You may well ask why I am doing this on my personal blog: simply because the news is too tasty to wait for the soon-to-be-relaunched YRS and RS websites.
Young Rewired State 2012 is gearing up a notch. We still have b*gger all sponsorship because raising sponsorship is hard and takes time/money to do, neither of which we have as we need to keep the lights on in Rewired State by running our fabulous hack days. However we do have a huge community of people willing to help, so once more we are doing this on a wing and a prayer but we know it is going to be awesome – more than that we are super excited
Here’s the story:
We were sitting around my dining room table (our current office) trying to solve the problem of running YRS2012 slap bang in the middle of the Olympics, with a Friday show and tell in London. When Adam McGreggor our multi-talented genius said “Hang on a minute, why don’t we run it at the National Museum of Computing in Bletchley Park?” From there it developed into an excited frenzy of telephone calls, emails and tweets to the rather wonderful museum and Chris Monk and a decision to run the end of the big YRS2012 event as a big festival style sleepover in tents in the grounds of the museum, with access to the museum itself (yes, BBC Micros) and the show and tell to be on the Saturday afternoon.
This is genius. Not only because it is not in London, but also because we are always a bit sad that the YRSers from the various centres from across the UK do not get a chance to mingle much on the Friday when they all come together, as it is such a massive rush to do the show and tell and catch various trains. This way they can all work together, be mentored together and practise their presentations. Also, more of you can come and see what was built as it will not be a work day!
You can’t get much better than the museum. It is staffed by a litany of incredible volunteers and many of the young people will not get a chance to see the history of what they are doing now and it is the centenary year of the birth of Alan Turing. And it will be all festival-y and Summer and so on and so forth.
So we are very happy.
Naturally, the cost just went up by a few thousand! We will have to have a far bigger hardship fund pot for those young people who cannot afford the fare to Bletchley and we will need to cover all manner of things like toilets and tents for those who do not have any, and marquees and whatnot – but we are never shy of a challenge.
I will be asking for sponsorship soon and will find ways to crowdsource some funds – but if you know of any organisations who might want to be a part of this festival of young geek talent then please do get in touch with me emma@rewiredstate.org. We don’t do these things for profit, and we do have a great band of volunteers – but there are necessary costs and we do need to cover them. So please do help
Before I bounce off, a huge thank you to the National Museum of Computing who have been so gracious, excited and helpful. I would like to point out that the Museum is a separate entity to Bletchley Park itself, even though it is in the grounds of Bletchley, and as such does not benefit from large benefactor donations – so we are even more thankful to them. What a Summer we are going to have.
I cannot wait…
Update on Funding! The wonderful STEPHEN FRY (no less) has tweeted about us and encouraged people to support us through http://www.peoplefund.it/young-rewired-state which has resulted in a great start in community fund-raising – do help us by pledging a tenner 🙂 and here is a copy of his tweet…
The UK’s young coders are at it again #YRS2012 looks even more intriguing this year, help support it over here peoplefund.it/young-rewired-…
Emma Mulqueeny 