PRESS RELEASE: YOUNG REWIRED STATE
London, 23 August 2009. On Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 August, 50 young developers aged 15-18 years old gathered at the Young Rewired State event hosted by Google at their London Victoria offices.
Building on the success of the National Hack the Government day on 7 March, where around 80 developers created over 30 working projects from public sector data sets, Young Rewired State was created to give 50 young developers the chance to build and create useful applications with previously released and cleared government data.
The organisers James Darling, Richard Pope and Emma Mulqueeny, co-founders of Rewired State, sought to encourage young people to engage with each other for peer to peer support; highlight to government the need for good programming skills in many languages; and showcase the young talent in the largest event of its kind.
The event was opened by Emma Mulqueeny and technology journalist Milo Yiannopoulos on Saturday 22 August setting the aims and objectives of the two days. The 50 young developers self organised: continuing work they had started the previous week on rewiredstate irc, or grouping themselves around topics that most concerned them and so the application solutions began.
After rapid assimilation of the Rewired State data wiki (one of the largest collections of UK public sector information) to inspire, the hacking began. Young developers started creating designs and working prototypes of their ideas, with the mentors providing a guiding hand.
The following day the groups returned to finish their project and to present to government officials, invited media and the luminaries in the judging panel.
The winners were:
Most likely to be bought by Google: TFHell
“Wish I’d thought of that!”: Work For Peanuts
Most likely to antagonise the CIO council: How’s my Train?
Best in Show: School Routr 2.0 Beta
Special mentions: Theory Test, Blogotics, Unicloud, Blab to Betty
James Darling said: ’The day highlighted better processes, applications and ways of working for better use of public data as well as to expose government officials to the concept of allowing great creative minds to play with the data to provide interesting and creative solutions.’
Emma Mulqueeny explained: ‘We strongly believe that this successful event format could be invaluable to young developers who will not yet have established the professional networks to help guide and showcase their current interest in developing.’
Ben Hammersley said: ‘I found the standard of the work produced by 15-18 year olds in many cases infinitely superior to that produced by government professionals.’
Luc Delaney, UK Policy Associate from Google said: “developers are the people who stimulate innovation on the web; coming up with new and better ways to make data useful and creating solutions that have the potential to benefit all of us. We’re delighted to be hosting these creative young minds at the Google offices and look forward to seeing what they come up with.”
Notes to Editors
Rewired State is a free, invitation-only event to demonstrate the creative use of public data by great technical minds. Created by James Darling, Emma Mulqueeny and Richard Pope.
Judging Panel
Mark O’Neill Chief Information Officer, Department Culture, Media and Sport
Ben Hammersley Associate Editor of Wired UK
Craig Elder Communities Manager for the Conservative Party
Helen Milner Chief Information Officer of UK Online centres
JP Rangaswami MD of Design at BT
Diana Johnson MP Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools
Mike Hoban Directgov
Dan Heaf Channel 4
Rewired State was created as a non-profit organisation to ‘code a better country’ by using and liberating public sector data. By combining the power of the talented IT communities and Government, we hope to showcase the power of raw public sector data and the high quality projects, utilities and tools that can be easily, cheaply and swiftly developed in a safe environment with government data by the best of British talent.
NB: any data used was non-personal.
For any post-event press enquiries please contact emma@rewiredstate.org
SPONSORS
4iP
4iP is a major initiative from Channel 4 that aims to re-invent public service media for the digital age. Working with emerging digital talent across the UK, 4iP is supporting great ideas for websites, games and mobile services which will help people improve their lives. Just like Rewired State, 4iP is committed to finding and supporting the best new digital media talent.
Directgov
Mike Hoban, Director of Communications and Engagement said: “Directgov is pleased to be involved in Young Rewired State. We are continuously exploring how new and existing data and software can be used to make information available to the widest possible audience, in the most effective formats.”
Department of Culture, Media and Sport
DCMS are sponsoring the event on behalf of the Government CIO Council which brings together all the CIOs from all central government departments with representatives from Local Government, defence and criminal justice. DCMS sectors are some of the most exciting and visionary creators and users of information and content and initiatives like Young Rewired State help connect young people with these sectors so helping to build the future economy and bring talented individuals together.
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) is building a dynamic and competitive UK economy by creating the conditions for business success; promoting innovation, enterprise and science; and giving everyone the skills and opportunities to succeed. To achieve this we will foster world-class universities and promote an open global economy. Young Rewired State celebrates the next generation of British digital talent, and we are delighted to help support the event.
Statement from the office of Diana Johnson MP
We are supporting this event as it supports two of our strategic objectives. The DCSF Digital Communications Strategy outlines the need to “make our data more accessible and bring it together”. Secondly, within the Communications Directorate Improvement Priority 1.2 of the Departmental Action Plan, to “Develop and exploit modern communications channels to increase the reach and impact of our communications”.
The Dextrous Web
We were delighted to sponsor the inaugural Young Rewired State. It’s great to see the next generation of civic hackers doing their thing. We’re all about improving public service on the web so we can’t wait to see what comes out of it.
See also The Press Association Press Release here
The full story on Emma Mulqueeny’s blog
What the BBC said here
Search on Flickr under youngrewiredstate or young rewired state for the photography
