Tour Stop One: Melbourne and YOW Connected

Stop one on our 2017 #JewelbotsBuild tour was the one the furthest away (on the other side of the world) in Melbourne. We partnered with the YOW Connected conference to get together a Jewelbots  workshop hosted by REA Group.

Before that, there was a Friday Keynote that I was blessed to be invited to do. The least interesting part of the keynote was me (Sara). The most interesting part of the Keynote was an eight year old named Clara.

Clara is 8 years old, she’s from Brisbane which is over a thousand miles from Melbourne. One of the many things I learned in my short trip to OZ land is that people often just hop to the other part of the continent. Clara’s father is a scientist named Eugene who recently discovered how much coding can help the world of biology.

Clara’s presentation started part of the way through mine. We had practiced together the night before. I’m not too proud to say I teared up after watching an eight year old girl explain a for loop to me.

Girls are brilliant, I just know they are, and girls like Clara are my proof.

Clara live coded her Jewelbots and also explained to a group of 100 adults many up to five times her age the basics of C++, Arduino, timers, and for loops.

She’s a star, I hope I get the chance to work for her one day. The conference organizers have asked her to apply in a few years to do a talk on her own. We will post the video when it is ready.

The next day we were all up bright and early, for the Jewelbots workshop. The space at REA was decked out with every cool thing a kid could imagine playing with. Oculus, Hololens, android arms, really the coolest if I hadn’t been teaching I could have hung out forever.

The folks from YOW Connected were amazing. They provided snacks and were there for every question and need a kid could have.

My single favorite part of this workshop was all the variations of the game we got when kids figured out how the API worked. It was super fun to see how some of them did their own remixes and to play with them myself.

Big thanks to everyone at YOW for all the support and the amazing time and talks. My whirlwind tour of Melbourne has only left me hungry for more.

Now we are headed to our next stop, Washington State! CPPCon is gearing up to be an amazing conference both for learning and for teaching.