#coolest projects

I was a volunteer at the 2018 CoderDojo Coolest Projects event held in the RDS in Dublin on 26th of May 2018. It was an amazing day, and I was honoured to be one of volunteer media team there. 

Thank you, Coolest Projects team for the event and enabling me to participate. A big shout out to Ben and Ken especially.

Inspirational Projects

What impressed me most was how young innovators saw the possibilities of using technology for solving problems. In other words, they offered more than just technical skills, but a jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) approach. That these young innovators based their use case on good old UX observation should be a lesson to all UX pros and wannabes.

Solar-Powered Peace of Mind

I just loved Ruby and Zara from the Accenture’s The Dock CoderDojo solar powered watering of horticulture project. We had something similar designed and developed at an Oracle partner hackathon in the Netherlands a few  years ago (the Go Flora Grow solution). Coolest Projects saw an  IoT (Internet of Things) solution too, the developers using sensors and microchips to detect when domestic plants needed watering automatically.

Ruby explaining the solar-powered watering system (Zara was talking with somebody else!)

Sensor chip detecting moisture levels in soil triggered automatica watering of the plant when needed.

So, big #agtech possibilities as well as peace of mind when you go on holidays. Couldn’t they just hire a neighbour to do the watering? No, this was more reliable, measurable, and fun.

See, Seagulls, See

I also loved the project by Kian from UCD CoderDojo who developed a  bird survival game in Scratch. This gamification-based learning project was inspired by observation of the pecking order of Dublin seabirds in the food chain, and Kian was inspired by some neat UX observation out the window on the Sanydmount coast. Good work.

Kian explains the seabirds survival game.

Introduction to Kian’s game, explains all.

There were plenty of other great projects on display too, but I didn’t get the time to Tweet, Instagram or write all of them in details. However, words such as “fun”,”cool”, “interesting” were common from the participants I spoke with. Enthusiasm for coding and real passion for using technology to solve problems was very much in evidence. 

The Future is Bright

The 26th of May 2018 was also the day to count the votes of that “Once in a generation” referendum in Ireland (one of the election counts centres was also nearby in the RDS) held the day before. 

That Saturday will stick in my mind for a couple of reasons as the day I realised that the future of Ireland was safe in the hands of young people.

So, check out the Coolest Projects event out next year.  I hope I am selected as a volunteer in 2019 too. 

Coolest Projects is a great day; all about the kids, sure. But we can all learn something from such events.