Tech City UK has supported HRH The Duke of York KG in the development of the Inspiring Digital Entrepreneurship Awards known as iDEA
iDEA is a national project that aims to support 11-24 year olds in developing digital skills through a series of online challenges and events. This initiative is designed to inspire young people to follow their passion, equip them with digital skills to put that passion into practice, and gain nationally recognised awards that make them stand out from the crowd.
The United Kingdom is on the brink of a sea change. Entrepreneurship – and particularly youth entrepreneurship – is transforming our society.
iDEA is a joint initiative designed to inspired young people to follow their passion, equip them with the digital skills to put that passion into practice, and make them more employable all at the same time.
At the end of 2015, Tech City UK hosted iDEAHack – a hackathon to help the development of the iDEAHack Awards – which led to in depth feedback and assisted in the development of 5 ‘Bronze Award’ badges.
This resulted in the development and creation of a Cyber Security Challenge developed by Wirehive; Electronics challenge supported by Ryan White of RLab; Computing History Challenge supported by Jeremy Thackray and the Centre for Computing History; and our very own Digital Business Academy Foundation Course in Entrepreneurship challenges.
Digital Business Academy – created by Tech City UK in partnership with leading educational institutions, businesses and organisations, to give you the business skills you need to succeed in a digital world.
Digital Business Academy Foundation Course – enables children to engage with our core subject matter in cut down interactive manner giving them insights into what makes good ideas, how to develop a digital product or service and how you would go about marketing your idea.
Our very own Digital Business Academy team, along with Microsoft and Wirehive, had the rare opportunity to meet with HRH Duke of York, KG during a roundtable event at Buckingham Palace recently to show the development of these online challenges which were greatly received by the iDEA programme steering committee.
In January, we then visited Westminster Academy, for the programme’s official user testing. This gave the opportunity to show and test the badges with 200 Year 7 students, providing great feedback to continue the development of the badges. HRH The Duke of York, KG then addressed 1000 students on the importance of digital skills to all the students at the Westminster Academy, with the official launch set for April 2016.
Tech City UK is pleased to continue supporting the iDEA programme and we are delighted to announce the appointment of our Technical Lead, Gary Fletcher, to HRH Technical Advisory Board for the iDEA Programme.
We would like to thank all the people who participated and gave invaluable industry input via iDEAHack, with a special thank you to Ryan White of RLab and Jeremy Thackray of Centre for Computing History.