Our third TeenTech event of 2012 was at at Basingstoke in Hampshire – the first time we have run an event in this part of the world. The venue was the Hampshire Court Hotel at Chineham which has one of Basingstoke’s best kept secrets: an enormous leisure hall, five tennis courts wide. This proved to be ideal for hosting the TeenTech Insight Exhibition and Innovation zones plus a couple of Challenge zone activities and still left lots of room free!
As with all TeenTech events we had been working hard for the last 6 months or so with our delivery partner, the Basingstoke Consortium to raise the necessary sponsorship and support from both local and national companies. The key factor for success was inevitably the strength of the steering group for TeenTech Hampshire, chaired by the Basingstoke Consortium with representatives from several local companies including Sony, Shire, AWE, Blatchfords as well as Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council, to name but a few.
This was a particularly special TeenTech event for us as we were thrilled to have HRH the Duke of York as our guest of honour, adding considerable excitement to the day. Our most important visitors and the reason we were all there however were the 300 young people from 30 schools in the Basingstoke area. They experienced an intensive day of interactive activities with an estimated 140 Scientists, Technologists and Engineers and the buzz of excitement was palpable.
We at TeenTech are used to working with a wide variety of companies but we never fail to be amazed by the imagination and creativity they demonstrate in putting together their activities. A really good example of this was Shire who had spent several months with an enthusiastic team putting together a version of “Millionaire Drop” complete with glamorous presenter and mad professor! Blatchfords had a presence in both the Insight Exhibition and Challenge zones, fascinating all with their ingenious range of artificial limbs and other prosthetics which our young visitors were trying out. Sony too had staff manning both zones, their Challenge involving the shooting and production of a short video being a popular and long-standing feature of TeenTech events. Laleham Healthcare had our visitors dressing up in protective clothing to precisely measure and fill out a variety of cosmetic products into containers using very cool machines.
A key element of the TeenTech experience is the Ideas Wall where are young visitors are encouraged to post up their ideas for improving life in 2050. These are then judged by a group of entrepreneurs known as “The Old Gits Club“, led by Marshall Leopold who award prizes at the end of the day for the best ideas.
The Innovation zone is a key element of TeenTech events and we are lucky to have had a group of top class App Designers from Agant and Pyuda run this for us at many events now. Alyson Fielding did the honours for us at Hampshire.
In summary, a really great day was had by all and we would like to say a big ‘Thank You’ to all the companies who took part or supported the event: Air Products, Amey LG, Atkins, AWE, Apps for Good, Balfour Beatty, BlackBerry, Blatchfords, BT, BBC, British Computer Society, E-mpirical, HHFT, Institute of Directors (South), JVC, Laleham Healthcare, nu desine Ltd, Shire Pharmaceuticals, Sony Europe, Surrey University, Symantec, Thales, Universal Air, Vitacress, University of Winchester, VISA, Wates Construction, Wood and Douglas, WSP
STOP PRESS: TeenTech Hampshire 2013 is on June 18th