This time last week we were on a coach back from Plymouth, having spent a week participating in the national ‘Young Rewired State’. It’s a yearly hackathon for children (18 years old and younger) where they hack at centres around the UK for a week and then spend the weekend in one venue, pitching their products – based on coding and open data – to judges and each other, for prizes.
The Stemettes Centre was sponsored by City University and followed our boot camp sessions earlier this year. We had about 12 girls (and a couple of boys) join us for the week to build products they’d thought up:
- Twoovie – a movie recommendation app based on Twitter sentiment
- Miaow many people? – a data visualisation of the world population with a quiz and fact randomiser
- Jack and Finn’s Sugar Rush – an addictive game
- Vibe Music – a mobile app which plays music based on your mood
We were joined by volunteers, plenty of food, this music playlist and sweets all week, whilst building our ‘hacks’ using a variety of languages and tools.
Coach Friday
We spent most of this day on the coach to Plymouth – an 8-hour journey including severe traffic into the city. Eating snacks, practising presentations and listening to music helped us pass the time. We then arrived at the ‘YRS Festival of Code’ in the main Plymouth University building.
Saturday and Sunday ‘Festival of Code’
On Saturday all of our teams presented to the judges, gallantly asked questions and received huge audience applause (especially from our rows). Many many people made it through to the Semi-finals and had to present a second time. We spent the evening watching films together.
The following morning, we did some filming for the video above and then headed back to London – this time a 7-hour coach journey. What a week!
Huge thanks go to City University, Charlie Watson, Emma-Ashley Liles and John Sandall for their support throughout the week. They are also due to YPlan and SendGrid for all the cool swag they sent us throughout the week – to keep us going.
We’re looking forward to joining YRS next year and having an excellent time with even more young coders (and of course Stemettes).
