Field Notes: Junior Innovation Camp

Automatticians, the individuals who construct WordPress.com, take part in occasions and tasks world wide on daily basis. Periodically, they report again on the thrilling issues they do when not in entrance of a pc.

At the moment I’d prefer to share some experiences we had through the Junior Innovator Camp that was a part of the Marvel Girls Tech convention earlier this summer season. I used to be joined by my colleagues Marjorie Asturias (who additionally spoke), Sarah Blackstock, Erica Varlese, and Anne McCarthy.

Marvel Girls Tech, the place Automattic was a sponsor, is a convention that highlights girls in STEAM (science, know-how, engineering, arts, and math), and offers a discussion board for discussing vital subjects round variety. The 2-day occasion drew over 150 audio system, all of whom have been profitable entrepreneurs or enterprise leaders, who shared their triumphs, failings, and discovered classes. The convention supplied academic alternatives to numerous space college students who have been attending on scholarships.

My colleagues and I introduced a half-day workshop on “WordPress for the Starting Entrepreneur” as a part of the Junior Innovator Camp aimed toward younger adults aged 13-17. First up we taught the scholars the right way to create web sites utilizing WordPress.com, together with the right way to customise the feel and appear of a website. After that we walked them via a hands-on branding train that explored the right way to provide you with a services or products, the right way to make your enterprise distinctive, and what kinds of individuals your enterprise would attraction to. We rounded the entire thing out with a crash course in advertising and marketing earlier than the scholars shared their companies with us.

Twenty-one college students (and their mother and father) attended this occasion. College students labored in teams for the workshop, however I used to be happy to see the adults following alongside on their very own as effectively. It’s by no means a nasty day when you’ll be able to share your data with somebody, and at the present time was no totally different. Our college students have been great and enthusiastic. We ended up with quite a lot of nice enterprise concepts and even a couple of alternatives to speak about future profession paths for these younger innovators.