Some 800 young innovators from across Ireland and Europe are set to take part in the fifth annual CoderDojo Coolest Projects Awards, which will take place at the RDS in June.
This year’s Coolest Projects Awards will be held at the RDS on Saturday, 18 June and are expected to attract more than 10,000 spectators to witness demonstrations of the apps, websites, animation, games and robots among this year’s submissions.
The awards were established just after CoderDojo itself was formed in 2011 by James Whelton and Bill Liao in Cork to get more young Irish-based kids to start coding.
There are now more than 800 dojos operating in 60 countries worldwide. Within Europe alone, CoderDojo classes reach more than 25,000 students and the annual awards have been embraced by the European Commission.
“Coolest Projects provides the bridge from learning coding skills at CoderDojos to innovating and creating future employment,” said Coolest Projects co-founder Noel King.
“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 2015.”
This year also sees the addition of Launch’d, a unique one-day event aimed at supporting the next generation of technology entrepreneurs.
Running in parallel with Coolest Projects, it will feature Ireland’s 100 top tech starts-ups and a host of top international speakers.
Meet the innovators
Pictured at the launch of CoderDojo Coolest Projects Awards 2016 at the Chq were young coders Lexi Schoener (age 8) from Monkstown, Dublin and Jasper Brezina Conniffe. (age 11) from Wicklow with Lightron the robot. Photo: Conor McCabe Photography
Coolest Projects has seen young people deliver projects across the latest technologies from cloud, to internet of things (IoT) to virtual reality, and has the real potential to drive vital digital skills across a pan-European platform
Eight-year-old blogger Lexi Schoene has entered the blog/website category at this year’s Coolest Projects Awards with her site lexililybelle.com.
“I used the HTML and coding skills I learned at CoderDojo Dun Laoghaire to design my website using WordPress,” said Lexi, who blogs on her life and interests across a range of platforms.
Joining Lexi at the launch were 11-year-old Dhruv Bhamidipati from Francis Street CBS, who created his website Dino-Know-It-All to educate people about dinosaurs, using HTML and CSS coding learned at the Docklands Dojo.
Harvey Brezina Conniffe (14) from The Warehouse Dojo in Dublin has created an online editor that helps kids design their own website.
He also designed an app that enables homeowners to check in on their personal security cameras by tweeting them – a project that was featured at SXSW and TechCrunch Disrupt NY.
12-year-old animator Grainne Meghan from CoderDojo Dun Laoghaire created Mob Show: the race for the last cookie, a quirky Minecraft-inspired animation using Swift.
