2021 Vision: Unlocking your digital potential
By Margaret Cooney, Director, Partnerships & Innovation
2021 Vision
Being clear, pragmatic and realistic is important to us. We know from experience that many organisations don’t have the in-house expertise to make the most of their digital assets and feel daunted by the challenges they present, says Margaret Cooney.
January 2020 now feels like another era, but back then I was considering my next career move and pondering what the year may have in store for me.
Quite a bit as it turned out.
I’d left a job at the end of summer 2019 and all I knew was that I needed to do something different. Unfortunately, I had no idea what that might be.
Then an ex-colleague and old friend Claudio Concha, got in touch. He had a really captivating idea he wanted to run past me. It was to set up a web-based service offering support to organisations to optimize their digital presence and improve their web accessibility. He had contacted some ex-colleagues and people he’d met on his PG Diploma Course in Digital Media Management at Birkbeck, University of London, who had expertise in a range of skills; content optimization and creation, digital strategy, social media strategy, project and product management, UX and of course, digital accessibility. They were all interested in being part of the new venture.
I thought that sounded great and wished him well, but then to my surprise, he asked me to help him. I wasn’t sure why; yes, I’d had some basic Agile training as a member of a digital transformation project in a large charity, and had recently commissioned a website and developed a digital strategy for a smaller, new charity. But, I told him, I wasn’t exactly an expert in this area.
He explained this was exactly why he wanted me to help him. Having worked in a couple of organisations that didn’t have big tech teams or indeed, any tech expertise, I would understand the benefits of the services he was proposing to offer. After all, championing online accessibility means very little if it is only comprehended by digital experts. We decided to join forces.
Getting real
And so, gradually, Pilao Labs became a reality. Our offer is simple really; we exist to help organisations unlock the potential of their digital presence to achieve their goals.
We put people before the technology though, so work with our clients to help them to understand what they can fix, or do better, and we'll be clear about the reasons why they might need to bring in some additional expertise.
Being clear, pragmatic and realistic is important to us because we know from our own experience that as often as not, most organisations don’t have the in-house expertise to make the most of their digital assets, and might feel daunted by the challenges they present.
Our experience also shows that most people and organisations don’t know where to go for advice and will often end up feeling overwhelmed. They don't need to feel this way. Pilao Labs believes in helping clients to make the best use of what they have. Our advice breaks down complex challenges, turning them into easily implemented actions; saves time and money, and helps clients to understand what they need to do to keep getting better.
Don’t look back?
Awful though it has been, in some ways 2020 was the ideal year to launch a service like ours, because if ever there was a time when digital came into its own, then this was it. Most of us won’t want to look back on this year, but it was important to Pilao Labs, as it underlined the importance of digital inclusion and accessibility and helped us refine and test our offer. We say thank you below to everyone who helped us do that.
Pilao Labs values accessibility and inclusion above all; it is central to our service. We’ve said it before and will keep saying it, improving the accessibility of digital services should be the goal of all organisations. It’s also why our sector snapshots focus on this issue. We’ve got another coming out later this month about online banking, so please watch out for that.
Thank you to:
The Sheila McKechnie Foundation were our first guinea pig, and let us run an audit on their old site. They had just agreed to commission a new website, but they told us our report gave them valuable pointers on what they needed and helped the old one function better. Call it proof of concept, but I knew we had something after hearing that feedback!
In 2020 I also became chair of Bags of Taste an award-winning social enterprise that supports people living in food poverty. We’ve run workshops with them on content and social media strategy, as well as the fine-tuning of their messaging to audiences. A big thank you to Alicia Weston for her formidable energy and encouragement.
An extra big thank you to Helen Lardner and Gareth John at Kando by Design for their advice, encouragement and support. We are delighted to be a partner organisation and look forward to more collaborations. We also look forward to seeing their new website in 2021.
Peter Mills at Brand Ethos has also been generous with his advice, support and encouragement (we like the new website Brand Ethos did for SMK!). We are also delighted to be a preferred partner organisation of theirs and look forward to collaborating in 2021.
Thanks to our internationally dispersed team for joining us on this interesting journey at Pilao Labs. I’m looking forward to putting projects their way and unleashing their amazing talents and expertise. Particular thanks go to Gary McFarlane - I’m looking forward to working with him on a new accessibility project in 2021 - and also to our excellent co-Director, Jon Reed, for joining us and offering his considerable expertise.
Finally, I’d like to give a big thank you to Claudio for the support and encouragement he’s given me during that most difficult year (some might call it nagging, but I wouldn’t), and for investing so much into making Pilao Labs a reality. We may have had the vision for Pilao Labs in 2020 but our eyes are focused on the horizon ahead and a better 2021 for everyone. This year I hope we can help many more organisations unlock their digital potential.
Margaret Cooney - Director, Partnerships & Innovation
