Digital for good – How to make an impact with your tech skills

"It's my work" he'd say, "and I do it for pay. And when it's over I'd just as soon go on my way", sang Bob Dylan in Hurricane. But for a lot of us, we want to know what we work on has meaning. We don’t want to ‘go on our way’, but rather feel like we’re making a difference to something that really matters.

Working in tech adds a whole extra layer of abstraction, making it even harder to know if the work you do has real world impact. You can work for months improving a digital service, but being sat behind a desk means you never get to see if it’s having the impact you intended.

Yet tech can be an extremely powerful tool for good. Scalability means you can impact many times more lives with the right piece of software than you ever could if your efforts were confined entirely to the physical world.

Here at Numiko, we deliver ‘great digital for good’, for many of the country's most well-known charities and cultural institutions, such as the British Museum, The Children’s Society and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. We’ve been doing it for over twenty years, and in that time we’ve learnt a lot about linking the online world to real-world impact.

Across a series of 5 minute ‘lightning talks’, we’ll be sharing what we’ve learnt, and hearing from other purpose-driven businesses about how they use tech to help make the world a better place.

Lightning talks:

- David Eccles, Managing Director, Numiko: Linking digital to real-world impact.

- Rob Lihou, Climate Tech Lead, Tred: Using tech to tackle climate change

- Mark Duhonyi, Head of QA, Numiko: The importance of testing for delivering accessibility.

- Josephine Noble-Smith, Engineering Manager, Depop: Doing more good by lowering friction.

- Colin, few & far: The stresses of over-choice – A talk on 'choice overload' and why avoiding it is key for end users in need or crisis.

Building an impactful career in tech Q&A panel

After their lightning talks, our speakers will convene for a Q&A session so you can put your questions about building an impactful career in tech to them.

Host or Publisher Numiko