SMARTSTEM
It’s been a while since my last blog on SMART Cities, but cast your minds back to April where we talked about SMART cities as SMART communities and underpinning any community is the people.
In June I was asked to attend an inaugural event in Glasgow aimed and focused at young women aged 12-18 years old to inspire them about STEM careers. SMART STEM’s.
Our aim was to create a workshop that would help young women understand technology in a fun way and help them think differently about careers in STEM.
So together with Hannah Malone and Lindsey Nelson, we decided to show how we can connect the unconnected and tried and tested solution with the Makey Makey Boards.
The Makey Makey is always popular with kids, of all ages. It allows you to connect seemingly unconnected objects together to create music and videos using a simple program called scratch.
It’s a simple ‘Invention Kit’ for beginners or experts in art, engineering and everything in between.
And the in-between in this demo was critically important as what makes one group say “wow” makes another group say “so” especially the girls, who described technology as “boring”, “complex” and well just “urgh”
I kid you not when I say the deep sighs when we told them we worked for a technology company echoed across the corridors of the university.
So we need to get to a point where we could get them simply thinking differently about tech. Our first 2 groups were all aged between 11-13 years old. Telling them that I could make music with a bunch of bananas and play a piano by simply touching water was a big “wow” factor. Course they didn’t believe me and when we did the demo they were amazed and excited. So what else but set a competition for them to create their own unique keyboard that would play keys of a piano?
And the results were impressive, not only because they were creative but they took the concept of “connecting the unconnected” and created innovative ways to represent the message and finding ways to conduct electricity through all sorts of materials.
The imagination, passion and focus the girls put into their design was incredible, but the team work and collaboration was for me inspiring.
Now you might be thinking what about the “so” group, well these young ladies were 14-15 and not so impressed by a bunch of bananas, but totally fascinated that Hannah, Linsey and I did not look “technical”.
They were interested in earnings, lifestyle, how we worked, where we worked, did we travel, did we have fun, are there young people at Cisco?
All valid questions and something all organisations should be thinking about when trying to attract young talent. Young talent want a career that gives them a specific lifestyle, a place where they make friends and a place where fun is core to the culture. The question is how do we get that message out to young people? Today Cisco ranks as number 122 preferred company by the undergraduates 122 (The Guardian UK 300) How do we get to number 1? How do we bring the inside > out?
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