Rewired State

YRS-2010 Roundup

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 18:03:00 +0100

A short essay on Young Rewired State 2010…

If you don’t know what we are talking about, then check out the YRS page on rewiredstate.org. But as a short recap this is what we did, and why:

Four centres of talented young coders (plus one young dev in Scotland and one in Reading) showed what could be done with government data. They picked their own themes and chose to find digital solutions or visualisations for things that interest or irritate them – there was only one rule: it must contain at least one government dataset.

They spent the week at centres in London, Brighton, Norwich and Manchester, working with established tech teams, mentors and visiting experts, making apps, websites, games and visualisations.

We did this because:

The next generation needs to be able to interrogate and explore data; in many of the careers they choose it will become essential, especially media. Some are not taught code in schools and we think they should be or at least have that option. YRS is helping to showcase why and helping to boost those who are ahead of their game (often self-taught and flipping brilliant).
It helps those in power understand the things that interest and irritate young people into doing something about it themselves.
Working on projects in teams is fun and challenging, and actually quite unusual.
There is a lack of distinct lack of support for young people with an interest in technology - its time to change that! (But more plotting later..)

What happened at the Friday presentations event (in media)

(If you have any blogs/photos/videos/links etc - please send it to us and we’ll add it here)

There has been a LOT of twitter love over the past week, there is an awesome repository of tweets here.

Paul Clarke was our official social photographer on the day and took these staggeringly good photos (Thank you so much, Paul). There is also a gallery of all yrs2010 tagged photos: (on flickr)

Link: http://bit.ly/yrs2010-gallery

Special mention has to go to Tim Dobson, Steven Flower and the Manchester YRS team who made this rap, yes rap, about Rewired State and government data:

There are lots of videos. Also see more YRS videos on YouTube :)

The afternoon presentations were also streamed by the super FABULOUS Sam Smith – for whom we are MASSIVELY indebted: you can watch it all here (not sure how long for though!):

Link: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/rewired-state

What happened on Friday (in text)

On Friday, the young devs taking part and their host centres decended upon Transform’s offices in London to show what they did to an audience of government people, media and interested parties - as well as a judging panel made up of Andrew Stott, Ben Hammersley, Helen Milner, Mark O’Neill and Marisol Grandon (Marisol was picked out of the audience at the last minute as we had two missing judges!)

Before the kickoff, an excited army of young geeks armed with their trusty laptops hung around in reception with a mixture of nerves and excitement. Five minutes before the show and tell was due to start, we let everyone in and the presentations began (after some wifi panic fun).

Visit our projects page for a list of what was made. The apps are being loaded to here over the next few weeks, so you can have a look for yourself what they all are (Manchester has also loaded theirs onto a YRS page on the DFEY site):

The Presentations

Norwich @ NeonTribe

Gimme5 - Fred Peckett and Ben Holloway
Jobber - Jack Hair and James Clapperton
Notlate - Ryan Taylor
Tax Man - William Oakes
Better Off in Bed - Ryan Taylor

Dundee

NatuSearch - James Cunningham

Brighton @ NixonMcInnes (all of team worked on both apps, but split the presenting)

Tubesmart - Harry Rickards, Lawrence Job
Socialibrary - Damon Hayhurst

Reading

Postcode Lottery - Steve Cox

London @ Osmosoft

Live London Leisure Locator - Dylan Maryk
CycleHubs - Daniel May
Un-Named - Sufian Hassan and Dylan Maryk
GovSpark - Isabell Long
Psych Survival Rates - David Goater
UniSearch - Sufian Hassan, David Goater, Harry Burty, Daniel May and Marcus Stewart Hughes

Manchester @ MadLab

Criminator - Ben Webb, David Kendal, Michael Mokrysz
E-food 2.0 - Tim Dobson
Cool Broadband - Rob Barry, Josh Pickett, Tim Dobson,
recycle.me - Josh Pickett
Pick My House - Michael Mokrysz
Pizzanator - Joe Henthorn
HTML5 Microdata - David Kendal
whatBlock - Rob Barry, Ben Webb, Josh Pickett
Twitter Picker - Tim Dobson
Manchester images through Time - Rob Barry, David Kendal
Bus Timetable - Josh Pickett, Ben Webb
Cutterama - Joe Henthorn
Bus Map Live - Ben Webb, Josh Pickett

Plus one manchester dev working from home:

hub:app - Stephen Mount

The Awards

The judges had a hell of a time choosing the winners, but they did extraordinarily ill, here goes. The winners were:

“Best coding” - James Cunningham – NatuSearch

We have to say something about this over here as this completely blew the room away. James has written a little explanation here about how it works until he releases the code: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/334452/yrs/how.jpg.

This is what it does: “NatuSearch is a Natural Language Data Comparison Engine to help allow people easy access to usually large and complex data sets and also allow smart data access through comparison”. Ben Hammersley said that he actually did not know how James had done it, and offered James a job in the spot ← we are not sure whether he was joking or not.

What we would like to point out is that James did this on his own, as we had to disband our centre in Scotland after a few last minute drop-outs by the young devs – he had no mentor and no centre. He did get flown to London (blowing most of our sponsorship budget but WELL worth it!) and we awarded him Lego Mindstorm for his efforts – we are all a little bit in awe of James.

“Wish I’d thought of that”
Ryan Taylor – NotLate

“Most likely to get you fired”
Sufian Hassan and Dylan Maryk - iWanted

“Most likely to annoy a government CiO”

Isabell Long – GovSpark
Rob Barry, Ben Webb and Josh Pickett – WhatBlock

“Most likely to be bought”
Josh Pickett and Ben Webb - Bus Timetable

“Best App”
Damon Hayhurst, Harry Rickards and Lawrence Job - SocialLibrary

Runners Up:

Gimme 5 - Fred Peckett and Ben Holloway
TubeSmart - Harry Rickards and Lawrence Job
Psych Survival Rates - David Goater
TaxMan - William Oakes
Pick My House - Michael Mokrysz

Julia Chandler has written a detailed blog post about these winning apps, its well worth a read.

We would like to say, though, that seriously everything that was made by every young developer was astonishingly good.

We are going to spend some time looking at each app and talking to all of the young developers about how we can take things forward and build on this network we have managed to cobble together – and will keep you posted on what we are doing over the coming months.

Blog roundup (so far)

Who’s who

If you’re missing from the list and should be there, please email your bio & twitter!

*** IF YOU WANT TO HIRE OR CONTACT THE YOUNG DEVELOPERS BELOW PLEASE GET IN TOUCH FIRST!! ***

YOUNG DEVELOPERS

Damon Hayhurst (Brighton) - My hobbies include DJing and playing rugby. I came here to learn more about web development and design. Also as a form of work experience to improve my CV. I’m very much interested in social networking and how it affects the media as a whole. I hope what I will get out of the week will benefit my skills in web development.

Harry Rickards (Brighton) - Hi, I’m Harry. I know a bit of PHP, HTML/CSS and C, and want to learn a lot more (PHP). I signed up for Young Rewired State to get some more experience, and hopefully make something cool that’s useful to someone. I’ve had quite a bit of experience in open source projects, e.g I’m part of the Debian Multimedia Packaging Team and the contact point between that team and upstream (the developer of the program) for LiVES (a piece of video editing software).

David Kendal (Manchester) - Wizard.

Daniel May (London) - Daniel May is an 18 year old software developer from Surrey, originally beginning developing applications in PHP, MySQL and VB6 around 7 years ago - before moving to .NET. Daniel didn’t take the ordinary route into Software Development - he dropped out of college at 17 and entered his first job as a developer in June 2009.

Now working for sharpcloud, a software development company surrounding corporate roadmapping, Daniel is specialising in Silverlight and Blend. Daniel is extremely interested in the development community and has now spoken at multiple programming-related conferences around the UK - also currently in the process of seeking and working on publishing opportunities.

Lawrence Job (Brighton) - Hi there, I’m @lawrencejob. I freelance under the better known brand GridFusions, and love cloud/web development. I have attended a few Rewired State events before, and always leave wanting more – I enjoy socialising, coding and the feeling of changing the country. Albeit slowly. I attended YRS last year, and loved it, so, naturally, I’m here again.

Dave Goater (London) - 16 years old, I like to dabble in pretty much anything, coding being just one such thing. I’m really into music, play saxophone and am in a band where I sing as well as playing the sax (not at the same time!). I’m also into sport, especially swimming, I swim for a club and have recently become fully qualified as a Lifeguard. Will probably go on to University after college but am just taking life as it comes so I may not.

Dylan Maryk (London) - I am a 14 year old website and app designer with a passion for technology. I have previously run multiple websites and am now focused on iPhone application development, and would like to develop for other platforms in the future. I am also very interested in learning new programming languages in the future, such as Java and PHP.

Isabell Long (London) - I came along to Young Rewired State last year and it was great, so I decided to sign up for 2010 too. I am a 16 year old girl geek passionate about data who can code in HTML and CSS but who is learning, albeit slowly, more programming languages. I have learnt loads this week and it has been thoroughly enjoyable.

Joe Henthorn (Manchester) -

I have decided
To write my biography
As a haiku, yeah?

Robert Barry (Manchester) - I came to Young Rewired state last year and enjoyed coding with other people in a similar situation to me and so once I heard about Young Rewired State this year I wanted to go. I’m interested in the side of the data which is applicable to transport systems, in particular the rail and bus networks and enjoyed helping to develop the “untransport direct” project last year. I have programmed before in a number of languages, for example PHP (with MySQL), C++, Java (at a push) and my favourite of all Ruby - which I will almost certainly be using again this year.

Sufian Hassan (London) - I am a Designer and Developer who mainly leaves most of the coding to others, I usually tend to be the one who thinks of the ideas and invents the user interface and the designs. Some of the skills I have helped me in starting up my own company in the past few months.

Michael Mokrysz (Manchester) - I’m a web developer from Yorkshire, competent in PHP, MySQL, HTML/CSS and JavaScript and having experimented with many more. I’ve been into development since the age of 11, and I’m also moving into iPhone development and developing with Python.

Josh Pickett (Manchester) - Well hi there! My name is Josh, Im 15 and im a webby - techy - designery person from Manchester (yes I’m a northerner). I’ve been messing around with tech stuff for a couple of years now but I’ve only really got any good at it since the last Young rewired State in 2009. Since then I’ve learned a hell of a lot about php, mysql, c, objective-c, css, javascript (inc. json and jquery), applescript and im planning on looking into ruby or python soon (I’m open to suggestions of which to choose).

I currently work as a freelance web designer/developer/graphic designer from my home in reddish under the studio alias http://alymbic.co.uk and have been doing so for about four months. In my spare time I play guitar, ukulele and piano, though I’m significantly worse at the latter, and read magazines about design, which I probably find vastly more interesting than most people do but that’s just me. (Hopefully I wont use as many brackets, or commas, next time I write! )

James Cunningham (London) - I am a fully self-taught coder who started out with desktop programming in languages like QBasic and VB, and then moved on to web programming in languages like PHP using MySQL, HTML/CSS and Javascript. I also dabble in C++ but I am far from fluent. I enjoy building and designing different types of web application purely for the challenge that it presents.

Jack Hair (Norwich) - I like to animate and learnt some Action Script 2 for Flash to make a few games. Since then I have been trying to learn JavaScript and messing about with templates in Dreamweaver.

Ben Holloway (Norwich) - I Like Macs. Steve Jobs is the next Messiah. My Languages are Objective C (++).

Fred Peckett (Norwich) - I have a huge interest in technology, starting at an early age. I am fairly new to the world of coding but have a passion to learn. I aim to study some kind of computer based subject at University and plan to widen my knowledge and continue with learning. I am a very heavy computer user, ranging from gaming to coding to web design. I also have a huge love of building computers and have built many over the years.

James Clapperton (Norwich) - very interested and enthusiastic about working in the IT sector. i know a little html and have created a few websites. i do a lot of study in my own time as to what is required to do well in ICT as a career. i am willing to work on most tasks and am enthusiastic to learn new things and to give things a go that i have no experience with.

William Oakes (Norwich) - I am relatively inexperienced in coding but I hope to learn more about it from Young Rewired State.

Ryan Taylor (Norwich) - I’m 15, I can’t really code to save my life, but I am good with Photoshop. I would like to learn how to code and learn different languages.

Marcus Stewart Hughes (London) - I am a PHP developer from Weston-super-Mare, I started computing and have been messing with programming and server related projects for about 4-5 years. Currently I work in server administration for a small company.

Stephen Mount (Manchester) - Self-proclaimed Drupal developer, ideas guy and entrepreneur.

Harry Burt (London) - I’m an amateur programmer and Wikipedia administrator. I have previously worked making Firefox addons, Adobe Flash projects, maintaining a website, and contributing to open source collaborative desktop projects. My main area of interest is political economy.

Stephen Cox (London) - 17 year old tech enthusiast from Wokingham, who enjoys game development and web design and is hoping to make a career in one of them.

Megan (Manchester) - I have created a couple of sites and write and design my own online magazine.

MENTORS - There were lots of mentors involved, its going to take us a few days to collect their details….

Ben Webb (Manchester) - I’m 19, and I like to code, And play with data an awful load, I came to YRS last year, And now I’m a ment-or, But my app writing hasn’t slowed. (Although my poetry hasn’t improved).

Glyn Wintle (London) - Software consultant and behind the Open Rights Group.

Ben Griffiths (London) - Startup escapee, consultant and coding coach.

Tim Dobson (Manchester) - ”I started school at Padfield County Primary before attending Manchester Grammar School for my secondary education and GCSE’s. I then went on to do my A levels in Applied ICT, Geology and French at the Marple Campus of the Cheadle and Marple Sixth Form College. My professional life is rooted in Information Technology, I am currently employed as both a Systems Engineer for a small Internet Telephony consultants in Manchester, as well as being a contracted part-time systems administrator for large corporation with responsibility for their Xen Web Cluster.

My interest in computing and digital rights grew after my introduction to free software whilst still at school. From there my ambitions for and involvement with the Manchester and later the UK technology scene grew to the point that I now travel widely to attend meetings and have given a variety of talks on many issues including “”Engaging Young People in Technology”” at BECTA’s Open Source schools ‘unconference’.”

ORGANISERS

Emma Mulqueeny is one of Britain’s leading digital communication strategists and communicators. She has spent much of the last decade successfully crafting transformational digitial initiatives, at senior levels, across the British Government and in the States.

She has consulted to the Cabinet Office, Foreign Office, Home Office, Department of Work and Pensions (DWP), Central Office of Information (COI) and Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC), among others. Reinforcing this work is her track record as a serial entrepreneur described by Britain’s first Digital Minister, Tom Watson MP, as “simply extraordinary”.

Daniel Morris is an active web developer and social geek. Since previously working in the BBC’s youth strand Switch, he has been championing young geeks and trying to organise ways to support and promote them. As well as co-organising YRS 2009/2010, he’s also involved in Apps for Good and blogs about youth & tech.

This year apart from young geeks, he has focused on building exciting apps around socialising SMEs in the UK (as part of a team that won the O2 Incubator competition). Before moving to London, he co-organised and grew the northern tech user group Geekup.

Sam Smith was part of the team that won first prize at the first RewiredState hack day, runs the OpenTech conference, and has his fingers in a wide variety of pies.

Tiffany St James is the former Head of Public Participation (Digital) for UK GOvernment and Director of Comms for Directgov. She advises the Speaker of the House of Commons on public engagement and launched data.gov.uk working with the Cabinet Office and Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Tiffany advises governments and industry on digital strategy, social media and digital skills and capability. She is mapping the Open Data world and connecting the private and public sector leaders to drive the world’s open data agenda forwards. Tiffany is the Head of Comms for Rewired State, the largest open data movement.

Milo Yiannopoulos is a technology journalist specialising in privacy, piracy and the UK start-up scene. He writes twice weekly for the Telegraph on technology and once weekly on culture and celebrity.

He is director of the boutique marketing and communications agency WRONG and an editorial director for hire to start-ups. He also advises media groups on online strategy and digital development. Oh, and he’s studying English at Cambridge, because he’s really not busy enough with all the other stuff.

Young Rewired State 2010 2nd - 6th August

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 22:03:00 +0100

This year we are going to be running a slightly different event that is essentially a hack week for young developers across the country to go and build visualisations, digital and/or non-digital products using government data, alongside working devs in businesses across the UK. These would be presented back to government at the end of the week, either in person, or by live stream from wherever you are based.

It is open to anyone aged 15 to 18 (although certain businesses may not be able to take the under-16s) who can work with data, coding or design.

We do not want this to be London-centric like last time, so are calling for businesses or organisations across the UK to join in. If you are ‘developer friendly’ and have space in your offices for a number of Young Rewired Staters - say anything between 2 to 7 - please sign up. We will have people signing up through our site here but you can also recruit in your local area, and drum up some local sponsorship if you like! Please email emma@rewiredstate.org if you would like to put your hand up - yes government departments and organisations can put their hands up too!

If you are a young developer and want to join in, then sign up here http://events.osmosoft.com/recipes/yrs/tiddlers.wiki

We also plan to have some roaming experts who will visit the centres <- that’s our new name for the organisations playing host, as will we: the Rewired State team.

The big show and tell at the end of the week will also involve prizes and pizza as is the tradition.

What we need now:

Businesses and organisations to volunteer to host some YRSers for a week, with light dev support
People aged 15 to 18 to register their interest
As ever, sponsorship will be needed for the big presentation at the end and for travel for the experts whizzing about the country

This is just the beginning of what will be a very busy few months getting this pulled off, any volunteers for just generally helping very gratefully received!

we need to make sure that everyone is safe, therefore we need every business to be CRB checked, this costs a few quid but does not take long

Do contact me: Emma Mulqueeny emma@rewiredstate.org or 07711355023 if you want to ask or give anything

DotGovLabs and National Hack The Gov Day 2010

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 19:11:00 +0000

Evening.

Having spent weeks building up to an event, or two in this case, it’s very easy to be so exhausted, as you start back on your day job, you don’t manage to do the follow up work. Like write the blog entry about it. But look, it’s here.

These things seem to keep producing the goods. Just as well, as the momentum of what we’re doing is getting quite intense. We woke up to find the PM and a Cabinet Minister chatting about what was produced over our two events this weekend.

Sponsors!

National Hack The Government Day needs a venue, beer and food. These were provided by The Guardian, 4ip, BIS, TSO, Vodafone, The Dextrous Web and Unboxed Consulting. Good guys all round.

DotGovLabs

DotGovLabs didn’t need sponsors, as it was all provided for by DotGovLabs. They also paid all developers that turned up, and we don’t think they were disappointed. Major milestone. Good talented hackers can now spend more time working on coding a better country.

The stuff that was made

As ever, it’s all at http://rewiredstate.org/projects < please do add your project if you haven’t already.

Bloody good show

This stuff is getting good. The amount of good will being shown by everyone involved is so heartening. We’re all doing good stuff.

Rewired State: Justice & Home Affairs

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 10:26:00 +0000

Yesterday 10 Rewired State developers (including two of our young rewired staters) hacked on Home Office and Ministry of Justice data for a few increasingly panicked hours (panicked because of time restraints 10am until 4pm). The lovely people at Osmosoft hosted the day and we presented the 9 final apps in the Home Office to Home Office Chief Information Officer: Annette Vernon, the Cabinet Office Director of Digital Egagement: Andrew Stott, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Nigel Shadbolt, and roughly 80 Home Office and MoJ policy, statisticians, ecomms and Press Officers.

Paul Clarke took some great photos. Photos of the hacking here and photos of the presentations here.

There was no wifi or reception in the presentation room so you won’t find much on twitter, but actually the point was to enthuse and inspire the Home Office and MoJ officials, not everyone else. And it worked - we will see what happens next but everyone was very buzzy afterwards. The Q&A after the presentations was challenging at points, but the usual subjects were well-debated: you don’t understand the data, how will people know what we mean, loss of control etc as well as the shiny, bouncy, happy people wanting more and wanting to race back to their office to tell their colleagues.

Then we all went to the pub. We will be loading up the apps over the next few days so you can see what people made.

Next up is Rewired State: DotGovLabs this next Friday and Saturday, if you are a hacker you can sign up here. We are paying for 30 of you. Then it’s National Hack The Government Day next Saturday!

Thanks again to Osmosoft, the Home Office, Ministry for Justice and 4iP for supporting the event.

photos cc/© Paul Clarke

Rewired State: 2010

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:32:00 +0000

Hello from Rewired State, it’s been a while, but we’re back.

So much to announce:

2010: The plan
National Hack The Government Day 2
Rewired State: DotGovLabs Hackday
Rewired State: Justice and Home Affairs Hack Day
Rewired State: Culture

2010: The plan

2009 was pretty incredible. We started with the public sector still getting their knickers in a twist over Twitter, without a clue about data, and ended it with Tim Berner’s Lee being appointed data tzar and launching data.gov.uk.

We were very close to putting down our weapons and retiring to a safe distance, but then we remembered just how far we still have to go. There are still problems, such as billions being spent on failing IT projects. There was also a problem which we seem to help create: the undervaluing of developers. Data has helped show the power, but there is more to be done before that power is fully utilized.

So we have three main aims:

Get developers in there as part of the system, and paid for the work they do
Enable developers work with Government in a geek friendly way
Keep it all fun and positive and fluffy and nice

This weekend we will finally sort out rewiredstate.org, but we couldn’t hold all this back any longer, so here’s the lowdown on our upcoming events.

National Hack The Government Day: 20th March 2010 The Guardian Offices, King’s Place

All of this doesn’t mean that we’ll be leaving a good old Hack The Government Day behind. We’re very excited to announce it’s return, and soon!

You know what to expect from this, so we won’t explain further. As last time, we have a capcaity of 70 developers so usual drill, please send an email to info@rewiredstate.org with National Hack in the subject, who you are, whether you have been to a Rewired State event before, and if not - an example of something you have created.

Rewired State - DotGovLabs: 19th and 20th March 2010 The Guardian Offices

We need 30 developers for a two day piece of work with dotgovlabs (the innovation arm of the government supersites: businesslink.gov.uk, Directgov and NHS Choices). They have some problems that they’d like us to help solve.

We will be paying all developers, as this event is for specific work, and we believe that it is right. Don’t worry though, we’ll still keep it a fun and creative hack day environment.

You may notice that the second day clashes with the National Hack the Government Day, everyone will be in the same space, you just get 2 days instead of one

Let us know if you’re interested in this by emailing info@rewiredstate.org with the subject line dotgovlabs

Rewired State - Justice and Home Affairs: 11th March 2010 (Venue TBA but will be London SW1)

On the 11th March 2010 we propose to run an event using datasets from the Home Office and Ministry of Justice.

Ten developers will work on datasets in the morning and present their results to officials in the afternoon – where there will be an opportunity to discuss and exchange views on the presentations. Again, we will be paying developers.

As there is such limited space, this will be invite only. If, however, you are very keen on this, email us at info@rewiredstate.org explaining why.

Rewired State: Culture: 27th March 2010 (Venue TBA but will probs be London SW1)

Rewired State is working hand in hand with department for Culture, Media and Sport to run a Hack event. Here’s the blurb:

Rewired Culture has two strands - the first is a hackday bringing together data owners, data users, developers and people with ideas to see what they can create in a day. This builds on the very successful Rewired State events held in 2009.

The second strand is a halfday unconference style event starting at midday and running in parallel with the hackday for data owners, entrepreneurs, data users and communites to discuss business models, funding mechanisms and challenges.

We will be encouraging constant communication between the two strands because by the end of the day we want the event to have come up with a number of projects that people want to take forward on technical or business grounds, preferably both!

These chosen projects will then be used as exemplars for the Chief Executives and Chairs of the major national cultural institutions, broadcasters and key figures from the creative economy. They will be used as both an inspiration and a challenge to that community.

Look, it’s even on a proper .gov.uk and everything: http://www.culture.gov.uk/working_with_us/6644.aspx

Blimey, that’s quite a lot of stuff. We’re going to be working our arses off here. Hope you will come and enjoy what we’re up to.

Royal Mail threatens legal action on improving our country

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:59:00 +0100

Do we live in a society that brings the might of the judicial system crashing down on those who use their talents to provide free public services in their own time, often filling market failures far better than the Government? It’s a question that is (finally) beginning to be asked in the media, parliament, and if all else fails, the courts.

Unfortunately it has taken two of the finest of these individuals to endure threatening legal action that threatens their livelihoods to bring this matter to the limelight. For years, however, entrepreneurial creators of the web have been posed with this dilemna with every good idea they’ve had. Some have continued with the hope of a shield of obscurity, others with the mantra “ask forgiveness, not permission”, others have caved in, not wanting to risk what Harry and Richard are going through now.

It is an issue that poses complicated, interesting and extensive questions for economists, lawyers and politicians. But these tangents shouldn’t distract from the fact that it is undeniably wrong to destroy a free services that significantly improves job hunting whilst we’re in a recession, helps local people engage in the development of their local area, assist elderly people pick up their pensions or one of the many ideas that haven’t been thought up in the few years of the internet’s existence.

I urge you to support Ernest Marples’ defence of their service that has the potential to help every person in this country and move Britain into the digital age.

Young Rewired State round-up

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 22:33:00 +0100

Our guests were far more efficient than we were at writing up the happenings at Young Rewired State on the 22nd and 23rd August 2009. Apologies for our tardiness, we have pretty much recovered now so there are some important things to note and people to thank.

Firstly the young people who attended:

Elliot Theis
Jordan Hatch
Grant Bell
Jonathan Davies
Bryant Tan
Tim Dobson
Fergus Ruston
William Tinsdeall
Isabell Long
Rob Barry
Callum Lamb
James Bowden
Thomas Wood
Horatio Caine
Joe Henthorn
Ben Webb
Kyle Richards
Sahar Abdulrahman
Robert Leverington
Andrew Davidson
Sufian Hassan
Marcus Nelson
Jamie Dickinson
Sufyaan Patel
Nick Scott-Jones
Poppy Johnson
Shyam Thakrar
Samuel Hale
Richard Fontaine
Jawsh Jawshington
Alexander Jethwa
Jordan Smallin
Josh Buckley
Tim Dobson
Lawrence Job
Connor Smith
Stephen Mount
Thomas Veness
Harlan Kohll
Vivan Jayant
Scott Dennison
Richard Thompson
James Stoker
Max Siegieda
Marcus Stewart Hughes
Sarah Frost
Sean Whitton
James Robson
Daniel Kershaw
Chris Parsons-Giles
John Paul Dickie
Edward Worthy

We have bios for most and will put them all up here somewhere, when we have approval from them to do so. They had a variety of skills, a heady mix of highly skilled developers, young entrepreneurs who already run successful tech businesses, science and innovation geeks and those with a basic understanding of coding but a raging passion to understand and do more.

How did we find them?

Initially we used the power of twitter to get the word out, then we started calling people we knew who might know any young people with the interest and skills and finally we charged the mighty Dan Morris of the BBC with getting at least 50 people signed up. With a mixture of his contacts and going to events, he drummed up a list that grew so rapidly we had to close it in the end. Of the 55 signed up when we closed the list, 53 turned up <- an incredible achievement, and thanks mainly to Dan contacting every one and making sure they were able to get there and, for the 15 year olds, had permission from parents. Thank you, Dan! Now an honorary member of the Rewired State team.

In addition to this we used our own networks and it did help when Tim O’Reilly tweeted about us…

What did we do?

At the beginning of the weekend we gathered everyone in the St James’s Park room at Google London and outlined why we were there: to see what we could create over the course of two days using public sector data. Mentors, who had come along with a variety of skills, stood and introduced themselves and outlined their capabilities/passions.

After some hasty scribbling we put up sheets of paper with broad topics that might be a good trigger for an idea, such as: crime, sport, culture, travel. The obligatory post-it notes were dished out and everyone was asked to put down any ideas they had, or issues they wanted resolved and they were then grouped around topics. From then on everything really fell into place; people self-organised into groups, found a mentor and got on with creating stuff (we did have a few individuals that worked one-on-one with a mentor too).

Over the rest of the weekend we really just concentrated on leaving them to it, feeding, watering and encouraging where necessary. The mentors were brilliant and moved from group to group to share their expertise where needed.

What did they make?

Check their projects out live on our creations page

Education and the web (1)	Compares violent crime rates with exam results (education)
Education and the web (2)	Does having broadband affect exam results in the area? (education)
Education and the web (3)	OFSTED results (education)
StepSafe	Route planner. Creates heat map of areas to avoid (based on violent violent crime data)
TFHell	Real-time bus service status updates
Blab to Betty	Sex & sexual health service for web and mobile – complementing the Talk to Frank service
AgeVerifier	Online age verification service using passport authentication
Blogotics	Sniffs “mood” of the blogosphere around given Parliamentary Bills
Untransport Direct	Plans journeys door-to-door. If a connection is missed, can replot the journey on the fly
How’s My Train?	Live train service updates.
Will Work For Peanuts	Work experience placement finder and advertiser.
Engage	Leisure activity database.
Unicloud	University course search engine
Free The Theory	Get around the copyright on driving tests to enable more people to take theory tests online.
Schoolroutr 2.0 Beta	Safe routes to school.

At the end of it all, everyone was asked to present what they had done to a group of government people, Press and the judging panel. Enormous thanks to our judges for coming along at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon:

JP Rangaswami, MD of Design at BT
Mark O’Neill – DCMS CIO
Ben Hammersley – Deputy Editor of Wired UK
Diana Johnson MP, Undersecretary of State for schools
Craig Elder – Communities manager for the Conservative Party
Helen Milner – MD of UK Online centres
Mike Hoban – Head of Communications Directgov
Dan Heaf – 4iP

Prizes were awarded in the following categories:

Most likely to be bought by Google: TFHell: Horatio Caine, Jordan Hatch, James Bowden, Lawrence Job
Wish I’d thought of that (prize category courtesy of Harry Metcalfe): Work for peanuts: Bryant Tan, Vivan Jayant, Daniel Kershaw, Shyam Thakrar, Chris Parsons-Giles
Most likely to antagonise CIO council (proposed by Mark O’Neill CIO of DCMS): How’s my train? Callum Lamb and Thomas Wood
Overall best in show: Schoolroutr 2.0 beta: Stephen Mount

Special mentions were given to:

Free the theory test: (developers yet to put their names to this)
Blogotics: Ben Webb, Joe Henthorn, Richard Thompson
UniCloud: Richard Fontaine, Marcus Hughes, Jawsh Jawshington, Sufian Hassan
Blab to Betty: Nick Scott-Jones, Poppy Johnson, Sufyaan Patel, Jonathan Davies

We are in the process of contacting all winners and organising their prizes, we have been jaw-droppingly rubbish and slow at getting this done – apologies to all (again!)

How did we afford it?

By the generosity of our partner Google and the sponsors, who dug deep (and even deeper when we started running over budget when we realised we had to bring so many from across the country, and accommodate them overnight safely and close to Victoria).

Department of Children Schools and Families
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
Directgov
Department for Culture, Media and Sport
CIO Council
Unboxed Consulting
4iP
The Guardian

It is very important to note that most of the sponsorship came from government. Our message is intentionally harsh and we want to prove the power of Agile working – but government departments wanted to be a part of this, to learn from this and indeed to take on some of the creations, or at least incorporate what had been done, in future planning. It is with thanks in main to them that this weekend happened. (Money was spent mainly on travel and accommodation in London for the young developers, food and computer hire took up most of the rest of it, with a little left over for prizes.)

What happens next?

Everyone was keen to remain in touch and to continue the work they had started. Some, like DFEY, were an established network – but work is underway to create a way for this collaboration to continue, for the young people and also for those who might want to tap into this talent.

The applications continue to be worked on, and you can watch this in real time on our projects page. We will be talking to all sponsors about those that might be useful to take forward and launched as services provided by government.

Rewired State was set up originally as a hack day for people who wanted to do something practical, rather than talking about what government should be doing. The first one ran in March 2009 and was so successful that we decided to make it an annual event. The idea for Young Rewired State came about when we kept hearing of the struggle government was having trying to get young people to use their websites. Rather than setting management consultants at the problem, we thought we would set some young people at it instead and see what happened.

Interesting discovery: the problems they want solved are no different than the frustrations everyone experiences, and their solutions were simple, focused and in retrospect – often blindingly obvious.

So now, we get ready for the next one! (After a year off)

Ed: There will be another Rewired State run in March 2010. We need a little bit of beer and food sponsorship (but not much as everyone can take care of themselves for getting to that one!) and people to sign up – oh and a venue.

Enormous thanks to the following:

Dan Morris – without whom we really could not have pulled this off at all, not just the gathering together of the young developers, but he threw his hat into the ring with everything – mad dashes across London with laptops, tough financial negotiations the lot <- you are a star

Harry Metcalfe – who provided server and server troubleshooting, mentoring and even suffered through our weekly Thursday night prep meetings without complaint or exasperation

Tiffany St James – who was unfortunately away for the event, but in the run up to it organised all of our press and event liaison, (and us when we flailed about), helped spread the word across government about the event and was generally wonderful

Milo Yiannopoulos – who intended to pop in and see what was going on, then possibly come back on the Sunday afternoon; turned up, stayed, carried on staying, came out with us on the Saturday evening, promised to return the following afternoon, but was there bright and early helping out, finding out who was doing what, writing lots of lists and finally mastered the show and tell session after exhaustion and loathing of public speaking beat Emma into the back seat. You were a legend, we are eternally grateful

Luc, Layla and Laura from Google (plus the Google mentors whose names we do not have – which is bad)

Finally, if you want to read about what everyone else said, then we encourage the use of our partner’s natty tool: Google Search and see the news items and blog posts; there are also many photos on Flickr if you search for ‘youngrewiredstate’ or ‘young rewired state’; and Lee Martin from the department for children, school and families (DCSF) put together this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7SMq_6axT4

Cheers

James Darling, Richard Pope, Emma Mulqueeny

Founders of Rewired State

Young Rewired State

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:40:00 +0100

After some silence from Rewired State, we can finally announce one of the projects we’ve been working on behind the scenes.

Young Rewired State is a two day hack weekend where we gather 50 teenagers between 15 and 18 years old, and mix them with terminals, 20 of the finest Rewired State hackers and lunch.

Google are massively helping out with this, and have very kindly agreed to lend us their offices outside Victoria station, a treasure trove of technology and toys. They will also be partnering with us in other ways to be announced.

The day will be very similar to the original National Hack The Government Day, showing how Government can release and reuse public data for all sorts of amazing things. Have a look at how we did last time.

The weekend will start on Saturday 22nd August with quick introductions before getting straight into the hacking. Lunch and dinner will be provided, and for those who need it, we’ll be looking for accommodation that evening.

The next morning will be finishing off the hacks in time to present it to our very special, to be announced, judges. There will be prizes to the best hacks (suggestions welcome).

We’re very excited by this project, and will be working on it at a full pace over the next few weeks. Expect lots of exciting news to be coming from here very soon.

If you’re 15-18 years old (or very close), and would like to apply to come sign up here

We’re looking for as many sponsors as possible to make this the most exciting event. If you think you can help, email Emma at emma@rewiredstate.org.

If you’re from the press and was wondering who our lovely PR person is, email Tiffany at tiffany@rewiredstate.org

spread the word on twitter

Rewired State at the EU

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:44:17 +0000

I’ve just got back from a holiday with a week away from the internet, but while my writing about it paused, Rewired State keeps moving faster and faster, so there’s a few updates to come.

First up: The EU. Me and Emma Mulqueeny were invited to Belgium so we could present at an EU workshop called Public Services 2.0 event. We were part of the representatives of the “micro level”, up against (or with) the “meso” and “macro” levels of EU e-government. Up against keynote speakers mentioning “small budgets like 2 million Euros”, we really were the micro level, but attempted to show that that certainly didn’t mean we were outgunned.

In my 10 minutes I introduced them to the geek community, some of the influences, the event, and just some of the output of the day. It seems it was received well (Google translate is now vital for keeping up with the twitter stream), and had people approach me later with thoughts on subjects varying from Rewired State events in Sweden to how this can help excluded groups use technology. All interesting stuff we’re following up.

Below are the slides and a video:

Going global and virtual, perhaps

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:39:00 +0000

Ever since we started National Hack The Government Day, we’ve had plenty of interest from those who are not able to be at the event in London on the day. I’m very sympathetic to this, and see no reason why those who want to join in from afar can do so.

Obviously, though, I’m not about to start trying to claim world domination of this idea. I have neither the ego, nor the brainpower. So I’d love to get your thoughts and help with this.

There is already a confirmed brighton outpost for the day, and I’ve heard of possible outposts in Manchester, Ireland and a few fruitless (thus far) attempts to have something in North America. Nobody’s quite established what being an “outpost” requires, so I’ll have a stab at it now. Hackers, in close proximity, hacking on Government data. That’s about it really. As long as everyone there is making something (and I mean actually making something: coding, designing, knitting), we’re happy to help out any way we can.

Being able to present your hack at the end of the day is quite important to me. There will be prizes, but we will also be bringing in 50 Government officials to (hopefully) show off how important API hacking can be (they can look, not touch). So if you’re not attending, then I’ll do my best to ensure you don’t miss out on this. Whether we faff around with VOIP or I’ll just present something for you, we’ll sort it out.

I have already set up an IRC room (#rewiredstate on freenode), which of course anyone is permitted to join in on, so that should help those joining in from afar.

Any other ideas? Want to host an outpost in your area? Please do let us know, and we will support your efforts in any way we can.

Date and Venue for Rewired State

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:50:00 +0000

We’re really chuffed to announce a date and venue for Rewired State. The Guardian have kindly lent us their new (and *very* plush) offices in Kings Cross for a day, on the 7th of March. A really big thanks to Chris Thorpe for helping us arrange it, it’s a fantasic place.

If you can’t make it to London on that day and would like to do something from home or organise your own mini event, the please get in touch at info@rewiredstate.org.

Still moving and growing, quietly

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 00:50:00 +0000

I promised an email with a date and location last Monday. This hasn’t happened.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that I came down ill, and had to leave things for a bit. But the bigger reason is that as the word started to spread, we’ve had some very interesting people come to us with interesting thoughts and offers.

Now we’re certainly not going to be saying yes to all of them. A key part of this event will be who to say no to, so that we can keep the hacker spirit alive. But there have been a few that we feel can really help, and come with the right attitude. And with these people, we’re expanding our plans a little bit.

We have therefore cancelled our booking at our intial venue and are sorting out new things. We have a few meetings planned this Monday, and I hope to have some things to announce soon after that.

All very fun if you ask me.

Be in contact soon,
James

First (big) steps

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 23:44:00 +0000

So, blimey. It’s been 2 weeks since the idea of a Government Hack Day got scribbled down on a notebook next to a BLT during a late lunch in Soho. The antidote to the current public sector conferences, drinks and ‘camps’. Too much talk, and not enough actual doing. Not enough designs. Not enough code.

This idea has been spreading over beers and laptops around London from that moment. A crack team of notorious doers-not-talkers was quickly formed. I sampled the idea in front of a room of ruby hackers, and 37 signed up immediately. Clearly the idea of doing not talking was going to apply to the event itself.

We’re in the final stages of organising the date and location. Expect the announcement in the next couple of days.
We’ll be collecting all sorts of public data on this wiki page. Hopefully this will become a useful resource not just for the day, but for all hackers.
I will be writing some thoughts here on this blog, updating twitter and very occasionally emailing those who have registered interest with the latest important info.

But enough of this. I’m in danger of talking too much.

If you make stuff, sign up now!