Organised by the community for the community, Spark Festival was a frenzy of activity including 100 workshops, conferences, presentations, demos, screenings, pitches and other events.
Before it all kicked off, Team Spark’s Education Stream (co-led by Ribit’s Founder, Liz J) set themselves a 2017 goal to once again introduce hundreds of young minds to the future of work.
But forget staid, textbook style introductions to the future of work. The Education crew instead took the go big or go home approach and delivered the future straight to the next generation through interactive experiences bursting with all kinds of good stuff including hexapod robots, under-water virtual reality, drones, coding sessions and even tech savvy rappers.
Two events over two consecutive days at MAAS Powerhouse – “STEAM Popup” (a neat acronym comprising Science, Tech, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) and “Fish Tank”, a series of startup and idea pitches – offered more than 750 late primary and early secondary students pathways and general #inspo (that’s what the kids call it these days, right?) to building vibrant, digital driven careers.
You could hear all the action before even seeing it. Minister for Innovation and Better Regulation, The Hon. Matt Kean MP, stopped by on the first day to check out the work of the 120 plus volunteers involved.
Massive thanks to those who got in on the action, sharing their time, knowledge, tools and toys to create what was a pretty epic and unforgettable school excursion. This included ACHIEVR, CSIRO’s Data61, Tinkery, TinkerTank AI, Academy Xi, StarTime Studios, auggd, Julian Lee, underseaROV CodeCreate, Ritchie Djamhur, Optus, @LifeJourney Inc., CREATE NSW Inc. Propeller and rappers, Izzy & Zeadala.
