Written by Dominic Falcão, 2012

YOUNG REWIRED STATE

CODING A BETTER COUNTRY

A scalable, sustainable answer to fostering young British programmers, a White Paper

11/2012

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CONTENTS Executive Summary ......................................................................................................................................................... 3

The UK .............................................................................................................................................................................. 3

YRS ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 3

Changing perspectives ............................................................................................................................................... 3

Computing ........................................................................................................................................................................... 5

The importance of Computing ................................................................................................................................. 5

Technology and Inequality ........................................................................................................................................ 6

Solutions ............................................................................................................................................................................... 7

The major bottleneck to long-term change ........................................................................................................ 7

Fixing Education ........................................................................................................................................................... 8

Fixing education is not sufficient ............................................................................................................................ 9

Young Rewired State (YRS) ....................................................................................................................................... 12

What is Young Rewired State? .............................................................................................................................. 13

Why is YRS a good solution? .................................................................................................................................. 14

What are the individual benefits of Coding? .................................................................................................... 17

The Model and Mechanics of YRS ........................................................................................................................... 18

How do you find Kids? .............................................................................................................................................. 18

What does it cost to run a YRS Hack Day? ........................................................................................................ 19

How is YRS funded? ................................................................................................................................................... 20

What happens to the apps? .................................................................................................................................... 21

The future – how is YRS growing? ....................................................................................................................... 22

YRS in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales ................................................................................................ 23

YRS Everywhere ......................................................................................................................................................... 23

What else needs to be done? A change of focus. A change of direction. ................................................. 24

A change in government attitude ........................................................................................................................ 25

A change in Business attitude ............................................................................................................................... 26

Post Script ................................................................................................................................................................... 28

Are we really going to allow our kids to blindly stumble into a future so utterly dependent

on digital tools and products, without giving them the chance to be the demi-Gods who sit

behind these things, telling them what to do, and thereby telling us what to think?1

-EM

1 EM = Emma Mulqueeny, founder of Rewired State and Young Rewired State (YRS), CS= Computer Science http://mulqueeny.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/teach-our-kids-to-code-e-petition/

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

THE UK Future-proof the UK: Computing is a crucial driver and facilitator of innovation,

and thus of long-term, high-growth industry.

Computing underlies the growth of almost every contemporary sphere of business.

Technology impacts inequality: making computing skills available to the poorest is a key

part of social mobility.

We need to refocus on making software as well as using it. ICT education in the UK is a

“toxic brand”2 that urgently needs revolutionizing.

Education is the long-term solution: it therefore overlooks the possibility of an

immediate improvement in the situation: working with the young British programmers

who have taught themselves to code in spite of the hostile and unhelpful environment

that they find themselves in.

YRS Builds communities of self-taught programmers aged 18 and under at local,

national and international levels through “Hack Days”.

The YRS model is the most organic and scalable way to access and nurture this

delicate talent.

YRS is bridging the generational talent gap as talented youth succumb to the stigma and

lack of support around programming: stemming the “outsource culture” that is currently

draining money from the economy as regards software development.

YRS rescues self-taught programmers from the isolation of the Status Quo.

Initiatives like YRS are essential to flourishing creative possibility at the beginning of the

most fertile era for human ingenuity – the internet era.

CHANGING PERSPECTIVES Why not build it here?

We need a shift in focus from stimulating enterprise alone: without developers, the ideas

generated will go nowhere.

We need a shift in business culture towards openness: open data and open software are

the most efficient and forward thinking way to exploit our burgeoning data resources.

We need a shift in business culture towards nurturing local talent in place of

outsourcing to avoid talent flight and talent stagnation.

2 http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/mar/31/why-kids-should-be-taught-code

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Coding in Context – Economy and the state of UK Innovation

You can’t just have politicians pointing at a part of the country and saying let’s invent

something from scratch: that hasn’t worked in the past, it won’t work in the future. This is

about building on something good and making it great.”

“We’re not doing enough to teach the next generation of programmers... I don’t just want

people who are literate in technology: I want people who want to create programmes3”

– David Cameron

No Growth and falling innovation in the UK require a change of focus

Everybody demands growth, investment, jobs. The UK struggles to remain competitive in the

modern globalised economy: manufacture is cheaper in developing countries and technology is

done more effectively in others who have already begun to specialise. Sweden is green.

Germany is automobile. The US is aerospace, Web 2.0. South Korea is mobile telecoms and

shipping. India and China are engineering, manufacture in general and are becoming developer

hubs too. The UK is a service economy with a dwindling number of services over which it can

offer a competitive edge. One day we will finally admit that, but for global warming’s prospects

of turning the Devonshire Riviera into a quasi-Mediterranean paradise, we have very few

reasons to bet on our tourist industry as the future saviour of the British economy.

It is widely suggested that changing the way we think about innovation must be central in

addressing this issue: innovation accounted for 63% of economic growth between 2000 and

20084. Thus, with arguably the best higher education system in the world, it should be

concerning learning to read Nesta’s report:

“Investment in innovation by UK businesses started slowing in 2000, and decreased slowly

but steadily as a percentage of output all through the last decade. Fixed asset investment

was increasingly dominated by bricks and mortar, with less and less being invested in high

tech kit...

“The shortfall in 2011 was as much as £24 billion, four or five times what the UK

government spends on scientific and technological research in a year.5”

There are many suggested reasons for this decline. Nesta point to talent drains: to higher

salaried, more stable career paths such as Finance and Real Estate; to the vicious circle of less

UK talent leading to less businesses choosing to locate in the UK, less businesses leading to less

jobs; less applicants for cutting-edge courses because job prospects in those careers have

dwindled etc.

3 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15682850 4 http://www.nesta.org.uk/areas_of_work/economic_growth/assets/features/plan_i 5 http://www.nesta.org.uk/home1/assets/blog_entries/plan_i

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COMPUTING

THE IMPORTANCE OF COMPUTING

Computational thinking is a general skill;

it’s applicable to many elements of science

and the training of our kids today. It’s not

only programming, it’s the ability to

abstract, to think about problems at

multiple levels that’s important to teach

our kids. If we’re only users, we’ll be unable

to contribute to the digital economy.

-Professor Jeff Magee, Department of

Computing - Imperial College London

It’s the most creative thing you can do: it’s

purely of the mind.

-Dan Crow, CTO of Songkick, a London

tech start-up

Computing is a huge, yet rapidly declining British and European employer and

producer

The UK and Europe will require many more highly-skilled computing technicians

than we are currently forecast to produce, and we will lose substantial growth

prospects if provision to meet this shortfall is not made

Technology is proving one of the drivers of inequality: we pay high skills

premiums for technology literacy, but technology literacy is contingent on starting

family income

Certainly, one of the clearest bottlenecks for making the UK a prime destination for innovative

business, and one of the most commented issues, has been the total under-provision and

irrelevance of computing education in the UK, despite the fact that computing has, by all

accounts, become a truly integral part of innovation. 25% of all EU business R&D spend in 2007

(excluding State funding) was on ICT, twice as much as any other industrial sector.6

The importance of computing and computer science in all of the sciences, for advances in

engineering and manufacture, in journalism and film and even in the execution of every day

transactions for small businesses is a simple and inescapable fact of 2012 and of any future we

can predict from this horizon.

6 http://www.computingatschool.org.uk/data/uploads/BCS_Computing_Fact_Sheet.pdf

What is “computing”?

Computing is the study of how

computers and computer

systems work, and how they are

constructed and programmed,

and the foundations of

information and computation. It

is a discipline, like mathematics

or physics, that explores

foundational principles and

ideas (such as techniques for

searching the Web), rather than

artefacts (such as particular

computer programs), although it

may use the latter to illuminate

the former. Its aspects of design,

theory and experimentation

are drawn from Engineering,

Mathematics and Science

respectively. 1

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Computing at Schools supplies the following evidence to support the economic centrality of

computing:

The UK’s IT industry alone produces an annual GVA of £30.6 billion, 3% of the total UK

economy, with the continued adoption and exploitation of ICT having the capacity to

generate an additional £35 billion of GVA to the UK economy over the next five to

seven years.

Employment:

Another 150,000 IT professionals in the UK would add £44 billion in national GVA.

70,000 computer programming jobs were offshored in the US between 1999-2003. Over

the same period 115,000 more highly paid computer software engineering jobs were

created in the US.

The European Commission predicts the UK will need an additional 500,000 IT

professionals by 2015.

The CBI annual skills survey shows the percentage of UK employers dissatisfied with

basic IT skills in their workforce has increased year on year for the last three years, in

2008 - 55% dissatisfied, in 2010 - 66% dissatisfied.

TECHNOLOGY AND INEQUALITY

Technology has been a key battleground for arguments about inequality.

Globalisation, exposure of our unskilled workers to competition from countries without

minimum wage restrictions or proper regulation of working conditions has meant fewer jobs

for the unskilled. Simultaneously, the rapid pace of technological change and our increasing

reliance on these breakthroughs has meant the development of a much greater skills premium:

scientists and engineers have seen their incomes increase rapidly.7

A recent OECD report puts it like this:

“Globalisation... went hand-in-hand with the rapid adoption of new technologies which

may penalise those workers who do not have the necessary skills. Technological progress is

therefore often seen as inherently “skill-biased”.”8

In terms of computing, for those who are subjected to the current, absurd curriculums and grow

up in low income households, developing these high premium skills is incredibly difficult:

without access to up to date technology it is hard to see how they could even teach themselves.

7 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jul/16/technology-inequality-policy-change 8 www.oecd.org/els/socialpoliciesanddata/47723414.pdf p.10

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SOLUTIONS

ICT education is un-engaging and unfit for purpose

The generation in schools now ought to be the most highly skilled, technology-

driven cohort ever, yet it is held back by the state of the current course

This has ramifications for GCSE and university uptake of Computing, which in

turns will mean massive under-provision of these skills

THE MAJOR BOTTLENECK TO LONG-TERM CHANGE

Uptake of Computing courses in the UK is on the decline: between 2003 and 2011, UCAS

applications fell almost 12%: the percentage of students looking to study the subject has fallen

from 5% to 3% of all applicants.9

And whilst organisations such as the Royal Society, individuals such as Eric Schmidt and David

Cameron, have remarked upon the inadequacy of the status quo in education, it is often young

people who are able to put the point most succinctly:

“We need to ensure that the IT which we are teaching is useful for us. In the course I did

from 2008-2009, I was given 2 As and 2 A*s for doing silly, simple and rather patronising

tasks, like opening and formatting word docs, etc.”

And

[we can encourage more kids to start coding by] “Scrapping the secretary-training ICT

curriculum, replacing it with one which teaches more about how technologies work and

how to manipulate them.” (Young Rewired State attendees, 2012)

There is a sense of frantic urgency and fatalism in these remarks: it is already too late for many

students whose lives will rely and revolve around these technologies.

This skills deficit holds up the entire system. Without skilled workers and young people

enthused by the technology needed to push the economy forward, businesses will not develop

their technologies here, will not invest here, small businesses will be left behind by better

equipped international competitors and young people will lack the tools needed to innovate for

themselves. This damages the United Kingdom’s long-term prospects for growth significantly.

Computing solutions and ideas are increasingly outsourced, bypassing the small but incredibly

high calibre community of native programmers and developers here.

Moreover, this deficit cannot be “solved by any one organisation or thought leader – it requires an

expert and committed community, self-driven and focused on specialist areas... This is very much a

community thing10”. Whilst disagreement on what exactly is to be done is rife, it appears that

there is a consensus that singular, isolated government intervention is more likely to damage

and disrupt the protean technology infrastructure developing in the UK than to help solve the

challenges that it faces.

9 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15916677 10 Emma Mulqueeny - http://mulqueeny.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/codingforkids-evening-

barcamp/

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FIXING EDUCATION

Inject funds into sources of innovation: places of education, schemes providing

skills beyond school curriculums

Public-Private partnerships identifying the exact syllabus that is needed: raising

money and investing together

ICT as part of compulsory primary school syllabus

It is clear that the solution must be multilayered. At the macroeconomic level, Nesta points to

lack luster financial architecture; the difficulty of hiring talented, specialist staff both in the UK

and from overseas (due to complex and intractable Visa laws), the government’s lack of

commitment to funding innovation through public funds and its propensity to invest in

infrastructure for short-term political benefits rather than long-term, sustainable economic

growth.

At the level of computing, the NextGen, Royal Society and BCS reports made it clear that

computing must become part of the national curriculum. This is underway following The Ofsted

report on ICT, 2011, the scrapping of ICT as a compulsory subject from 2014 and the

recognition by Michael Gove that:

“Computer Science is a rigorous, fascinating and intellectually challenging subject... and is

merging with other scientific fields into new hybrid research subjects like computational

biology... We will certainly consider including Computer Science as an option in the

English Baccalaureate11.”

A further development in the form of Behind the Screen, a partnership between government and

industry, is an effort to augment this push with the objective of creating

“a new curriculum and delivery methodology which will put the UK ahead of its

international rivals in the education of young people for success in the e-enabled future

economy12.”

11 Michael Gove’s speech at BETT January 2012

12 http://www.behindthescreen.org.uk/about-bts/

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FIXING EDUCATION IS NOT SUFFICIENT

While you have your day tomorrow, and every day from then on, remember that we are

living through the greatest revolution ever seen in the potential for human achievement

and human connection. We can ruin it at birth, or we can nurture it. And one day, in

decades to come, we’ll be asked about these years, and what we did at the birth of the

internet era.13

-Ben Hammersley

“Senior schools are not the most malleable of organisations to effect immediate and

effective change, regardless of good intent and recognition of a problem14”

-EM

Trying to solve this problem with a top-down, managerial (half-hearted) cry to throw open

the digital doors in Year 8 and force change in education and interest is going to be a long

and bloody process. If this is the way we choose to go, then accept that it will take time,

money (lots of money) and that it will affect the whole of the education system, not just ICT

reform.15

-EM

I see you and your consultancy revenue based organisations, and I raise you a network of

100s of kids through YRS who will not be fooled16

-EM

The current strategy is a long-term, top-level approach

Failure to effect immediate action will lose an entire generation of programmers,

designers and technology-literate scientists and business people

13 http://www.benhammersley.com/2011/09/my-speech-to-the-iaac/ 14 http://mulqueeny.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/open-education-and-freedom-to-teach-computing/ 15 ibid 16 http://mulqueeny.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/paragraph-seven/

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The completion of the revolution in computing education is clearly a long way off. There are

multiple major obstacles to establishing an adequate curriculum nationwide.

1. Examinations. The construction of examinations that can cope with creativity and a

supporting set of people capable of marking the results are required.

2. Teachers. Ideally, IT and computing would be taught by Computer Science graduates;

teachers with a sufficiently specific and deep expertise in computing to allow them to

keep abreast of advancements in a rapidly changing field.

a. If immediate action was taken, the current generation of CS graduates might be

incentivised to teach, and experts in the field brought into schools.

b. However, with the diminutive number of CS graduates currently in stock, this

would be at best a small influx.

c. A full cycle of graduates would be required, with teacher training included: we

cannot expect to have sufficient teachers for a new course at anything higher

than the English Baccalaureate within 5 years.

3. Course texts and course resources. An effective syllabus will be inherently laconic,

requiring frequent updating for anything less specific than general principles.

4. Stigma, prejudice and inequality. This is perhaps the longest-term issue that

Computing faces.

a. A brilliant computing course that is optional will attract only those already

converted to the charms of the subject. Whilst traditional subjects such as

English, Maths and Sciences are widely endorsed by corporations, universities,

the media and parents, Computing faces under-exposure and a lack of role

models and champions.

b. Computing is widely and increasingly perceived as a “male” subject. This is

unacceptable if programming is to play a major role in the future of the UK

economy.

What is more, many of these problems are “chicken and egg” type problems: they cannot be

solved with a single reform, but are held back by collective action dilemmas and other

circularities. For instance:

1. Stigma will not start to dissolve until there is a more widespread awareness of what it

entails.

2. Yet society will only come to this understanding piecemeal without its members being

educated about it and exposed to the truths of the discipline.

3. However, this kind of education requires, at least in part, that the stigma surrounding

Computing is dissolved, so that its basic principles can be instituted as part of

compulsory education and can be considered with an open mind.

4. Yet, the stigma will not start to dissolve until... (and so on)

Similarly with teachers:

1. In order to inspire a new generation of developers and creators, we need more people

who are better qualified in IT to teach and propound the strengths of the subject.

2. In order to get more specialist teachers, we need more people to first study Computer

Science, and an accompanying set of incentives to train to become a specialist IT teacher.

3. In order to inspire more people to study Computer Science, we need specialist teachers

in schools to inspire students...

11

Teach in school & younger

Clubs and Taster Sessions Better Resources

Teach game design

Don't even try; they'll come to it

themselves

It's Art, not Maths Better Heroes

More Kids Coding

All of this is not to say that these problems are beyond solution, but rather, that some

intermediate solution is required in order to effect significant change.

This paper posits that one possible, immediate solution: the model demonstrated by Young

Rewired State, is to employ grass roots virality that can spread from the existing kernel of

people who are passionate about their skill and counteract the decline in interest in

programming that occurs because of the existing lack of support in schools.

We put forward that this model ought to enjoy wider support: should be more extensively

adopted and replicated.

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17 YRS 2012 internal survey

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YOUNG REWIRED STATE (YRS)

“I think the most inspiring thing that I’ve seen is how giving kids, or anyone for that

matter, the space, the opportunity to create things: what that generates, just getting

people in the same room and giving them the resources they need.”

-Aral Balkin – Young Rewired State Judge.

There is an urgent and immediate lack of resources and support for young

programmers. They will stop programming without support

Schools can expand knowledge and awareness, but you still need people to have

the resources and motivation to use that knowledge

YRS creates an environment and finds the developers to put in it: the developers

do the rest

YRS particularly helps those from least advantaged backgrounds, providing the

highest caliber of mentoring and software: it is these young people who would

otherwise most lose out due to skills premiums for technology

Young Rewired State is an easily replicated and lean intermediate answer to the lack of support

that young programmers in the UK experience. The project aims at those who have taught

themselves to code, driven by pure curiosity and the desire to create. It is completely

unthinkable that these people, the ones who have had the wherewithal and ingenuity to teach

themselves entire esoteric languages in their own time, are either ignored or abused by the

mechanics of the economy.

These are the most creative and entrepreneurial thinkers of the current era: pioneers who are

capable of breaking the front-line systems of the technological age and building something new.

These individuals are marooned; maltreated by their peers and their distinctive talents

unrecognised by teachers.

For the last four years, YRS has begun the painstaking task of seeking them out, uncovering every

self-taught coder from their various hiding places and providing them with a support network, a

viable route to develop their abilities and fashion them into CV-ready entities, to actually meet

and learn from like-minded individuals and to start their own businesses and careers in

computing.

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WHAT IS YOUNG REWIRED STATE?

Under 18 year olds who have taught themselves how to program

Brought together for a week to create things with extensive local, national and

global guidance

Welded into a dynamic community that spans the area that they live in, the

country and the world

It works like this. Several hundred young people scattered across the country are challenged to

build digital products for mobile and web, using at least one piece of open data. For example,

previous hack days have focused on using at least one piece of open data: such as UK pupil data

temporarily released by the UK government for the purpose of the event.

They go to “centers”, spaces with WiFi and the necessary equipment, along with YRS mentors

and alumni, equally disparately littered across the country, identify the problems they will

attempt to solve and start building.

These centers each host a team for a week and help stimulate the ideation and creation

processes, sharing their expertise and guidance.

On the climactic Friday of the week, everyone heads towards a single location in the UK. This is

the “Festival of Code”: presentations in front of a panel of esteemed judges and the awarding of

prizes.

The festival involves food, drink and speeches from genuine thought-leaders before some of the

YRSers go to sleep and others spend the night finishing their projects.

Prizes are awarded after two rounds of presentations and have included such mischievous

categories such as “most likely to annoy a government official” as well as “code a better country”

and “best in show”.

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WHY IS YRS A GOOD SOLUTION?

(Diagram demonstrating YRS as an intermediate facilitator of peer-to-peer learning (P2P))

YRS facilitates five key channels of interaction.

Communities. It rapidly and sustainably synthesises virtual and physical communities of

young programmers both where they live and across the country.

Sustainable and scalable. It thereby reveals young people to their local professional

programming community, creating organic, sustainable and ultimately scalable

foundations for British programming.

Role models. Through judges and mentors, keynote speeches and centers, a layer of role

models is gradually created.

Global. It allows young people to tap into a global pool of expertise through the

#YRSHelp Twitter hashtag, creating an internationally competitive level of quality and

showing those watching exactly what under 18s in the UK are capable of.

Data. Lastly, it shows those in possession of data the potential of their data and begins

the process of transforming it into something genuinely useful for society.

These five channels each play slightly different roles, though there is some crossover.

1. Firstly, the networks of young people allow peer-to-peer learning and development: they make

learning how to code and create: an explosive and collaborative process. This happens on both a

“hyper-local” scale: through the centers, and at a national level: when they converge at the

Festival of Code.

15

The type of bonding that occurs in both the local centers and the national finale cannot be

replicated through virtual networks, cannot be recreated in the classroom. It is a 7-day process

of intrepid discovery: from isolation to the realisation that there are people where you live who

think in the same way and are passionate about the same sorts of things.

This is one of the particularly odd things about coding to an outsider: some forms of plagiarism

are seen in a positive light1. This is perhaps one of the reasons that open source software has

come to be seen as morally normal – most software is made up of at least some elements that

have been explicitly and proudly ‘borrowed’ from other constructions. This necessary facet of

the nature of programming is perhaps a core reason for YRS’s success and its intuitive appeal to

many who work in the industry.

This is a unique and highly scalable way of creating lasting and solidified relationships:

relationships that are crucial to the type of innovation and development that has come to make

Hack Days a revered research and development method, and that are crucial to keeping these

kids coding.

2. Secondly, through the attendance of alumni, mentors and professional developers at each centre

frustrations are coached out of the picture and the talent of the YRSers is best realised.

Furthermore, the groups forged under these pressurised circumstances often stay in contact,

linking young networks to more developed ones and creating a sustainable and local chain of

support that will survive beyond the event.

Less obviously, exposing mentors and companies to the energy and unrelenting creativity; the

sheer and compelling ambition of YRS, reminds them of the un-realised potential vested in

nascent programmers and gives them a reason to involve themselves in revitalising and

reinvigorating this base.

3. Thirdly, by assembling talented panels of judges, by collecting enthusiastic professionals and

bringing back YRS alumni as mentors who are eloquent in support of programming, YRS

curates an answer to the mainstream media’s lack of attention to the very people who should be

role models to subsequent generations of programmers. This is a crucial part of reversing the

stigma that clouds computing: of creating a culture of innovation and high-tech enterprise.

4. Fourthly, the convergence of creative minds and determination to make things that manifests at

these events is further stoked and stimulated by the input of the hundreds of experts worldwide

who follow the #YRSHelp hashtag on Twitter and inject parts of solutions into the process; both

developers at transnational companies and genius individuals silently coding for themselves.

5. Lastly, the inexorable rise of open data requires a similarly substantial growth of the community

available needed to use that data to its full potential.

Raw data on its own is virtually useless to the vast majority of people; it requires creative minds

and problem-solvers to mine in and carve useful solutions out of this information. Open data is

arguably the thing that triggered the creation of YRS – abundant data but scarce young

developers. Open Data is now the thing that inspires and feeds the creations of the under 18

year olds who take part in this event.

16

Examples of Apps created through YRS

See below examples of apps that have been created through YRS:

Humap, a “human direction map app”. An intuitive directions application that gives you

directions based on specific landmarks rather than street names.

Why Waste a Vote, a site aimed at teenagers and new voters, educating them about the political

system and the use of voting.

Way to Go. The web app uses crowd-sourced data from wheelchair users to figure out the best

places that are readily accessible.

Smart Move. The website lets you search for areas of London you may move to, according to

specific criteria. Depending on what criteria are more important to you, it will reorganise your

results to match.

Where’s my Train. Uses data about train arrivals, top speed and delays to estimate the position

of a train to be plotted on a Google map.

Norwich Blocks. Maps broadband connectivity in a more accessible and detailed way using a

three dimensional, interactive map based on software by the Games company, Mojang.

UniMatch — Helps find a university that is right for the user, using distance, fees, UCAS points,

night life etc.

Urbani — A pedestrian heat map, showing the busiest pedestrian areas in London.

myNHS — Connects patients to the NHS on the basis of four criteria: location, GPs, prescriptions

and bookings.

Lifestyle — An app that quickly informs you about your neighborhood by postcode in terms of

Education, Crime & Lifestyle.

Food for Thought — An app that uses data from the Food Standards Agency to allow users to

find out the hygiene ratings of food outlets.

17

WHAT ARE THE INDIVIDUAL BENEFITS OF CODING?

Coding is creation. This appeals to different people for different reasons: some see it as a mode

of self-expression. It is an artistic and changeable medium, clearly analogous to architecture:

solving problems in the most elegant, efficient and robust manner possible. And yet it offers a

greater degree of freedom than architecture because the solutions that are sought can be to

problems that the creators themselves devise.

Others enjoy the challenging flavour of thought that coding requires, citing its deep

requirements upon the coder’s logical faculties. Where mathematics allows also elicits these

thought processes, coding combines them with the satisfaction and lasting products of unique,

personalised solution.

Moreover, perhaps ironically for something so stereotypically “artificial”, the allure of coding

also comes in part from its appeal to intrinsic human curiosity – many people are drawn to code

simply because they feel compelled to understand what processes and structures underlie the

furniture of modern existence.

There are other, less unexpected drivers to code: the drive for friendship, for job prospects, for

profit. Coding is a way of creating a business from scratch. Hack Days and forums link each

coder to a like-minded community. These communities are completely crucial to the survival of

coding in the UK; they are fed by selfless hours of contribution and co-operation, mentoring and

development.

Creating and accomplishment

Problem Solving

Freedom

Curiosity - understanding

how things work

The Challenge Logicality Art & self

expression

Profit Social

What do you like most about coding?

18

THE MODEL AND MECHANICS OF YRS

HOW DO YOU FIND KIDS?

Without a significant budget to spend on publicity, and without a reputation to build on, finding

people who have taught themselves to code is a challenging place to start.

In spite of this, 2012 has seen a promising increase in awareness of the issue, in part thanks to

the success of previous Hack Days and PR work by Emma Mulqueeny and her team, but also due

to high-profile communications from OFSTED, The Royal Society, BCS, CaS, Behind the Screen,

Michael Gove, David Cameron, Eric Schmidt, Stephen Fry and the British press – especially the

Guardian.

YRS has been able to gain momentum through recommendations and the burgeoning number of

centers who participate. Yet, this is simply not high profile enough and fails to give the issues

involved due sincerity. What is required is a change in focus, a change in direction.

50 100 100

423

800

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 (projected)

Participants

19

WHAT DOES IT COST TO RUN A YRS HACK DAY?

In the first year, the majority of attendees came from highly disadvantaged backgrounds and

throughout the development of the event; this has continued to be a fact of YRS. For this reason,

a large percentage of the costs are hardship funds; helping get YRSers to the events. The first

event proved to be the most expensive per child: the money went towards paying for train

tickets, food and places to stay over the weekend.

The cost of the event increased significantly between 2011 and 2012 due to the increased length

of the finale: from one day to an entire weekend and the additional fact that 400 people was too

many to rely on the donated spaces for the final weekend; it became necessary hire a venue and

equipment for the weekend.

Other consistent, essential costs include food (pizza – LOTS of pizza), prizes and travel.

£23,000 £20,000 £9,000

£120,000

£200,000

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 (projected)

Cost

20

HOW IS YRS FUNDED?

“The idea is that this thing will be built and will grow and grow and grow, goodness knows

where it will take us all but I would still like to be doing this when I am 90”

-EM

YRS is a not-for-profit, philanthropic project

It is largely supported by the generous involvement of sponsors: this varies from

offering their buildings for the Festival of Code to providing their software and data free

for the participants to use.

Sponsors gain brand advocates by supplying software and familiarizing key users. In

the past, sponsors have included:

SAP

Google

Mozilla

Independence and freedom is crucial – the organization will never be for profit and

needs to flexible enough to supply what is needed most in this area of society and the

economy. Therefore, venture capital can never be an option

The aim is to find a single, main partner sponsor

Funds from Rewired State – profits from the company Rewired State, of which YRS is the

philanthropic arm, support the event

Community funding – www.peoplefund.it – “So as much as peer-to-peer learning is key

right now, so it seems is peer-to-peer funding18”

Grants (e.g. Shuttleworth Foundation Flash Grant )

18 http://mulqueeny.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/get-in-funded-by-the-people/

21

WHAT HAPPENS TO THE APPS?

It is not about the development of apps, it’s about the development of the

participants

Monetizing the products of Hack Days would be complicated, morally dubious and

counter-productive

It is crucial to note that the actual prototypes of YRS Hack Days are not the most important

outcome: the most important outcomes are the learning and community building to which app

building is simply a means.

As you might expect, it is particularly problematic to monetize software created through the

joint efforts of a group of under 18 year olds of mixed abilities. Despite this, some projects

survive through the continuing individual efforts of the participants; some are taken forward

through partnerships with government and other socially-minded organizations. All of the code

endures on the internet as a testament to the creative efforts of their creators.

Even if commercial exits existed for the prototypes created, introducing a profit motive would

betray the tagline “Coding a better country”. The motivation for each and every app is problem-

based rather than profit-based. YRSers learn how, faced with a specific problem, it is most

productive to go about building a solution.

This broad framework can be mapped onto commercially viable problems too, however, with

the general aim of developing the talents of programmers, this would be unnecessarily

restrictive and more importantly, a morally dubious activity to involve children as young as 7 in.

22

THE FUTURE – HOW IS YRS GROWING?

“The idea has always been to find and foster every kid who is driven to teach themselves

how to code, and this does not limit us to the UK.”

- EM

A longer weekend – the Festival of Code

More Participants

More Centers

More UK Countries: Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales More international countries: Estonia, Berlin, New York, Amsterdam, Kenya A Global community of young programmers

Every subsequent year has seen the number of centers involved increase. 2013 will see the first

cap on centers imposed at 50, with the size of the event tending towards the limit of the

organizational capacity of the YRS team.

As this limit is approached, the current fund-raising process becomes increasingly strained,

even as the importance and success of the event itself increases.

The length of the final weekend was increased between 2011 and 2012 to properly allow the

different centers to coalesce, to give that crucial community-building that occurs when everyone

comes together to compete and present their ideas, two entire days instead of two hours.

The mission to find every British self-taught coder may be a self-defeating prophecy – as YRS

grows, inspiring young people to evangelize programming, so therefore does the number of

British coders teaching themselves to code.

1 4

14

42

50

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 (projected)

Centres

23

Nevertheless, this model can and should be replicated abroad. For YRS, global barriers make no

sense. Rapid advances in collaborative software and platforms mean that YRS will eventually be

able to effectively transcend national barriers and physical locations, leading to the emergence

of a globally connected community of young programmers, mentored by worldwide community

of experts in all fields. This is a goal that governments worldwide should strive towards, as it

marks the only sustainable way of properly utilizing the data that they generate, the most

forward-thinking way of ensuring that programmers and computing in general advance without

restriction.

Global YRS would mean a global focus on the problems that are considered with international

data to back the process up. Young people working across borders to solve worldwide problems

is an admirable and realistic goal.

YRS IN SCOTLAND, NORTHERN IRELAND AND WALES

It is all about awareness. There are young people silently teaching themselves to code in these

countries, they just do not know we exist. The countries of the UK are an intuitive first step. The

first of these is:

Aberdeen, Scotland – December 2012

Held at The University of Aberdeen, over the weekend of December 1 & 2 2012: 50

young Scottish coders, aged 18 or under, to attend and build digital tools: apps, widgets, games

and websites - using open government data from Scotland. The weekend will be a traditional

Rewired State hack weekend, with coding continuing across two days and presentations of

prototypes on Sunday afternoon to a panel of judges.

YRS EVERYWHERE

2013 witnesses the birth of “YRS Everywhere”, the worldwide expansion of YRS, starting off

with Amtersdam 2013 in April or May, and looking to run Hack weekends on the UK model,

using local open government data) in the following places:

Estonia

Berlin

New York

Kenya

This will be the genuine beginning of YRS as a global community.

24

WHAT ELSE NEEDS TO BE DONE? A CHANGE OF FOCUS. A CHANGE

OF DIRECTION.

“Code is at the heart of everything we do in the digital world in which we exist. It’s not just

about video games and visual effects, it’s also about designing the next jet propulsion

engine, or fighting cybercrime, or running financial services.

Coding is essential to everything, and with traditional manufacturing in decline and

financial services in disarray, if the government wants the economy to succeed, you have to

empower our creative nation with the skills necessary to serve digital content to global

audiences via high-speed broadband, and code is absolutely essential to that19.”

-Author, entrepreneur and government-appointed skills champion, Ian Livingstone

Stem the outward flow of talent and outsourcing: use and develop British

programming talent: build up execution to supplement ideation

Problems that cannot be solved without making profit are still problems

One of the biggest problems for developing a competent and vibrant population of

programmers and developers in the UK is the false and anachronistic dichotomy between

“ideas” and “execution” that seems to be at the forefront of both business and government

mentality in the UK. The discordant reality is that virtually all new businesses are unequivocally

dependent on developers to progress from the idea stage. Developers tell them what is possible

and impossible, what are efficient and inefficient solutions: the very boundaries and details of

the fuzzy blueprint that entrepreneurs lay upon their tables. Developers then actually build

these solutions. And yet government encourages and invests in entrepreneurs to the detriment

of this essential element: a class of business people who are utterly impotent without good

developers, completely incapable of otherwise moving forwards.

What YRS shows, through the hundreds of unique prototypes it creates every year is that

developers themselves, given space and equipment can squash that dichotomy: they are

problem-oriented, design-thinkers, capable of taking embryonic ideation to rapid, lean

execution in weeks, rather than months. Proper investment in this talent sector would very

clearly be a more fertile destination for investment in terms of UK innovative production and

growth: YRS is solid and unquestionable evidence of this.

19 http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/interview/2199109/sowing-the-seeds-of-digital-success-an-interview-with-skills-champion-ian-livingstone#ixzz265CcGjGR

25

A CHANGE IN GOVERNMENT ATTITUDE

Hack events in the UK have always played a vital role in helping government be open and

transparent about what it is doing, and it is essential that this extends to what Parliament

is doing too. 20

-EM

1. The public good rather than profit. Organisations such as YRS produce content and

shape individuals to focus on the public good rather than on the creation of profit. This

too is the remit of government: to focus on the public good rather than the creation of

profit.

You put money and data into YRS, and out of it, you get individuals who have been

stimulated and oriented to concentrate on how to make other people’s lives better,

regardless of whether their solutions are commercially viable.

2. Social Mobility. Many of the individuals that YRS supports are from disadvantaged

backgrounds. Moreover, “coding” is, inexplicably, highly stigmatised and so young

programmers often suffer from peer-abuse and ridicule. This is not the kind of culture in

which the most creative minds of this generation ought to experience their childhood.

To transition from being an isolated programming teenager in your bedroom to an

employable and self-confident adult is a tumultuous journey. In the case of the children

involved in YRS, more is at stake than for the average individual, for both the individual

themselves (without adequate educational options, with peer-pressure rife, many are

likely to simply give up on this valuable talent), and the country (if we admit that ICT is

without use, who will be inspired to teach the new Computing Ebacc if not the current

generation going through YRS?)

3. Openness, accountability, involvement. In recent years, we have seen the government

open up sections of its data to feed hack days: this is brilliant and it is crucial that this

becomes a trend that extends throughout government departments, rather than a one-

off experiment. The proper manipulation of the data held by government is a brilliant

way to improve accountability, to identify inefficiency, to extend democracy through

technology: that young people can directly influence government through the creative

use of their skills is a panacea to apathy: a sure way to increase participation.

20 http://mulqueeny.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/parly-hack-2012/

26

A CHANGE IN BUSINESS ATTITUDE

Developers are a talent to be nurtured in our open data and open society world.21

-EM

We can make it here. Why outsource?

Coding entrepreneurs: the lean alternative to pure ideation

We live in an open society: closed businesses will suffocate

1. Outsource less: develop local talent.

This is part of the “chicken-egg” dilemma. Without more developers, companies will

continue to look abroad. Unless more companies use local developers (and pay them

properly) job prospects will falter and less people will aspire to careers as developers.

Yet YRS allows British companies to break that cycle by concentrating their efforts on

those who have taught themselves to code in the UK, deepening this national resource

for future prosperity.

2. The developer is central, not secondary. Truly lean startups - building without

funding – the traditional model is dead.

YRS Shows that developers are more than just workhorses; a means to someone else’s

dream. It shows that given freedom and resources that they are capable of building the

most incredible and sophisticated products in a matter of days. This should mark the

beginning of the end for the traditional: idea – funding – development: cycle that is the

foundation of the current business hegemony.

Firstly, it should push wannabe entrepreneurs to teach themselves how to code so that

they can genuinely understand how their own products work, the frameworks upon

which their businesses rely. This will open their eyes to the depth of expertise that they

tap when they hire developers, will lead them to respect their developers and pay them

appropriately. It will also mean that they are able to appreciate the limits and

possibilities of their business for themselves. Lastly, it will even the communication

gradient between entrepreneurs and developers and allow faster innovation, less

misunderstandings.

Secondly, it should lead to more entrepreneurs teaching themselves to code and

building their own products. The entrepreneur is supposedly the all-rounder and yet

this is a realm which most have not conquered. The programmer-entrepreneur a la

Zuckerberg is the rightful role-model for the UK tech industry. Learning to code is not an

impossible challenge.

21 http://mulqueeny.wordpress.com/2011/06/19/whats-the-point-of-a-hack-day/

27

2 2 3 3 3 4

13 16

20 21 26

50

Where would you like to work?

3. Open software, Open data, Open business

Closed-doors software development is the method of a past era. Most people want to

work for companies who have allowed anyone to familiarize and modify their software,

advocates of open: 22

Mojang and Google rightfully claim places in the top three as companies who allow

anyone access to the bones of their software. If developers are introduced to your

software from an early age and find it yields to their touch, they will more readily

become advocates of your brand; will more readily consider employment at your firm.

Give your software to these promising minds, let them test it and in exchange it will be

home to them.

But it goes deeper than this. The fact that we live in a time when data is too abundant to

be properly utilized should point to Open Data as the progressive and most profitable

route for society. If you open your data to programmers you will learn infinitely more

about that information than if you restrict access to the few developers you can afford to

permanently staff.

22 YRS 2012 survey – N.B. Some individuals gave multiple answers to this question.

28

Post Script23

I know I am in it for life and I am going to dedicate myself to making it great and worldwide.

Young developers will take the network and make friends for life, build businesses, create the next

bazillion dollar thing.

Mentors will become worldwide mentors helping young people from all backgrounds, maybe even

working with them to create something world-changing.

Centers will find their own local coding youth and will hold the ability to shape that relationship

and hone those skills for the greater good, or for their own.

The Rewired State team work together to boldly go wherever, to try stuff, test and be brave, with a

small cushion (a very small cushion) of financial stability. It is what we all make of it.

-EM

23 http://mulqueeny.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/young-rewired-state-year-5-everywhere-and-hyperlocal/