CREATE:2014 – It Takes Young People to show Young People that Age is No Barrier to Success

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    TechWatch occasionally strays from its focus on tech startups, to feature some of the events and activities fuelling the extraordinary growth of Northern Ireland’s knowledge economy. For this growth to continue into future decades, we need our young people to have the confidence to pursue novel areas of innovation and entrepreneurship. So who better to set an example than a bunch of people the same age?

    CREATE:2014 is a conference for young people, made by young people. A few hundred schoolkids were exposed to a range of speakers and panellists that had made remarkable achievements outside of the standard professions. Speakers from around the world included Michael Sayman from Florida, who’s still well short of the legal drinking age yet was profiting from iOS app development at 13, and is now working at Facebook. Or Kate Russell, presenter on the BBC’s Click programme. Some of those onstage were still attending school in the daytime, while running global businesses in the evening. One message was clear and consistent from all those presenting: any kid can be a self-made success.

    The inaugural event was an all-day show held in the midst of the week-long CultureTECH festival that runs throughout Derry~Londonderry. The CREATE:2014 team, all of whom are aged 16–18 years’ old, organised the whole show. When I asked the team’s CEO, Sarah McBride, what other events she planned to attend at CultureTECH, she told me she had to drive to the airport the next day to fly off to university. Building businesses in the summer holidays – that’s the spirit!

    I’ve been in close contact with the team for a while, both through NISP CONNECT’s Generation Innovation programme, and Farset Labs. And I had the pleasure of hosting the Youth in Tech panel at the event, where I got to look old and lazy next to four brilliant young innovators. One of the CREATE:2014 team members, Gareth Reid, has even been featured on TechWatch before, with his Write to Read app for combating dyslexia. All that while finishing his A Levels. It’s inspiring to watch.

    As soon as their exam period was over, the CREATE:2014 team produced a Kickstarter bid that got nearly twice its goal, helping to fund the event. Then on the occasion, they managed to get hundreds of attendees out of school for the day, filling two adjacent venues for a series of concurrent events. Following this success in its first year, CREATE is well set to grow now. The ambition is to go global, with events in various countries, supported by a shared online environment. And why not? Nothing has stopped them so far.

    - See more at NISP Connect.

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