Where coding is child’s play

An informal group helping children and teens develop their skills as computer coders started in Cork last year — and it’s just about to go global, writes Tommy Barker

THE activity that might have identified the next Mark Zuckerberg is in train, and it just might deliver up young Alan Panayotov, a nine-year-old schoolboy in Cork. Already reckoned to be a tech genius, he’s just one of the gang in an Irish start-up club phenomenon for computer-savvy youngsters, a movement which is about to go global.

However, the next Mark Zuckerberg might be the guy or girl sitting next to Alan, in this Saturday morning gathering of youngsters, of keyboards and of cursors.

We’re at the National Software Centre in Cork’s Mahon suburb, which sits right next to major, growing employers such as gaming company Big Fish and Quest Software. These kids aren’t just possible employees of the future — they’re the employers.

Possibly pipping Alan to Mark Zuckererg-like respect might be Harry Moran, who at least has a considerable age head-start on this clearly-bright nine year old: Harry’s all of 13 years of age, and his gaming app, called PizzaBot, on its launch weekend before Christmas outsold the mega-hit app Angry Birds and Call of Duty in the Apple store. Strike one for Coder Dojo.

Coder Dojo’s a whole lot cooler a name than ‘Saturday Programming School for Kids.’

The first coder movement started out with 30 children in Cork’s National Software Centre, Mahon, just last summer. Now, on a Saturday morning, there can be up to 100, and the buzz is palpable.

It was swiftly followed by a second dojo in Dublin’s Montevetro building, next to Google HQ. The Coder Dojo vibe has spread west to Arranmore Island and across the Atlantic just this weekend to San Francisco. It’s also moving east across the UK to the rest of Europe, while China and Africa are also in is sights.

“Be cool. That’s our one rule, and it’s a very powerful rule. Have you even been told ‘you’re uncool?’ It just withers you. But, to be told ‘Wow! that’s cool,’ well, that’s just what kids need to blossom,” says world citizen Bill Liao, and Coder Dojo co-founder, along with 19-year old James Whelton — who has just been given a philanthropic stipend to spread the gospel of Coder Dojo (see below).

Australian-born Liao, now based in Cork after 12 years in Switzerland, is a serial initiator and investor in tech start-up companies, and made considerable sums when he sold his business-to-business network Xing. Liao now hopes to be putting some of his own considerable web-spun wealth into business start-ups initiated by some of his youthful Irish and international Coder Dojo initiates “not in five years, but in two years.”

There’s still the sense of being in close at the start of something that could become really big. It’s a not-for-profit movement, run by volunteers with a real energetic zeal, a consuming appetite for learning from sponge-like young minds, unfazed at the ways of the web, open to all of its possibilities. These are kids on a cyber-curve, and one or two of them just might save Ireland Inc.

“How many Facebooks does it take to turn around an economy like Ireland’s? This is what we are building for, this is the next Facebook, the next Google, it’s the next MassivePlay. We want an Ireland that is strong, one filled with creative talent rather than a nation of just users,” asserts Liao, who home schools his three children in West Cork and who points out that “learning how to think is a tool you get to keep for life, no matter where you go.”

Coder Dojo is, he says, about creating “an ecosystem, when you create a context in which there’s permission to excel. That context actually draws excellence, and that’s fantastic. It’s the best feeling ever to see young people switching on, thinking, engaging and doing this sort of high-level stuff socially.

“And the other part of the dojo is to break the terrible stereotype of a lone geek, sitting in his bedroom with no social skills, in love with computers and nothing else. It’s about collaboration, teamwork, the best of what the human condition has to offer, enhanced with creativity and computers.”

“This is a tech brand that has real traction, founded in Cork and growing internationally. I see Ireland, with Coder Dojo’s success, becoming the new Silicon Valley on this side of the world — and that can only happen if you’ve got young, enthusiastic bright talent,” says Liao.

KERRY entrepreneur Jerry Kennelly gets the picture. Back in 2006, he sold his photo database Stockbyte to Getty Images for over €100 million; now he’s making more waves on the web with his online graphics/publishing firm Tweak (www.tweak.com), based in Killorglin.

According to Kennelly, “often people think of those who work in technology as geeks.

They’re not. Really, they’re hugely creative people who are solving huge problems all over the world,” he recently said while praising Coder Dojo on RTÉ radio.

So, for those who reckon it’s the geek, rather than the meek, who will inherit the earth, Kennelly argues that the tech-savvy and tech start-ups amongst us “are people who are changing the world.”

Coder Dojo is a great example of software developers sharing their talent and experience with young people, he says.

“If it gets the traction it deserves, it could change the shape of Ireland’s business start-ups, at almost no cost. It’s a real opportunity to plug in at a different level than before.”

Well-plugged in is Coder Dojo co-founder James Whelton. This ‘webpreneur’, social media innovator and crack-hacker who — having linked up with Liao last year while still in his Leaving Cert year — has temporarily put his own business start-up on hold while he spreads the dojo message, thanks to a stipend from a philanthropic fund, via Kinsale-based venture capitalist Sean O’Sullivan of Avego and SOSventures.

James Whelton says he saw the need for such a social movement when he himself didn’t know who to turn to when he encountered computing challenges as a younger teen (he had started programming at age nine). He formed a loose club in his school, Presentation Brothers in Cork, which quickly picked up 40 members, and led to requests for help from those in other schools.

Entrepreneurial Whelton made some early, small money posting clips on Youtube (his school friends skim-boarding on Cork’s flooded streets in November 2009), as well as his hacking of the iPod Nano. But right now the 19-year-old Whelton casually asserts “money’s of no particular concern right now, I’m happy to drink Dutch Gold at the moment and leave the prosecco for a while!”

Coder Dojo:WHAT IT IS

A dojo is a temple or place of learning, usually associated with Japanese martial arts. A coder is someone who builds software to produce anything from websites, graphics and animations through to games and other apps (applications) for mobile devices such as smartphones. And hence coder dojo — a not-for-profit movement which is free to join, is run by volunteers and open to those aged seven to 18. Started in Ireland last summer, it’s for the computer curious, and it’s social.

The supervising parents of younger members might learn some stuff too. With over a dozen dojos already in the first nine months scattered around Ireland and now abroad too, it’s all set to trend worldwide.

* Coder Dojo co-founder and entrepreneur Bill Liao is keynote speaker at the CIT Innovation Week (Mar 5-9) www.cit.ie/innovationwww.coder.dojo.com

Time to become tech creators as well as tech consumers

Social media entrepreneur Bill Liao — the keynote speaker at Cork Institute of Technology’sInnovation Week and Entrepreneur of the Year Award on March 9 — dropped out of high school at 17 after his computer studies teacher told him he’d never amount to anything.

“It ruined 10 years of my life. I was just devastated. For 10 years I bummed around, playing with computers, and doing nothing special.”

Since discovering his business mojo, Liao’s been involved in numerous start-ups, and is a venture partner in a number of other enterprises including former RTÉ journalist Mark Little’s Storyful.com.

Irish people are “incredibly entrepreneurial,” he says. “It’s just the systems haven’t been preparing them for years to be creative with computers, they’ve prepared them to be users rather than creative: this is what has to change.”

Don’t get him going on Irish trains or broadband. “Ireland has this fantastic rural lifestyle and no rural broadband. It could be the most perfect balance: You could attract the entire tech population of the planet who’ve made money — if you’d just put in that infrastructure.

“The lifestyle is perfect, brilliant golf courses, (he’s a member of the Old Head course), great beaches, great surfing, lovely food, friendly people, great pubs — and no broadband. Four years and I still can’t get a connection from Eircom.”

Sounds like he’s going to get things going at CIT’s Enterprise and Innovation event at its Cork campuses — which, appropriately, is due to finish its week with a rocket launch competition by budding primary-school entrepreneurs at Blackrock Castle Observatory. Fireworks indeed.

See ww.cit.ie/innovation.

“Alan is every bit as bright as Mark Zuckerberg...”

Nine-year old Alan Panayotov is the middle child of three. His parents arrived in Ireland from Bulgaria 12 years ago but Alan’s dad — a computer engineer — died when he was a toddler. Now his mum Galini says, “he was raised on the computer, because I didn’t have the time then with another baby to mind.” As peers, and adults mill around the child (including a number of very impressed Chinese engineers visiting the dojo) Galini adds, “Alan is making friends here, they’re not nerds, this is a social unit. He teaches us. He taught himself to read by the time he was only three, from looking at logos on computers, and now makes his own games. He could read 10 books in a day. By accident, I made him a genius!”

That’s not just a mother speaking. “Alan is every bit as bright as Mark Zuckerberg, and I’ve met Mark,” says Bill Liao, referring to Alan as a “superstar” of the three current Cork dojos (Mahon, Kinsale and Blackrock Castle Observatory). “Now, he’s in an environment where what he does is cool. At school, it’s not cool; here it’s cool.”