Over 10,000 people are expected at the RDS in Dublin on Saturday June 18 as 800 young innovators from Ireland and across Europe take part in the fifth annual CoderDojo ‘Coolest Projects’ Awards. This year the event will feature gadgets, robots, blogs, games and sites designed by young coders aged from 7 to 17.
Over 100 Coolest Projects entrants are travelling from elsewhere in Europe to the event, which kicks off at 9.30am and is now inspiring similar awards schemes in Belgium, Romania and Silicon Valley. Among the project entries will be Auto-Journalist, developed by 13-year-old Niamh Scanlon, who was named European Digital Girl of the Year for 2016.
This helps journalists conduct interviews by sending a list of questions to interviewees, who can then record their answers and reply through the app.
The kids at the CoderDojo Warehouse on Dublin’s Grand Canal Quay have developed a low-cost phone for developing countries that does not require a network, plus a dementia aid app to help with medication reminders and important contacts.
A nifty app comes from Kinsale in Co Cork — Car Security uses face recognition software to recognise the driver and sound the alarm if an intruder gets behind the wheel, while My Voice, a speech-enabling app, was developed by CoderDojo Gorey to help people with speech impediments communicate through images.
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And, if you want give Fido or Rover some love while away from home, there’s Remote Dog, an app that uses a camera to allow dog owners to feed and interact with their pet while away, courtesy of the DCU CoderDojo crew.
This year sees the introduction of Launch’d — an event over four stages featuring 50 international speakers as well as 100 of Ireland’s top tech start-up companies. It’s aimed at taking participants to the next level by creating an entrepreneurial component and focus to enable many of the projects to launch.
“Launch’d is aimed at inspiring and supporting the next generation of technology entrepreneurs and will be an essential platform for the Coolest Projects kids, tech professionals and anyone considering a career in coding,” said Coolest Projects co-founder Noel King.
Among the speakers is Michael Hunger, caretaker of the Neo4J community, who will be talking about how his organisation helped to unravel the Panama Papers.
Seattle-based Dubliner Aidan Hughes is the developer of of the world’s most popular calculators, with more than 50m combined downloads and 11m monthly users and will be talking on the secrets of making it big in the App Store.
Other speakers include tech thought leader James Lewis, Garry Lyons, chief innovation officer at MasterCard Labs, John Ferguson of Behaviour Driven Development and Emmet Connolly, the creator of Google Wear.
King said: “Coolest Projects provides the bridge from learning coding skills at local CoderDojos to innovating and creating future employment. We are the piece in the middle which makes the connection. These digital skills are vital if Europe is to address the coding skills shortage which has led to 500,000 open job postings across the region in 2016.”
Some tickets are still available, and last year’s winners can be inspected on the Coolest Projects website.
Photo: Lexi Schoener (age 8) from Monkstown in Dublin will be attending CoderDojo Coolest Projects. (Pic: Conor McCabe)
