Last weekend, I had the amazing opportunity to work on the Festival of Code 2015. Since June I've been working with Young Rewired State as their 'Festival Logistics Lead' for the event, so doing anything from managing DBS checks to ordering hundreds of pizzas… The Festival of Code is the world's largest hackathon, that was held in a whole host of cities across the planet.
From 27th July to the 30th July, all the kids were in their centres and were tasked with building anything they want (that could be a web app, mobile app or even something physical) with only one condition — they use open data.
They all travelled to Birmingham on the Friday (31st) where we were holding the finale at the ICC. They presented their ideas and showed to groups of up to 1200 other young people exactly what they had made. There were many sleepless nights leading up to the final presentations, hacking away until the early hours, making those final adjustments to their code or tweaking their designs.
What amazed me was the quality of what all these 18 and unders created in just one week. There was an incredible amount of thought which was put into the ideas, two of the ideas that specifically stand out in my mind are 'P.U.M.P.S.' and 'Ko-lect'. Both of these ideas were something that most under 18s rarely think about in their everyday lives. P.U.M.P.S. was a service that allowed you to enter in your vehicle registration in a petrol forecourt and a light would appear on the pumps you should use after pulling data from the DVLA. This was trying to solve the age old problem of drivers using the wrong fuel in their cars. What really astounded me was when one of the group members, a 13 year old, talked about scale, and how they could grow the business. Their plan was to grow the business so petrol stations would use their ANPR cameras to automatically read the number plate and then shut off the fuel pumps which shouldn't be used. IT'S JUST MINDBLOWING…
The second app that stands out in my mind was 'Ko-lect'. An app made by tweens, yes under 13s… about food banks. I was speaking to Julia, the CEO of YRS' sister company Rewired State who was telling me that the ideas that come through here, show what children are concerned about. The way that food banks were a really popular choice of basis of the apps that were being made just goes to show either how many of them, or their friends are being affected by the current economic climate, and how so many of them want to make a change for the better. The app itself allows shop owners and families to list food stuffs they have leftover as well as allowing families who are struggling to signup for updates of donations near them.
All in all, it just went to show me why I fucking love the work I do. Being able to help to bring all these kids together, help to run an event where they are mentored and build their connections in the industry (and it's future members). If this doesn't show big businesses why they need to invest in young people at an early age, than I have no idea what else we can do… There was so much talent at the weekend, all of it that could and should be used in businesses to improve the way they work.
The kids took to Twitter to express their love for #FoC2015. These were the incredible stats we had from over the week:
- 11,968 posts by 1,804 users
- Total reached: 4,299,775 people
- Total impressions: 25,909,753
- 65% male users and 35% female users
- During the final presentations we had over 2,000 tweets alone!
- The most commonly used hashtag in addition to one associated with the festival was #watttheduck
- The most tweeted centre was #FoCHighbury
- We had tweets from all over the world, with the UK, US and Ireland being top of the list.
I'll leave you with a little tweet which made me smile on my train back from Birmingham. I might not change the world in what I do, but I think I've helped the people that one day might just do that…
Very sad that it's my last FoC participating, but the ways that @youngrewired have changed my life are uncountable. My fav week of the year!
— Neena (@ThisIsNeena), August 2015
Big Love 😊❤️
Originally published at words.marcwalsh.co.uk on August 9, 2015.