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Martha Lane Fox, aka Baroness Lane Fox of Soho, is a woman of many projects. A cross-bench peer and serial entrepreneur she burst onto the business tech scene in the late 1990s with lastminute.com, the website she co-founded with Brent Hoberman.
She now chairs digital skills charity Go ON UK and leads the Open University as Chancellor.
Recently Martha talked to WIRED about her latest project, Dot Everyone, and she explained how transformative use of digital technology will make the UK a better place to live and work.
Martha will be speaking on the Main Stage at our flagship event, WIRED2015, on October 15-16. She will take part in the session, "Building social impact", alongside Geekie founder and CEO Claudio Sassaki and data architect Carlo Ratti.
Bringing the WIRED world to life, WIRED2015 showcases the innovators changing the world and promoting disruptive thinking and radical ideas. There will be more than 50 speakers over the two-day event, presenting stories about their work in science, design, business and many other fields.
Martha plans to share her plans for women in tech with the WIRED2015 audience: "I'm going to talk about why I think it's one of the most profoundly important challenges and opportunities facing the sector," she says. "There are more voices from more different places talking about it," she adds. "I want to paint a picture of how the UK can be a test lab for the rest of the world in having an incredibly gender-balanced workforce, and also the ability to tap into a completely different workforce and what that might do for other products and services."
She is confident that, "the UK could become the best place to be a woman in the digital world."
Martha will also talk more about Dot Everyone. "It's one of the first, if not the first, global digital institutions," she says. "That is, something run digitally but also focussed exclusively on the digital world in its macro sense." Dot Everyone will have a mandate from the UK Government and support from organisations including the BBC, the Open University and the Wellcome Trust.
A central aim of the organisation is, "to make the UK more prosperous and with greater wellbeing through digital technology."
That includes levelling the tech playing field in terms of gender. "One of the major projects we're going to run is around women in technology," she says, "but there are others. I'm slowly beginning to talk more about it, we’re getting close to defining he projects that we might start launching."
The Dot Everyone team is in place as is the seed funding. It's due to be launched in November, but "we're very much going to be showing not telling," Martha smiles. "We're going to start rolling things out and talking about them as we do so rather than a sort of 'ta dah!' launch."
In 2014 Martha was almost killed in a car crash, and she still struggles every day with the aftermath of the serious physical injuries she suffered. Considering her fellow WIRED2015 speakers, Martha says the one she's particularly looking forward to meeting is amputee Arunima Singh. "Since my car accident I face constant physical challenges, and she climbed Everest. That will be exciting for me."
She's also very interested to see North Korean defector and activist Hyeonseo Lee. "Partly because she's a young woman, partly because of what she’s managed to do."
Go ON UK estimates that 10.5 million adults in the UK lack access to basic digital skills. It aims to plug the skills gap and ensure that everyone has those basic digital skills. What does Martha think this sector might look like in five years' time? Does she think there will still be groups and areas lacking? "I think we have a real opportunity to try to help enable and create the most networked country on earth, and I don't just mean in terms of numbers of startups, though we are doing pretty well on that," she says. "I think the UK has been an incredible leader, but I think it's a job that's kind of 10 to 20 percent done. How incredible would it be if we thought, you know what? We could really create a skilled workforce!"
Does Martha have any plans to further develop GO ON? Does she envisage a day where its work will be done? Where whole communities will have gained those basic digital skills? "I hope so. I really do," she says. "It all feeds into my view that the UK needs a vision. I don't think it has one. And I think it has an opportunity to have a big digital vision." A coherent plan and vision plus a skilled workforce is what will "make us happier, wealthier and more successful as a country over the next 50 years. That's what I'm committed to trying to play in part in helping pull off."
When asked if she has set herself any more challenges on top of the massive one that is Dot Everyone, Martha laughs. "That's like a joke! I get so overly teased by my close friends and family not even letting myself get through a day without setting myself a challenge!"
WIRED2015 takes place on October 15-16 at Tobacco Dock in London, E1. Last year's event sold out, so secure your place now. WIRED subscribers save 10 per cent on tickets. We also have a limited number of half-price tickets available for startups and registered charities. For more information or to register, please visit http://www.wiredevent.co.uk/wired-2015.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
