Young Rewired State
Wow. Just wow. What an amazing day. Everyone at #YRS2011: you all ROCK.
#yrs2011 has been awesome. Even more awesome than last year! :-D
#yrs2011 wish I was back at school. Some great opportunities here.. In this room!
Had ridiculous amounts of fun at #yrs2011 this yr! Hope 2 come next yr
"Just today, I’ve written over 200 lines of code. I could never have done that without the confidence #yrs2010 gave me."
"#yrs2010 got me to dive into Linux and expand to learn other interesting languages beside the typical web stack."
Young Rewired State is the philanthropic arm of Rewired State and is a network of developers aged 18 and under.
Its primary focus is to find and foster the young children and teenagers who are driven to teaching themselves how to code, how to program the world around them. This is a mighty challenge though well-supported with free tutorials online, but inevitably an isolating and solitary activity.
YRS works to seek out these people and mentor them primarily through a week long hack event in the Summer. This always runs in the first week of August. During that week businesses, small and large, around the country act as hosts to local young people, YRS alumni, Rewired State mentors and other volunteers. A challenge is set to build digital products: mobile and web, using at least one piece of open data.
It is free for every child to enter, so long as they are aged 18 or under and have a rudimentary understanding of programming — although we do send out free resources in advance of the week for those who are unsure of their skills.
At the end of the week everyone piles on coaches, trains and cars to the The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park where they will have a night of camp and code, pizza and camaraderie. On the Saturday afternoon, they will show what they have made to an audience of their peers, Press, government and industry. Prizes are awarded and lives are changed.
After this they are automatically a part of the growing network of young developers across the UK. Lifetime friendships are born as well as businesses. Mentor relationships are forged and that child is no longer coding alone.
One of the bi-products of YRS is the strong alumni network. Once the YRSers get to 19, they volunteer to return year on year to mentor the younger ones, helping them understand what the week is all about and welcoming them into the broader network of developers — helping them make life-changing decisions.
It is all run through sponsorship and volunteers and will always be so.
Here’s what the 2011 young people and alumni had to say:
Young Rewired State 2011
In August 2011, 100 young developers created more than 40 projects at 14 centres around the UK in a week, and presented them to press and government at Microsoft's offices in Victoria. Read the blog post...