Young Rewired State

Young Rewired State (often styled as YRS) was an organisation based in the United Kingdom, which ran events and schemes for technically gifted young people aged 18 and under. It brought together young developers, designers, and those with other technical skills to build projects (mainly phone and web applications) to attempt to solve real world problems.[2] Many developers who participated in Young Rewired State events learned coding skills outside the traditional school curriculum.[3]

Young Rewired State

Founded	2009
Founders	James Darling, Richard Pope, Emma Mulqueeny[1]
Type	Non-profit Organization
Focus	Young technical talent
Location	United Kingdom
Origins	Rewired State
Area served	United Kingdom, Berlin, Singapore, New York City, California, Kosovo
Method	Running events and schemes to facilitate further skills
Key people	Emma Mulqueeny, Ruth Nicholls

Young Rewired State was founded in 2009 by Emma Mulqueeny, James Darling, and Richard Pope[1]. It was initially run as an annual event by its sister organisation Rewired State. The former Managing Director of Young Rewired State was Ruth Nicholls,[4] a law graduate from Cambridge University.

The last event run by Young Rewired State was the 2015 Festival of Code[5], and the organisation was formally dissolved in February 2019[6].

Festival of Code

Main article: Festival of Code

Between 2009 and 2015, Young Rewired State held a national hackathon where attendees across the UK took part in a competition to make an application including at least one piece of open government data. This event was initially called "Young Rewired State", but was renamed in 2012 to the "Festival of Code". Young Rewired State also ran their "Hyperlocal" scheme from October 2014, which aimed to keep some of the local Festival centres open throughout the year, to provide ongoing support for young "digital makers".

According to an article by Emma Mulqueeny only around 5% of the participants were female at the 2012 festival,[7] although this rose to over 30% by March 2015.[8]

The Festival of Code that would have occurred in 2016 was initially postponed until 2017[5], but ultimately did not occur.

Hyperlocal

Throughout the year, Young Rewired State ran 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.[9] Hyperlocal generally had fewer centres operating than the Festival of Code, with 21 operating as of 25 July 2015, although it did have three operating outside of the UK.[10][11]

References

1. "Young Rewired State". The Guardian. 24 August 2009. Retrieved 11 November 2018.
2. Kiss, Jemima (4 August 2011). "Young Rewired State 2011: Fresh blood, fresh data and fresh hacks". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 October 2012.
3. Fox, Killian; Kappala-Ramsamy, Gemma; Sweeney, Kathy (31 March 2012). "Young coders: ideas for change". The Observer. Retrieved 15 October 2012.
4. "Ruth's bio on the YRS Website". Archived from the original on 7 December 2015.
5. State, Young Rewired (31 March 2016). "How do we scale? The future of Young Rewired State and the Festival of Code". Medium. Retrieved 31 March 2016.
6. "Young Rewired State - Companies House". Retrieved 8 March 2019.
7. Mulqueeny, Emma (31 March 2012). "Girls and coding: female peer pressure scares them off". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 October 2012.
8. "Young Rewired State Tweet for International Women's Day 2015". Twitter.
9. "Hyperlocal - About". hl.yrs.io. Archived from the original on 6 October 2016. Retrieved 25 July 2015.
10. "Hyperlocal - Centres". hl.yrs.io. Archived from the original on 25 July 2015. Retrieved 25 July 2015.
11. "Hyperlocal (archived)". 25 July 2015. Archived from the original on 25 July 2015. Retrieved 25 July 2015.

See also

Festival of Code