Founded 2009 Focus Young technical talent Origins Rewired State | Founder Emma Mulqueeny Location United Kingdom | |
Type Non-profit Organization | ||
Young Rewired State (often stylized as YRS) is an organisation based in the United Kingdom, which run events and schemes for technically gifted young people aged 18 and under. It brings together young developers, designers, and those with other technical skills to build projects (mainly phone and web applications) that attempt to solve real world problems. Most of the developers participating in Young Rewired State events have taught themselves or learned coding skills outside the traditional school curriculum. It was initially run as an annual event by its now-sister organisation Rewired State, and has since become its own separate entity. The former Managing Director of Young Rewired State was Ruth Nicholls, a law graduate from Cambridge University, specialising in criminal law, penal policy and human rights.
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Festival of Code
Every year Young Rewired State holds a national hackathon where attendees across the UK take part in a competition to make an application that includes at least one piece of open government data. At the end of the week the contestants present their creations to a panel of judges and they can win prizes in a variety of categories. This event was initially called "Young Rewired State", but was renamed in 2012 to the "Festival of Code". Young Rewired State have also run their "Hyperlocal" scheme since October 2014, which aims to re-open the local Festival centres to provide support for local young "digital makers" throughout the year.
According to an article by Emma Mulqueeny, the founder of Young Rewired State, around 5% of the participants are female as of the 2012 festival, although this has since risen to over 30% as of March 2015.
The Festival of Code that would have occurred in 2016 was postponed until 2017.
See also: Festival of Code
Hyperlocal
Throughout the year, Young Rewired State runs various "Hyperlocal" centres across the UK, which provide coding challenges across the year, rather than being focused on one week as the Festival of Code is. Hyperlocal has less centres operating generally than the Festival of Code, with 21 operating as of 25 July 2015, although it does have three operating outside of the UK.