Digital Bristol - Bristol Young Students of the year award

Today I had the pleasure of meeting around 90 students from schools all over Bristol at the launch of the Bristol young student of the year awards held at the Merchant Venturers building, part of the School of Engineering at Bristol University. I'm one of two mentors supporting a team from Filton College, one of 15 competing schools seeking to win the award, in this, it's first year.

The competition runs for 6 months with the students having a client company whom they receive a brief for the development of an appropriate application for a iphone. (Interesting that the competition launched on the same day as iOS5)

I'm really looking forward to supporting and helping our team to do the very best that they can and at the same time helping them to stretch and learn strong business skills. The competition goes further than a bit of nifty design for a piece of digital technology with many interim deliverables all playing a part in the teams success. In November they need to present the client company with a marketing proposal, In the spring they need to select and present suitable business fashion at Bristol Fashion week and they will be working with the BBC in the studio's in Bristol to learn about presentation and broadcast skills. They have to weave the work in amongst the studies too. No mean feat.

Supporting client companies include:
The Bloodhound Supersonic car project
The Creative Youth Network at The Station
Bristol Festival Community group
Hamilton House

A key driver is employability, not technical expertise in the application, so skills being measured also include team work, planning, project management, marketing and presentation.

All the participants will be winners, and there is a healthy competitive streak amongst the mentors too. We'll be keen to do the best for them all. It's a really great initiative and I hope to support it for many years to come.

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