the wellbeing of their staff.
Zoe: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I've heard far more positive than negative stories. And actually, there was a really good report in the Economist a few weeks ago on the future of work, which was about how this has actually been a very, very good thing for managers this time. Because when you've got your team working remotely, you have to be a better manager, you have to communicate more clearly and specifically. You have to give people more recognition for what they do, because otherwise the whole working relationship would probably fall apart in a couple of days. So I think there's some really positive things, definitely, that have come out of this time that will have had an impact on wellbeing as much as the wellbeing initiatives themselves.
Ben: Yeah, there's that kind of like ambient information and support that just bubbled down the workplace that suddenly has been stripped away and it’s what you're saying that it's absolutely made us focus. Much more communication much more and kind of like, proactively talking to people about about stuff like wellbeing and stress, because you've just not got any of the signals that you're used to having in the office, you know, someone's sort of, you know, appearing irritable, or kind of, you know, just picking things up in conversation, you've had to really hone in on that. It's been a weird experiment, and not one that anyone would have wanted. But there's loads of stuff that I think will come out of this that will be kind of hopefully, really beneficial in the future. I'm just wondering Greg, is there anything else? Your stat of the week, you've kind of morphed into like five steps of the week. Is there any of these other ones you want to kind of pick out and talk about a little bit?
Greg: Yeah, I always like to add extra notes, because I know you struggle with time to read the actual articles Ben. So yeah, I think one of the wellbeing ones is 72% are working longer hours. So a third of which are finishing later than when they were office based. And I think, you know, I think managers are picking up on that. You can see when people are online, because everybody's using things like Teams. I've noticed it in my own workplace. A lot of managers are kind of saying stop having meetings, you know, make sure you have lunches. Don't work over your lunch. Make sure you finish at a reasonable time. And I think that goes back to the original stat around 48%, feeling like their wellbeing has deteriorated. Because although the managers are doing more, I think people are feeling more pressure to like, work harder, because they feel like they're going to get judged in some way because they can't be seen to be in the office. So it's like, well, I need to do more work to prove that I'm working really hard.
Ben: Yeah. And people start by thinking, well I'm not commuting, so I'm saving time. So I might as well do work. And it just kind of crept out with either end from there. The lunch thing is interesting. I'm terrible at taking lunch in general. But the need to eat you know, in an office in town kind of forces you outside to hunt and scavenge for food. Whereas I can literally kind of do that within two yards on my desk now. So I've really sort of tried to kind of like put reminders in to take lunch, stand up, walk, move around, that kind of thing.
Greg: [laughs]
Ben: Yeah, no, it's kind of a really interesting report. And I will post the link to it for, you know, people who like myself will read it in full, maybe after the pod, admittedly. So thank you for picking up those stats. It does feel like a sea change in the world of working patterns. So sticking with charities, we've got some charity news of the week. Twitter has launched the tip jar as a new way to give and receive money on the platform. Do you want to tell us a little bit about this Greg?
Greg: Yeah. So this, this is an interesting one a little bit different to how some of the other platforms have done it. It very much is like a tip jar, you can just go onto someone's account, find their tip jar and send them some money. I think they sold it as being like, you know, for people who you like their tweets and things like that you can give them a little helping hand. It feels very American, the whole tip jar approach. But I think this is really the reason it's charity news is because tips are donations. They have set it up for I think initially journalist experts and non-profits. Whether that's non-profits in the UK, I couldn't really find any information on that. Because they have different rules and things. But yeah, I think there's a really, really great opportunity for charities to make some money here.
Ben: Yeah. Is this the first time where Twitter has kind of like, directly incentivized content creators?
Greg: Yeah. Yeah. So they're working on a few different things. There's talk about subscriptions, but whether we'll see much of that. But yeah, this is probably the first attempt that they've had to bring any kind of monetization to the platform.
Ben: Greg, you’re being admirably positive about this.
Greg: [laughs]
Ben: But given that this is Twitter, and knowing how some of the sort of the dialogue plays out on Twitter, is this just gonna be kind of like, what was that? There was like a campaign to stop funding hate. I'm not gonna say this feels like the polar opposite but is there a danger that it could kind of spill into that?
Greg: [laughs] That's a very good point, actually, before we go down that dark road, Zoe what do you think? Like, you work with charities in digital a lot, how do you think the charities are going to react to this? Do you think it's going to work?
Zoe: Well, I think it's really exciting. Obviously, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. It's another new option for charities to try out in a relatively low risk way, which is great. I think that we don't know yet, obviously, whether it will be a success. So we'll just have to wait and see. But yeah, I mean, I'd be very surprised if charities didn't welcome this new innovation because it's a great opportunity to try and develop a new income stream.
Ben: It feels quite interesting. Again, with Twitter it’s quite light and easy to engage with, and it's kind of like an interesting sort of way. Very, very frictionless. We spoke about this in the past, Greg, ages ago. Like a really, really low friction way to kind of just agree with the sentiment and make a donation. Do you know if it’s kind of rolled out, as you say, is it just American non-profits or is it could be tried to register for UK charities yet?
Greg: I was trying to find a list of who it was open to currently. So if you can't accept tips, you can enable the feature by clicking ‘edit profile’ and toggling the tip jar on. So it may be that some people have access to it already. You need a way of processing those payments. So they had some initial issues with PayPal, where PayPal was sending receipts and sending like the person you were paying, it was sending like their personal details on the receipt. So you could tip someone and find out where they lived, which obviously has some serious GDPR issues. But you're gonna have those early onset things. I think was better than the Facebook, or the Facebook donations, oonce they've rolled this out, it sounds like it'd be fairly frictionless. I know that for many charities, particularly in the UK, they're really struggled to get onto Facebook donations, because the process was just horrendous. So they'd apply and they wouldn't hear anything for months on end. So if this is just a toggle in your profile, then it's going to be a lot easier for them.
Ben: Brilliant, okay, well, I'm gonna hope that my cynical take on that is not proven to be founded and it's a great way for charities to kind of generate some extra revenue. So I was, I'm doing a quick Google to see if I can see if it’s in the UK. Nohing conclusive as yet, but definitely one to watch. So in terms of you mentioning Facebook, Facebook's Oversight Board has been in action and it's given its verdict on the initial Trump ban that it made several months ago. So can you give us a quick summary of this one Greg?
Greg: Yeah, we've all been waiting for this. So back in January, following the assault on the Capitol, Facebook banned Trump, and then said, we're gonna send it over to the Oversight Board to decide whether this was appropriate. And they’ve finally come back with the decision. It was interesting. I saw the article in the BBC and they were saying that the Facebook Oversight Board had agreed with the banning of Trump. And I was like, that's an interesting read on it. So they did, they did agree with the initial banning of Trump. But essentially, what they've done in regards to his ongoing ban from Facebook, is they've just sent it back to Facebook and said, you decide. So it's a little bit of a yes, you did right but we're not going to make any decision on whether an indefinite ban is appropriate. So yeah, it's very lawyery.
Ben: This is kind of interesting, because I guess, this is kind of a legal challenge now on fundamentally a private organisation, its own policies, and it's kind of moving into the territory of, can Facebook choose who, you know, arbitrarily can choose who to ban from the platform. I don't know Zoe if you've seen this, have you got kind of a take on this? This is quite interesting to me how it's come about.
Zoe: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I was pretty cross when I saw this, to be honest, because I think it's a very weak wishy washy decision. And I think what we need to remember about the Oversight Board, as well as that they're not, they're not a court. The people who are involved in the Oversight Board, their wages are paid by Facebook, so they're not an independent body. And that in itself, I think, is part of the problem that we have here. There was an opportunity for Facebook, or indeed the Oversight Board, to really do the right thing here, I think and to demonstrate their integrity and the values and the behaviours that they want to see on the platform. But that opportunity was not followed through here. And I worry that it opens the door, not just to Trump returning in the future, which is now a very real possibility, but also what that then sends out as a signal to other people who may use their platform and indeed other social media platforms for nefarious ends. So it seems like this is a very worrying development.
Ben: It does feel a little bit like the Trump situation was so acute, that some action had to be taken, but then the ramification of this is you then have to consistently follow this through across the board. And that is obviously you know, faced without really like doing anything unless an algorithm can kind of get in there and do the dirty work. So it strikes me as like the sort of the, you know, the much maligned press complaint commission, which everyone's pretty young to understand, but you know, kind of a self regulating body. Sorry, a body that sort of regulates an industry that is selected entirely from people in ministry whose interests align with this is sort of success and doing as little as possible. And Facebook have now, what I do quite like about this is our Facebook and their public sort of celebrity fueled position where the decisions are being held to account. So I am hoping that this kind of leads to, you know, committing to making that body, some use, you know, involving some kind of, you know, potentially independent arbitration, or some kind of semi autonomy, shifting it sideways, rather than just kind of giving in and sort of throwing up the hands and saying this has nothing to do this is all too complicated. We're just technology. So it'll be interesting to see which way they go.
Greg: Do you not think the wishy-washiness though is because it is the Facebook Oversight Board and the reason they've passed it back is because what they've said is technically, you have no rules that say you can indefinitely ban someone. And you've currently have no rules around well, if that is the case, what is the process for that? And how do you, how does someone then remove that indefinite ban? So what do they have to do to get on the platform? So I think, part of the wishy washiness because Facebook's own rules are wishy washy. And the Board is saying, well, we don't set the rules, we just make sure that you're applying them correctly and they’ve said your rules are crap. So come up with some rules, and then we'll come up with a decision. So yeah, I kind of feel like they've responded exactly as a Facebook thing should respond in a wishy washy way.
Zoe: Do we not think that this is a growing indication that Facebook is in quite serious trouble though, and obviously, the mood music around this is that we're looking at greater regulation of the tech companies in the UK and the US. But to have this inconsistency of decision making and not to be able to make a really firm decision as well in this situation, that says to me that something's not happy in this camp. And this is an indication that this is a company that's not in a happy place, even if it's doing really well financially,
Greg: I've got two takes on that. One is, Zuckerberg is terrified of taking any kind of serious responsibility in regards to making decisions about things like free speech for their platform, because the minute he starts making those decisions, then he has to back those decisions up. And it's a messy, messy thing. So he's like, I can kind of feel for him in that regard because it is, you know, it's messy when you're not a private organised organisation, but he's a private organisation, head of one. And for them to start getting into that realm and making those decisions just is very, very complex. But I think the other side of that, so one of the Oversight Board wrote an op-ed like in The Guardian explaining why they did that. He's an ex-Guardian editor, Alan Rosberg, I think his name is, and he was kind of going through and saying about freedom of speech and freedom of expression, but particularly in the US, freedom of speech doesn't apply to private organisations. It's in regards to the governments. And I think Facebook are terrified of people. There's this disconnect, where we're saying that, you know, they constantly say, well we’re not the government so freedom of speech isn't relevant. But people obviously feel that Facebook has enough power, that if you are removed from Facebook, that it's the same as the government stopping your speech. And I think once we get to that point, then we need to start realising yeah, because they have got the same power of governments. They've got the financial backing of a, you know, a medium sized country and in some places, and they have lobbyists in Europe, and in every country who are going.. they’re almost I think one person said they're not, they're not lobbyists. They're almost like ambassadors. And they work like ambassadors within, like the EU and other places. So when you've got this thing that has got the financial backing of a small country, small to medium sized country, controls free speech and has ambassadors, we're getting into really weird territory now.
Ben: Yeah. I mean, considering Facebook's terror of being considered a publisher, being considered a country is probably Zuckerberg’s worst nightmare, I think, Zoe, so what you're saying it does, it does seem like an organisation being very publicly hauled over the coals and as you say, one that doesn't really know what it wants to do and things are being kind of bounced around between committees and individuals and, you know, relatively hastily scratched sets of rules are being kind of waved around. It does feel like Facebook don't know what position they want to take. They just want this all to go away as quickly as possible. And that's what they're really hoping for, but hopefully, if it's done consistently, they will have to sort of put together some kind of governance, you know, some sort of stronger governance around it. And if Donald Trump achieves one thing this year and it’s better governance in terms of consistency in terms of Facebook? That would be weird. That'd be a good start to 2021.
Greg: Could you imagine that being his legacy? Better governance for Facebook? [laughs]
Ben: [laughs]
Zoe: We can only hope [laughs]
Ben: So yeah, so yeah, why not? Let's stay with Facebook and kick it while it’s down. Signal have done some really kind of very succinct and funny stuff. Not that we didn't but you know, Signal have done it in a really cool and visual way. So as everyone's seeing these Signal ads that they’ve been puting out recently?
Greg: Yeah, this is I mean, this is a brief one, they got kicked back, so you wouldn't have actually seen them on Facebook. But yeah, I thought this was just a fun little story. I've seen similar ones do it before. When Facebook was left less careful with their ads. I remember a while ago, some guy wanted to see if he could mess with his flatmate. So he basically input because he knows lots about his flatmate input, lots of details into the ad targeting. And you could target very specific locations at that point. So we basically started tormenting his flatmate with his own fears, and things that he worried about, by sending him ads about medication and stuff like that. It sounds terrifying. But then shortly afterwards, Facebook changed the rules. But the rules that are still in place, Signal have tried to use here. So they're using the targeting on the ads to show people ads, which show them how they're being targeted with the kind of terminology that Facebook uses, which is very, very odd.
Ben: That was my big question about these is, can they select Goth Barista when I'm marketing? My dropshipping company on Facebook. Can I actually honestly select newlywed Pilates instructors as these ads indicate?
Greg: Well, you will be newlywed and you could be a Pilates instructor. So yeah, yeah.
Ben: Yeah, I love it. They’re kind of brilliant. These things do as much to educate people out of Facebook and kind of like, with the greatest respect to The Guardian, writing, you know, kind of like endless kind of articles debating and I think these just really show in a very plain way, exactly what Facebook is kind of gathering from you and sort of building up. And not just Facebook. Any one of these buys video companies that kind of thrive off data. But it's just very cool to see it sort of played back in such a weird and explicit way.
Greg: What do you think you'd come up as?
Ben: [laughs] What was it? So a tired professional dad would be mty current designation.
Zoe: [laughs]
Greg: What about you Zoe?
Ben: A few years ago, but the days are long behind.
Greg: What about you Zoe?
Ben: What would you be, Greg? Go on.
Greg: I want to hear Zoe’s first.
Zoe: Oh, gosh, I think it would be something like knackered tech nerd or something [laughs]
Greg: Yeah, I think mine. Mine would probably be angry food obsessed dog dad.
Zoe: That's very specific. I like that.
Greg: Yeah, generally doing things out of rage and looking at food, and then shopping for things for my dog. So yeah.
Ben: I think we kind of owned those. I feel very empowered now. [laughs]
Greg: [laughs]
Ben: Let's move on to our kind of rant of the week. And this one, we have a guest rant from Zoe. You're going to talk a little bit about children and sort of studying it.
Zoe: So this caught my eye for the weekend. And I thought it was really interesting partly because my son who's ten will be going on into secondary school imminently. And it's really quite a worrying stat. So this came from some research that was done earlier this year from the Learning of Work Institute. And what was reported in this news story is that the number of students taking IT subjects at GCSE level has fallen by 40%. And Greg, you had a great question before we started recording about whether there had been some shifting around and people moving over to different subjects. So the government has actually launched new computer science GCSE, but the decline in IT GCSE takers is not actually made up for by the increase in people taking computer science GCSE. So it's all pretty worrying. So I think this worries me on a number of different levels. The first is that what kind of support are we giving children in school with their primary or secondary with developing those technology skills which we know are so important for the new workforce and indeed for the workforce now as well. And then also are we giving them enough support in not just the learning about the technical side of things, but also some of the key skills that go alongside the development of technology. So that might be things like critical thinking, emotional intelligence, being able to think in a kind of kodi, computational thinking type way, breaking things down into various steps. So I do worry that there is a huge skills gap, well there already is one emerging in the education system. And I think Government needs to make this much more of a priority. Otherwise, we could really get left behind.
Greg: They're not going to teach critical thinking. Don't want the sheep rising up.
Zoe: [laughs]
Greg: Using like, critical thinking. Yeah, this baffles me a little bit because I mean, particularly, you've done that little bit of extra looking around and seeing what's happening with the other courses. I mean, for a couple of years now. There's been like, a lot of talk about code camps, and, you know, introducing coding even at primary school level, so if that has led to less children going into IT, because maybe they've decided it's not something they want earlier on. I don't know, it feels like there's a disconnect between that kind of drive to promote IT and technical and tech and actually now seeing that drop. I feel like there's been, something's gone wrong there right?
Zoe: I think so. I mean, I can only speak from the perspective of the school that my kids go to, which just just to be clear, I've, we've we're fairly happy with. But I think there are a number of things going on talking to other parents who have frustrations about this issue. Firstly, I think as with a lot of other digital adoption, it's very dependent on someone who's a real passionate advocate. So if you have got teachers in your school, who are big into coding, and who are really excited about teaching children about that area, then you will have that provision in your school because people will give up extra time to do that. But for example, in my kids' school, there was a coding club to start with but then for some reason, it got cancelled, and it's never actually been revived. So I think that there's not a lot of consistency is one of the key issues that we're going to see here within the system.
Ben: Yeah, it's absolutely surprising. When I saw it on the agenda, it was the thing that jumped out at me the most. Despite loads of interesting stuff, you wouldn't expect kind of children's interest in sort of technology to be falling from any angle. It's so hard, isn't it cause I think it's hard to put together a good curriculum, that's kind of abstract enough to sort of engage people, but then actually lead to some kind of use. And it's not like, you know, like a subject like Spanish where that's pretty much the same, you know, I mean, you can kind of sort of set that up and have it ru. We've seen this with university students, university courses, it's really difficult to kind of like bridge the sort of the theoretical understanding of how code works into actual practical coding skills. Obviously, at GCSE the second half is less of an issue but I wonder if it's, as you say, as a like maybe a lack of kind of like genuine you know, kind of talent in the teaching pool. With no disrespect to IT teachers, but someone who's close enough to the industry to really kind of bring the more modern practices into the the syllabus and in fact a syllabus that probably isn't geared up to change every six months, which is kind of like the slowest it feels, you know, when you're actually working in digital.
Zoe: Yeah, I think that's right, Ben. And you're right, it's really surprising that more children aren't taking this. And if I talk to my kids about technology, now, they they, they love it, and they think it's really cool. And so why aren't more kids actually lining up to do this? And that says something to me about perhaps, as you mentioned, that the curriculum, perhaps also about how the teachers who are teaching it are perceived. No disrespect to teachers, but maybe there is something there about the other inspiration, kids are also accessing technology. Do you need to bring in more external speakers to get kids fired up about tech? I don't know. But definitely more needs to be done if we're going to grow the digital skills that the economy needs.
Ben: So we're going to move to the final section. We found a really beautiful and cool looking typeface called Dysfluent. What's different about this Greg? I mean, we could, this is not the kind of podcast where we endlessly go over typefaces. Because yeah, we're not all designers fighting over the beauty of the typeface. But this is a really cool one. So tell us why it justifies its place in the tech for good canon.
Greg: Yeah, and audio experience is not the best place to talk about a visual medium, really.
Ben: Describe it. Describe the sensation.
Greg: But this was done to highlight stammering and I just thought it was really interesting because the idea and the way that people create typefaces anyway is really curious to me because for many people it can seem very mundane but there's always seems to be such huge level of detail that goes into it. But the key thing that they focused on with this one was was not creating this broken, you know, twisted typeface. You know, in certain places it's like stretched or like echoed. When you look at it, it really does give you that experience of somebody speaking with a stammer but not in a way that is horrific. It's like, oh, you can see almost the artistry in it. And I thought that was just a really nice way of putting a positive face on stammering. I thought it was great.
Ben: Positive face upon there?
Greg: [laughs] Yeah, maybe.
Ben: [laughs] Yeah, it is. It is genuinely beautiful. And again, we shall wack that link in because it is worth a quick look at. Yeah, as you say, Greg, it's kind of like it's hard to obviously describe but it is quite a nice thing to look at. It does kind of like give me the sensation and it’s just obviously repeating characters, which was obviously what the beaner always used to make do. That is the end of the podcast. Just before we go, we will ask Zoe, how was that for you and where can people find you online?
Zoe: Oh, it was great. Thank you so much for having me. It's been lovely to chat about the latest tech news. I really enjoyed it. Please do take a look at zoeama.com. And I'll also share the link for you guys to share if that's okay to the charity digital skills report because we're really keen to hear from as many charities as possible about their experiences with digital this year.
Ben: Absolutely. And thank you very much for your time Zoe. And thanks once again, Greg. Thank you, listeners. So now it's time to ask you, what did you think we would love to hear your thoughts. So please do get in touch on Twitter. As soon as we can get the donation jar set up we will. But for now, we just want your input. And you can find us at Tech for Good Live. Or you can do it the old fashioned way and email us Hello at Tech for good dot live. If we are still on iTunes then please leave a lovely iTunes review and tell your mates about the podcast. And we will also say thank you to Podcast.co for hosting us on the platform. Lovely producer Paul and Christina who have to make sense of all this. And yeah, I will see you all next time. Bye bye everyone.
Greg: Bye