Northsiders succeed with their Coolest Projects

TWO Northside youngsters took home winners prizes from the recent CoderDojo Coolest Projects Awards at the RDS, Dublin.

Cillian Manning (11) from the Navan Road and 16-year-old Orla Docherty who attends CoderDojo DCU were just two of over 800 young innovators who took part in the awards, which attracted  an estimated 10,000 visitors.

Cillian was awarded the special education prize from Folens for his puzzle-solving game, Rock Paper Sensei, while Orla was awarded top prize in the mobile category for her iPhone app Key Tracker, which uses Bluetooth to find people’s keys.

Other projects that wowed the judges on the day included a mobile flood warning system, a robotic dog feeding app and a mobile phone for developing countries that doesn’t require a network.

?¯“It was fantastic to see 100 entries from outside Ireland at Coolest Projects. We now have 1,020 dojos in 63 countries and reach 35,000 children a week,“ said Coolest Projects co-founder Noel King.

“Coolest Projects provides the bridge from learning coding skills at local CoderDojos to innovating and creating future employment. We are the piece in the middle which makes the connection.

“These digital skills are vital if Europe is to address the coding skills shortage which has led to 500,000 open job postings across the region in 2016.”

This year also saw the introduction of Launch’d – an event over four stages featuring 50 top international speakers as well as 100 of Ireland’s top tech start-up companies.

Launch’d is aimed at inspiring and supporting the next generation of technology entrepreneurs and was an essential platform for the Coolest Projects kids, tech professionals and anyone considering a career in coding.

Among the speakers was Seattle-based Dubliner Aidan Hughes –

?¯the developer of the world’s most popular calculators, with more than 70 million combined downloads and 11 million monthly users.

Michael Hunger, caretaker of the Neo4J community, talked about how his organisation helped to unravel the Panama Papers.

Coolest Projects is supported by Intel, Microsoft, Aol, Openet, Bank of Ireland, Folens, Symantec, Virgin Media, RTE, Deloitte Digital, Salesforce, Dublin City Council and Accenture.