Mighty oaks from little acorns grow – and this applies to both the ethos and rapid growth of Young Rewired State’s annual Festival of Code. What began in 2009 as a weekend gathering of 50 self-taught young coders, aimed at introducing them to the benefits of open data, has since expanded to become the world’s largest annual hack event for young people. Some 1,200 under-18s attended this year’s finale at Birmingham’s ICC (International Convention Centre), showcasing the projects their teams had created over the previous week at one of 66 technology centres, most in the UK, plus a few overseas. So great was the attendance – along with parents, mentors and centre leads – that it took six hours to process them all through ICC registration on the Friday afternoon.

The full article can be found in The MagPi 38

“This year it felt like we had finally come of age,” says YRS founder Emma Mulqueeny. “Every year we learn hard lessons! And every year we try to make sure we address those. This year it really seemed like we had managed to work out how to address the issues of scale… The feedback has been incredible and really wonderful to see. The standard of the hacks produced by the teams was also higher than ever.”

Infectious enthusiasm

The sheer level of enthusiasm is something noted by most attendees, including Raspberry Pi Foundation CEO Philip Colligan, who was on the judging panel for the heats and semi-finals. “The kids are awesome,” he tells us. “Walking around, you can see that they love every minute of it.” He’s also amazed at what the entrants managed to achieve in just a week: “They’re learning new programming languages, how to access and use open data, they’re doing physical hacks and physical computing projects.” Most of all, however, he stresses the importance of the kids solving problems that they care about, which means they’re totally driven to learn what need to create and showcase their project.

Fellow judge and Raspberry Pi Foundation colleague Marc Scott was equally impressed. Describing the scene on the Friday evening, as entrants continued to work on their projects, he says: “It’s quite an amazing sight to see that many kids all hunched over laptops, tablets, phones, and Raspberry Pis, with screens full of nothing more than text.”

“The atmosphere on the Friday is always a slightly anxious one,” adds Emma. “Everyone is nervous ahead of presentations the next day. However, for the ones coming back, it is a huge reunion – and the whopping amount of pizza always helps! On Saturday it is much more buzzy; everyone is showcasing what they have built, they have all connected again with each other or made new friends: sometimes these are lifetime friendships.”

Social experience

The benefits for the Festival’s young participants are manifold, according to Marc. “For many attendees it’s their first real experience of interacting with the ‘hacker community’ face-to-face. They’ll have people they know through social media that share their interests, and maybe one or two friends at school, but nothing on the scale of the Festival of Code. It’s nice to get together with a couple of friends to hack a project together, but being able to stand in a room filled with nearly a thousand people and know that each and everyone of them is as passionate about coding as you are is very empowering.”

Emma concurs: “Many of these young developers have taught themselves, and before the Festival existed, these youngsters were pretty isolated people, both at school and in their learning. Now they are growing up with hundreds/thousands of people exactly like them. They love teaching each other, they love learning from each other, and they love challenging themselves. What I see every year is a child spotting something that they want to learn by the time they come back, and then doing so; so the impact on the actual skill they are picking up is huge.”

Such is the lure of the annual Festival that many previous participants who pass the maximum age threshold of 18 (‘graduates’, as Emma calls them) return to mentor youngsters or act as judges. Most go on to university, while others have gone to work in startup companies or have formed their own with the aid of the US-based Y Combinator seeding fund.

Hardware hacks

The wide range of projects this year was impressive, particularly given the short development time. “I’m always blown away by what is produced for the Festival of Code,” says Marc. “There are apps, websites, and hardware hacks that range from the purely zany, to those that could genuinely do some social good, or even make some money. The standard is always high, and you can see that the attendees have really given it their all, no matter what the level of technical expertise they possess.”

While the majority of projects this year were software-based, hardware hacks seemed to find favour with the judges, including several Raspberry Pi-based projects. Most notable of these was Buoy (see boxout on left), a water pollution-detecting Pi-powered duck, which won the ‘Code A Better Country’ and ‘People’s Choice’ awards. It was a favourite of Philip’s: “They’d actually managed to get it to the stage in just a week where this thing was navigating itself around the pool, which was just amazing.” And while not all of the hardware projects made use of the Pi, Philip notes: “Most of the kids there that I spoke to owned one or more Raspberry Pis and they’re using them to learn on, which is exactly what we want.”

Another standout project was the Intelligent Elephant Alarm Clock designed by a trio of girls aged seven and eight, which was a finalist in the Should Exist category. Created using ScratchX and a PicoBoard, the clock makes use of local weather and traffic data to determine when the user is woken by one of five animal alarms. “They had one of the most complicated but effective Scratch programs I’ve ever seen,” says an astonished Philip. He was also impressed by ‘Best Example of Design’ winner ArduDuck, a USB dongle that instantly adapts any PC to the user’s special requirements so they can start using it straight away.

Considering the high standard of entries, Philip says it was really hard to judge them: “There was a fair bit of argument amongst the judges,” he reveals. Projects were assessed using four criteria: the quality of code, novelty factor, whether it addressed the problem that was being solved, and use of open data.

Following heats and semi-finals for four main categories, and final project presentations on the main stage, the winners were revealed on the Sunday afternoon. “When we announce the semi-finalists and the finalists, it is a bit like X Factor for geeks!” laughs Emma. “The finale is always emotional. Tears from parents, mentors and centre leads, nerves from the finalists, and huge sadness and grief when it is all over: no one wants it to end and to have to wait another year.”

Register for 2016

If you want to get involved in next year’s Festival of Code – as a participant, mentor or centre – you can register your interest at festival.yrs.io. The Festival is completely free to participate in and open to anyone under the age of 18, although you need to have at least some basic coding experience. Successful applicants are sent to a nearby technology centre, where mentors will help them to design their project during the Festival week, before it’s showcased at the weekend finale.