I was invited to Hutt Valley High School this morning to meet with some students from the Technology Scholarship programme to share my industry experience on a project the students are working on.
The goal for the students are to take an idea from inception to a proof of concept or prototype and document their journey. It is very detailed where lots of research is required, feasibility studies, requirements gathering, client relationship management, design, developing, testing the whole lot.
It is amazing what the students nowadays have to do. Speaking with me it must have felt like stepping into a time machine because I talked about when I attended HVHS, mobile phones were the size of bricks and Google, Facebook and Twitter had yet to be invented. That was because it was the early 90’s and it was the Internet that was being invented.
I was there to provide feedback on their ideas, share some industry experience and talk about some of the latest trends in technology. One key points I talked about was that one doesn’t need to have the best idea or the most unique or ground breaking idea because it’s about execution. Bringing the idea to life is that hard part. In fact, thinking of an idea is actually the easy part!
The other point was that these students are in one of the most exciting times ever. The amount of information available and the desire for instant gratification/information presents some very unique opportunities.
The 45 minute session gave me an insight into how technology is changing in schools and I hope the students gained an insight into the world of idea creation.
