He returned home, and was just a little bit enthusiastic. I got an email saying “You’ll be a mentor for the ICNE hack, won’t you? I’ve told them you would” I said yes, signed up and wondered what I was letting myself in for.
Today Ben asked me to put together a few words on what I thought of the ImagineCupNE event last weekend from a parents perspective. Foolishly, I said “yes”, then sat staring at a white screen for twenty minutes without anything useful appearing. This is what eventually (and after too much MacDonalds coffee) emerged:
To have the opportunity to mentor some of these young people has been an incredible honour for me. The amount of enthusiasm and passion shown by all of the future developers show me that the industry had better beware: the next generation of developers are ready to rock the IT world.
At the start of the event they organised themselves into teams and started discussing ideas to propose for their entry into the ImagineCup North East heats.
Every team came up with several ideas, and the various mentors pointed out good points and areas to improve and change. Every team I talked to had several good ideas knocked back, but they kept persevering and improving and adapting their ideas.
As well as discussing how they were going develop something to improve the world, they spent time in workshops covering a wide range of topics, from Presentation Skills to Sales and some fairly technical topics too, and the ideas gleaned made dramatic changes to some of their ideas and proposals.
I've watched the IT industry from the early 80's, when I got bitten by the computing bug, and the change I've seen is nothing to the change that the ImagineCup developers are going make over the next ten or fifteen years.
I will openly admit to being in tears of pride at the end of the event, my son and two of his friends from college came up with a proposal (after many, many changes and knockbacks from the mentors).
One of his team (and I don't have my notes as I write this) got nominated as the most supportive developer, and the tears were caused by Ben's comments that my son was most highly commended for his attitude and knowledge.
Several of the other mentors had told me during the event about James' interest, knowledge and persistence in asking questions on the workshop topics: James told me later that he had three pages of questions that he did not ask about the cloud workshop.
I only have one complaint about the event: only one of the teams will get through the regional heats to get to the country finalists. From what I have seen they all have the potential and ability to be very successful in the finals.
What were the highlights for me?
- A 2am run to MacDonalds and a £90 bill. The parcel shelf of my car was packed with drinks, and the two developers were buried in MacDonalds packages.
- Going to bed at 3am listening to them discussing their projects and waking at 6 still hearing them discussing and improving (no namby pamby hotel beds - sleeping bag and carrymats for the mentors was the order for the day)
- Running out of petrol on the way home - I did make it home (just), but was only the fuel in the lines and the car didn’t want to get as far as the petrol station the next morning.
- Watching the pleasure James has had from his new phone - the prize he well and truely earned.
