Click play above to watch the opening keynote session from Colin Cook.
We live in a digital world. It is changing the way we work, do business, entertain, deliver services, shop and keep in touch with our family and friends, as well as the work of government. Back in 2017, the Scottish Government set out a vision to ensure that Scotland is recognised throughout the world as a vibrant, inclusive, greener, open and outward-looking digital nation. In 2020, the context in which we are working has changed profoundly, with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, and the prospect of no-deal Brexit, and it is time to revisit and refresh this vision. The Scottish Government will shortly be consulting on a new Digital Strategy for Scotland, already shaped by contributions received during the Digital Nation challenge run in conjunction with ScotlandIS. Find out the plans laid out in the new strategy, and how to help shape them, at this session with the Scottish Government’s Digital Director, Colin Cook.
Colin Cook has been Digital Director, Scottish Government since May 2017. His portfolio covers the roll out of broadband and other forms of connectivity, data strategy, digital transformation, the delivery of Scottish Government’s shared IT service and CivTech, Scotland public services business incubator. Colin previously headed Scottish Government’s digital transformation and digital connectivity, economy and participation divisions. Colin’s previous roles include Marketing Director, British Army Recruiting, where he introduced an award winning online recruiting process and both Marketing Director and Service Specification Director of Royal Mail’s core Letters Business. Colin is a trustee of Royal Caledonian Education Trust, a charity that supports the children of current and former service personnel to maximise their potential.
9.00
9.15
Welcome from Cabinet Secretary for Finance
Opening Keynotes
Rik Ferguson, Global VP, Security Research, Trend Micro
Colin Cook, Digital Director, Scottish Government
Kate Forbes MSP
10.05
Session 1
Open source tools to find security vulnerabilities within applications
Building an Enterprise Data Marketplace to Shop for Data as a Service
Organisation Refactoring and Culture Hacking – Lessons from Software
Skills Development Scotland Report Launch: Neurodiversity in Digital Tech
Mark Goodwin
Mike Fergusson
Andrew Harmel Law
Bev Harrow, Lee Hutchinson and Chris Hughes
11.00
Session 2
In the Midst of Fire – The Chaos of Ransomware Attacks
Towards Application Driven Infrastructure
How inclusion can drive economic growth?
Restart and Prosper: Tech trends emerging from the pandemic
Chris Yule
Kief Morris
Janet Onyia
Richard Marshall
11.50
Session 3
AI for Good Mapping land cover to support Natural Capital Asset Index tracking in Scotland
Collaborating across clusters
Look! There’s a Threat Model in my DevOps
Sharpening the saw – how tooling can make us better developers
Dr Murray Collins
Dr Poonam Malik, Ben Shorrock, David Dunn, Jane Morrison-Ross
Alyssa Miller
Chris Heilmann
13.20
Session 4
Ten Traits that Differentiate the most Trusted Advisors
Getting value from data – productionising data science
Innovating with Immigration.
Austen Mulinder
Dr James McMinn
Jamie Kerr
Tech challenges coming out of Open Banking and the GOFCoE project
50% of AI is easy, we just don’t know which half
Gavin Littlejohn
Alex Bell and Petur Einarsson
14.10
Session 5
Overcoming and handling bias in data: ethical and practical considerations
Building brand awareness for your tech company
Start up, scale up
(fun)ctionality
Navigating Venture Capital
Olivia Gambelin, Joseph Crispell
Kathryn Strachan
Peter Proud
Brian Baglow
Paul Neeson and Andrew Noble
15.30
Session 6
A Fyne future for graphical development
Launching terrestrial tech into the space marketplace
Tales from the Crypt(o)
Serverless Architecture
Andrew Williams
Dr David Alexander
Matt Summers
Julian Wood
16.15
Closing Keynote
Steve Guggenheimer, Corporate Vice President – AI & ISV Engagement at Microsoft Corporation
17.15
Young Software Engineer of the Year Awards
The YSE Awards recognise the best undergraduate software projects, drawn from across all students studying computing science and software engineering in Scotland.