As many of you may already know, last week Red River software hosted a centre for Young Rewired State’s ‘Festival of Code’ at our offices here in Horsham. During the week, the kids split up into teams, came up with an idea involving open data, and were given access to mentors to help them build a prototype. These mentors came from a wide variety of places including Red River staff, charities, businesses, freelancers and 6th form students. At the end of the week the participants were taken up to Birmingham where they were able to demonstrate their projects to judges and thousands of other contestants. The week itself turned out to be a great success, all of the participants managed to finish their projects and had a great time along the way. When the weekend came, one of our teams found themselves in the spotlight as their Intelligent Elephant Alarm Clock got into the final round of the ‘Should Exist’ category. To watch the teams reaction, click on the video below and start watching 15min into the stream.
As an additional bonus, the elephant is going to be auctioned off for Horsham’s own Born Free charity. To be in a chance of winning this hand decorated masterpiece, head on over to www.elephantastic.org.uk and bid on the Young Rewired State / Red River elephant.

All of this could not have been accomplished without the hard work of the mentors outside of Red River. While there are far too many individuals & organisations to mention, we would like to extend our sincere thanks to them all.
If you would like to learn more about the projects to come out of our centre, please click below for the complete writeup. See the projects in action