Big Nerd Energy

Happy New Year and welcome back to the Tech for Good Live podcast!  It is a brand new year filled – so far – with the same kind of awful as 2020. I guess a consistent level of horror is better than a rollercoaster of horror? In this episode, we’ll be talking about LGBTQ+ arrests in Egypt, an increase in donations to charities in the US, Google scraping the barrel of evil and finding out that it just keeps on giving and also a heartwarming story about a robot dog in an apocalyptic wasteland. Oh, and a new rant about partnerships in the tech for good sector. Host Bex is joined by fellow TFGL team members Greg Ashton and Ben White Our special guest this week is Human rights centred and humanitarian designer. Eriol Fox!  A multi-skilled designer with 9+ years of experience in the design industry across in-house roles, Eriol actively works to make tech and design more inclusive . Eriol also runs LGBTQIA+ in Tech in Bristol, is part of the leadership group of Tech for Good SW and helps run Fuse Jam. This week’s topics: Stat of the week:  Arrests in Egypt of the LGBTQ+ community have increased over 5 times in the last 10 years. This has been aided by data from apps such as Grindr - Slate Charity news of the week:   In America donations to some small and mid-sized charitable organizations were up 7.6% in the first nine months of 2020 over 2019 - Reuters Tech news of the week:  Google ends 2020 "well" - Reuters But it's staff continue to try and change things - The Verge And finally…  Spot the dog is helping clean up Chernobyl's reactor - Syfy (and as promised by Bex, the Boston Dynamics Scottish Department) Plugs If you’re a designer curious about Open Source software, join Eriol discussing Open Source Design projects at opensourcedesign.net. Ben is looking for talent to join the team at Reason Digital reasondigital.com/career-opportunities. ---------------------------- Listeners, what did you think? We’d love to hear your thoughts.  Get in touch on twitter @techforgoodlive or Email at [email protected]  We’d love it if you gave us a nice iTunes review and told your pals about this podcast! Thanks to podcast.co for hosting our podcast.  If you’d like to be thanked on the podcast for giving us some cash, contact us on [email protected]. I promise we’ll spend it on transcription and not on kittens.