Now that the digital dust has settled, we’ve reflected on that hectic week in August to create a little report about our YRS adventure. You can download a copy here.
We’ve got some exciting plans up our sleeves, including two hack events during the forthcoming half term at MadLab. Keep an eye on the site for more details!
Over the past two years we’ve held a weeklong Young Rewired State (YRS) event here at MadLab.
YRS is aimed at providing the space and opportunity for those aged 18 and under to learn/develop/share coding skills. Each year, we’ve opened up MadLab and been amazed at the talent, teamwork and sheer niceness of the young people that come along. There has been plenty of coverage, from the open data bus timetable app, through to a Guardian profile of one participant, leading to a national Coding for Kids campaign.
This year YRS will be between 6th – 11th August. As ever, MadLab will host coders for the week. This year, the YRS have moved the Friday show-and-tell in London up a notch, to become a night of camp and code, pizza and camaraderie at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park…
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Last week was the third annual Young Rewired State (YRS), and we happily hosted at team at MadLab.
If you hadn’t heard, YRS is about young developers using (or collecting) open data to make/develop apps and ideas. Eight young developers joined in during the week at MadLab, with a wide variety of hacks, apps and ideas being generated. Alongside MadLab, there were 12 other centres across the country, plus a small work-from-home group.
Blimey, a year has flown by. Last year, a 10-strong team of young coders, developers and designers took over MadLab as part of the Young Rewired State initiative. This year, we will be there again – 1st – 5th August.
If you hadn’t heard, then YRS is:
…a week long hack event (1-5 August 2011) where young and aspiring web developers across the country build their own web apps, visualisations and projects using government data, mentored by great companies with visits from rockstar geeks.
Whizzkids from YRS 2010!
There are 12 YRS centres across the country this year – in 2010 we were one of four. On the Friday, the team will travel down to London to meet the other and show and tell. Last year, the “whizzkids” came away with prizes and kudos – no doubt this year will be the same…
We’d love the MadLab community to support emerging talent, so we’ve four calls to action:
1 – Tell a Young Person!
If you know someone under 18, who might be interested to take part, then point them to the YRS website to sign up. With 12 centres, it could be there is a base closer to home, but we’d also welcome more participants at MadLab
2 – Open Up Some Data
YRS is all about building on open data. We’ve data.gov.uk, but also the wonderful DataGM project. If you’ve got a dataset, and no-one else can use it, then you know where to find us – hire the YRS team (OK, so I fudged that a bit too far)!
3 – Become a Mentor
MadLab is full of “rockstar geeks” - can you spare an hour/morning/afternoon/week mentor the YRS’ers? It could just be you can help turn a developing app into a great app…
4 – Feed the Kids!
We really need pizza. Al donations gratefully received. In return, I understand there will be HTML 5 spinning pizza wheels.
YRS is a great initiative – and for the third year running Manchester is a major contributor. Drop us a line on @youngrewired, or via @stevieflow if you can help in anyway… and follow #yrs2011
Geek Meets Government
Title: Young Rewired State Manchester
Location: MadLab
Description: A hack week for young developers across the country to go and build visualisations, digital and/or non-digital products using government data, alongside working devs in businesses across the UK
Start Date: 2010-08-02
Start Time: 10:30
End Date: 2010-08-05
End Time: 17:00
YRS is a initiative that aims to support young developers and coders in using public data to build apps, websites and anything else that people may use. It is about mashing up and getting out there with data people may not have seen or experienced before.
Anyone aged between 15-18.
The nature of Young Rewired State means that people will get quite technical. We will welcome people will programming/hacking experience and skills. However, if you are also interested in developing apps, websites or good uses of public data, then by all means come along.
YRS is taking place at centres across the country. So far, there are centres in Brighton, London, Norwich, Oxford, Birmingham and of course Manchester.
In Manchester we will be based at the MadLab – which is a well-know space for digital collaboration in the city centre.
We will meet on the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at the MadLab and work together on ideas and developments. On Friday 6th August we will take the train down to London to meet the other teams, show & tell our work and maybe get a prize!
We can meet at MadLab at 10.30am each day, and try and finish around 5pm or so.
In Manchester we are supported by the MadLab, but then staff from Substance, Blackpool Council and Digital Freedom in Education and Youth. All support staff will be CRB checked and we will always be in a group.
Yes – there is a central registration form at YRS (http://events.osmosoft.com/recipes/yrs/tiddlers.wiki), but we will also require you to complete our local one too.
We need to know that you’ve told an responsible adult as to where you’ll be – particularly if you come to London. By all means, put them in contact with us, if there is anything not clear?
We went on YRS last year and got lots out of it – including skills, contacts and pizza. We think YRS is the perfect opportunity to get involved in something very exciting and interesting…
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This event is sponsored by the BCS, find out more about BCS, The Chatered Institute for IT, at www.bcs.org and www.bcsmanchester.org.uk