The Gibraltar Digital Skills Foundation will be launching on 27th February at the StartUpGrind Gibraltar Fireside Chat with Aaron Baw and David Black on the Sunborn Hotel. The recently registered charity aims to deliver the development of digital skills around Gibraltar. At the launch, one of the founding trustees, Stewart Harrison will be showcasing the initial initiatives and projects the Foundation has organised for 2020. These include working with the HM Prison delivering Pitman qualifications in Microsoft Office and the local Girl Guide packs to teach the Digital Skill badges such as the Google and NCSC badges. There will also be the opportunity to try out Gibraltar’s first ever cyber challenge, Rock Defenders which is a joint public-private sector sponsored project led by the Foundation and will be carried out by over 900 local comprehensive students in March.

Aaron Baw is a young, Gibraltarian former Bayside student who was the team leader of team G-SEC winning the final round of CyberCenturion in the 2016 competition held at Bletchley Park's National Museum of Computing. An avid digital content creator Aaron also participated in Young Enterprise and has founded his own ventures. He designed, edited and produced a series of promotional videos to raise awareness and help market the main event for the 2019 series of TEDxWarwick talks in which he also gave a talk himself.

Aaron graduated in the top 3 of his year with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science after having also been an intern at Apple. With a passion to make things that will make meaningful contributions he is now employed by one of the world’s leading global tech giants based in the UK.

David Black has 20 years’ experience within the online gaming and technology sectors in various roles from software licensing to data centre. As the first employee of Continent 8 Technologies PLC. In 2005 David led the Isle of Man data centre build project whilst developing the business throughout Europe and Asia until 2010. He returned to Continent 8 as an advisory executive in 2018, primarily focused on EMEA and strategy. In the interim years David engaged in consultancy/interim executive roles for Tech Co’s alongside involvement in various disruptive start-up technology businesses. Executive and entrepreneurial experience is supported by a BA (Hons) European Politics and an MBA from a Russell Group University.

Continent 8 won the Hosting Service of the Year 2019 Award at Malta Gaming Awards organised by SIGMA and are also sponsors of Startup Grind Isle of Man which launched last November.

Join us on Thursday 27th February at Sapphire Bar to support the discussion on digital skills, tech & startups potential locally, in the workplace and for the future of Gibraltar.

• 5:00 pm Arrival Drinks & Rock Defenders Challenge Showcase + Demo 

• 5:10 pm iDEA Awards presented by Hon. Minister for Digital Services Albert Isola

• 5:30 pm Gibraltar Digital Skills Foundation Launch Presentation Stewart Harrison

• 5:45 pm Fireside Chat Aaron Baw & David Black

• 6:30 pm Drinks, Food & Networking

GDSF aims to encompass the development of digital skills at different levels within Gibraltar using the vast and wide experience of nine trustees from both the public and private sector, offering a wealth of experience and expertise. Charitable initiatives such as senior citizen lessons and prison reskilling are just a couple of the overall activities that are being planned by offering different courses and learning opportunities based on advice and guidance from the technology sector. This has stemmed from an established history and the success Stewart and his team members already have with the private sector that they are able to join up with their education links.

Additionally, they will pursue the setting up of internships and work placements to give members of the Foundation an experience of the type of work that can be done in the technology industry with one of the aims being to reach out to school leavers and mature students to offer them opportunities to reskill themselves to make them more employable. This will also help when adapting to the needs of the job market to ensure the relevant skills are taught.