Coder Dojo takes Ireland by storm – new tech initiative gets Ireland's kids coding

An Austrlian-born entrepreneur with a penchant for global reforestation is the unlikely figure behind Coder Dojo, a sprawling network of 'coding clubs' where Irish teens can come together and help programme a dazzling array of hi-tech projects.

Bill Liao, whose credentials, beside global philanthropy, include a listing as the co-founder of global business network Xing.com, founded the movement with James Whelton, a schoolboy who had the bright idea of founding a computer club at my old highschool, the wonderful PBC Cork, before deciding to take things to the next level.

Despite the generational gap between Liao and his young sidekick, the project kicked off like wildfire, and a burgeoning global network of 'dojos' (the name, for those interested, comes from an ancient Japanese temple adjunct) continues to bring hobbyist coding together in new territories.

The official dojo directory bears testament to this furious global expansion. From humble beginnings in the 'real capital' of Ireland, the dojo network has begun a veritable world takeover: Stateside, clubs exist in Washington DC, New York City, and just about every State in between, while chapters have also sprung up in Cape Town, South Africa, Brudan, Uganda, and St Petersburg, Russia. Soon, practically every major city in the world will be host to a dojo where young coders can come together to meet like-minded individuals and hone their craft.

A typical dojo (take, for instance, the Manhattan outlet, at W 21st Street) meets once a weekend. The young age of some of these precocious 'coding monkeys', as they are sometimes sarcastically known, is evident by the disclaimer that those under 13 must be accompanied by an adult for the duration of the dojo meet.
---------------
Read more: 
Barry Manilow dismayed at how his Irish roots were denied


Want to live in a four-star luxury hotel in Ireland for just $128 a month?
---------------

A series of resources are provided on the Dojo website (a HTML Cheatsheet to guide the young coders through the rudiments of coding in the net's best-known markup script), while due to the sky-rocketing popularity of many dojos, places often have to be booked in advance of each session.

In Ireland, where it all started, the 'movement' has created quite a stir in the local and national news media, with many pundits hopeful that this blossoming generation of bright young computer geniuses will overtake the current skills-deficient one and lead Ireland's way, once more, back into the heart of the hi-tech, high-knowledge, digital economy.

Liao, who counts over 100,000 followers on his official Twitter channel, has emerged as something of a champion for the cause of tech-saviness among Ireland's youth, and as an outspoken critic of the government's general failure to foster this success.

Last weekend he blasted jobs Minister Richard Bruton for his fairly timid explanation of Ireland's notoriously unhelpful work visa programme on popular politics programme The Week In Politics and stands as a bastion for the belief in what young people, with hi-tech skills, can achieve.

And while the sight of a group of youngsters gathered around working stations to code computer programmes on their weekends rather than play sports is certainly one that takes some getting used to, the fruits of this strange but successful initiative are hard not to spot.

The world's youngest Mac app developer hails - un-coincidentally - from Cork, and is also an active member of the CoderDojo meeetup in Mahon Point here. His pizza game app was described on RTE.ie as a modern day sort of Space Invaders, and landed him a coveted place at the top of the Apple apps chart.

Elsewhere in the county of Cork, two young teenagers were reported to have invented an iPhone application that performs the unusual but useful function of translating Cork's notoriously unintelligible version of Hiberno-English into the standard form as taught, and understood, outside of the Rebel County.

Stock rural phrases such as 'Shove Whest' (lit. 'move west'; meaning, 'move over') will now longer be to the bedazzlement of hapless tourists who can purchase the app from iPhone's AppStore for less than the cost of a Berlitz guide.

Fittingly for the movement, however, it's perhaps in its cradle of Ireland that it stands to make the biggest contribution to society.

Ireland is notoriously under-equipped to deal with the manpower needs of the many hi-tech companies that have based here, something which has been identified as a major obstacle to development by government.

Technical literacy, as taught in high-schools, tends to extend no further (even if then) to an education in the humble European Computer Driving Licence an archaic and under-impressive qualification that merely attests to basic skills in functions such as word processing and spreadsheet use.

Besides the decline in software such as that needed for this qualification (with everything 'moving to the cloud' some believe, that one day, there'll be no need for desktop software at all), hard and highly sought after skills such as coding, web design, and information systems, do not comprise part of the curriculum at all.

The Industrial Development Authority (IDA) has for years been hell-bent on selling 'hi tech and technology courses' to students in the hope of increasing enrollment in such programmes and boosting the output of graduates.

Besides the known concerns of high labour costs, dwindling OECD education scores, the economic implosion, and more, concern rightly runs high that a failure to produce sufficient highly computer literate graduates will be the straw that finally breaks the camel's back and forces foreign direct investment (FDI) out of Ireland or offshore.

For that reason and more, Ireland should be thankful for the entrepreneurship that Liao and Whelton have shown in setting up the Coder Dojo movement, and for the huge job generating potential this will be proved to have had by the time the child prodigy coders have entered the workforce.

And the amazing little bits and pieces they'll come up with along the way -- even the Cork-ish - English translation app -- is a happy bonus.

Traveller horse race provokes outrage -- dramatic police chase footage goes viral -- VIDEO

Dramatic footage of Irish Travellers holding 'sulky' horse races on a busy Cork commuter road has gone viral, while police have promised to prosecute those involved in holding the unofficial races.

The amazing footage (below) has been viewed almost 200,000 times on YouTube, and featured in a BBC report. It shows unidentified members of the Travelling Community racing horses on the wrong side of a major Irish highway, before a police car joins in the chase, as oncoming traffic swerves to avoid collision.

The contest between the two riders featuring in the video was a traditional harness horse race, but this was one of the first times one had been held on a major public throughway -- and captured on amateur video for astonished viewers around the world to see.

The head-to-head battle between two riders on sulkies - traditional Traveller carts with two wheels and a seat - lasted almost seven minutes on video.

Approximately sixty spectators are visible towards the start and end of the videos uploaded, while police attempt to block the road in the direction the horses are traveling.

A following party often three cars abreast wide follows the two competitors, while traffic in the opposite direction can be seen swerving onto the hard shoulder.

Pavee Point, the Travellers' rights organization that seeks to ensure that the minority has a fair place in Irish society, while working to undo discrimination towards the ethnic group, decried the races.




A statement from the organization said that "What we saw on Saturday, what we saw in that video was just a serious risk to life, and there's nothing cultural about that, you can't defend that on cultural grounds, and no Traveller is trying to,".

Ben Archibald, the group's spokesperson, described the incident as 'senseless', adding that sulky and horse races can be conducted in safer and better supervised locations than public highways.

“We are concerned that the practice of sulky racing, which is a longstanding tradition within and outside the traveller Community, should not be conflated with the actions of the participants in this event — sulky racing can be carried out in a way which is safe and well regulated, where there is space for it to take place," the spokesperson said.

Meanwhile Superintendent Con Cadogan of Gurranabraher Garda Station described the incident as "a clear breach of road traffic legislation and posed a significant danger to those involved and to other road users".

A later statement from the police said that “The matter is being fully investigated at the moment. The gardaí arrested one male person at the scene in what were extremely difficult circumstances at the time. We are following a definite line as regards a number of other people who were involved."

A number of prosecutions have also been promised.

The 2006 Census reported that there were approximately 22,000 Travellers resident in the Republic of Ireland. They maintain a nomadic lifestyle and often speak Shelta, or Cant, in addition to English.

Pioneering Irish website FixMyArea.com outdoes local authorities and shows power of social activism

Here's a fantastic piece of social entrepreneurship that people need to hear more about.

FixMyArea.com lets Irish users report their neighborhood's problems (potholes, graffiti, etc) to local authorities, who then take action to fix what's been reported.

The interface is excellent, the site well populated, and minor nuisances, such as this South Dublin faulty manhole cover, seem to be getting fixed with very untypical speed,  but here's the amazing part: it's run by what effectively seems to be a group of volunteers.

FixMyArea.com looks, superficially, like the work of a very dynamic local government agency, but this being Ireland (where potholes generally takes months, not days, to be filled) that impression is unsurprisingly smashed when the FAQ page reveals that the website is in fact the brainchild of the people behind RateMyArea.com, a growing (and predominantly Irish) geography rating website, where users can rate amenities such as restaurants, and nightlife, in their areas.

What excites me about FixMyArea.com is the seeming total lack of a profit motive behind the idea (websites having to be hosted, the operation - unless subsidized - probably runs as an expense); local authorities apparent total lack of involvement in coming up with the proposition, but willingness to work with it to fix the problems it identifies, and the ease with which the idea could be transplanted to other geographies, such as, say, America, but equally as possibly, the world.

I'm clearly not alone in being a little wonder-struck by the ingenuity of this great new system: the service has already launched on both the Android and iPhone platforms as a phone application, while the system has now collated over 10,000 reports from users, ranging pretty much the full spectrum of what can go wrong, and unsightly, in a neighborhood, such as graffiti daubings, pothole problems, climbing frame issues, etc.

Its interface is fantastic and shows a full incident breakdown, ranging from when the incident was reported to the website, when it was verified, when the nearest local authority was alerted of the problem, and when (if yet) it was fixed.

While Fix-My-Area aren't the first people with the idea (FixMyStreet.com is another well-known website with an almost identical concept), they do deserve a special word of mention for being very obviously targeted towards Ireland, which adds a local touch to the experience.

I also love how they're in effect assuming the mantle of what was previously to be a Government run effort with a promised 48 hour response time: FixYourStreet.ie seemed set to be the darling of the next Government web design awards for all of a few months, until after having made a celebrated and feted launch quietly sank into relative obscurity, before now (for all appearances) having faded off the internet entirely.

Even if it's not the very first kid on the block to do this, FixMyArea.com proves an important point for me: Besides the 'power of the Internet' lesson that's a bit trite and beyond utterance at this stage, that Ireland has bundles of tech-savvy entrepreneurial-minded people like the founders of Fix-My-Area, who, with a bit of community altruism thrown in there for good measure, can craft fantastic solutions to truly annoying problems such as potholes.

The folding of the obviously untenable '48 hour response time' website is unsurprising, and Ireland's government has shown itself, once again, to be woefully incapable of dealing with the scourge of mass youth emigration, even as - for the second time in many citizens' lifetimes - hundreds of thousands of young people are effectively forced to flock the island's shores.

College fees, principally in the form of raised student contribution charges, continue on a steady climb skyward, leading many to believe that cash-strapped families simply won't be able to afford to send their children to third level education in a matter of years.

The panoply of social problems facing Ireland such as these seems to continue to mount by the day, but we can come up with a more creative and empowering response than blaming everything on the obviously cash-strapped and overstretched government.

Instead we need more people like these, the creators of FixMyArea, to rise up and use their ingenuity to show both the Government and the country that the power to fix social problems that were once written off as intractable is closer at hand than we'd thought. It's often within the citizen, particularly the bright and highly-educated one, both of which Ireland has in strong supply.

And if that holds logic can prove true for fixing graffiti and potholes, it can be used for solving other problems too.