Week 1 of the TeensInAI Accelerator programme kicked off at BBC, White City on Monday 20th August. I was lucky enough to be one of the 22 teens selected from 120 applicants, to attend this two week event looking at AI.
The programme brought together industry experts and inspiring mentors to work with teens to develop ideas on the theme of AI. I had attended an Accelerator programme back in 2016 with Acorn Aspirations and was interested to see how things might have changed. If you would like to read about the brilliant time I had on the 2016 Accelerator programme then click here.
The Accelerator this year was sponsored and backed by some pretty big organisations, such as BBC, Mastercard and Microsoft.
The sponsors
Day 1 – BBC Broadcast Centre
After completing our security checks, we headed into the working space for our time at BBC, White City, a place called the Blue Room, where we had a welcome speech from Elena Sinel (who runs Acorn Aspirations).
A cool mug I didn’t get to keep
A selection of teens taking part including me (the overly happy one near the back)
There were some icebreakers with Rob King and Hazel Kate (who work at the BBC) before the work began.
Warm up activities with Rob King and Hazel Kate in the Blue Room
The speakers for the day were Ali Shah, the BBC Head Technology Direction, who spoke about ‘AI Future and Now’, and a meditation session with Rio Davila Otoya (Google) . Meditation’s not my thing, never was, never will be, but it was an interesting experience all the same.
My group of 4 + 2 mentors trying to come up with ideas through Design Thinking
During the day I also got to try out some cool technology such as a pair of Microsoft HoloLens which allows me to look around the room and see unicorns and tigers (not hallucinations, preset images).
HoloLens
Day 2 – BBC Broadcast Centre
Still in the Blue room.
Day 2 talks showed us how a university has created software that can create fake videos of people speaking that look completely genuine, as well as a session with Leanne Page from InspiredAgile, talking about Scrum and Project Management with Hannah from LifeAtUnruly
With IT projects project management is key andhelps to keep things on track, something necessary with such a short timetable for our project.
Project Management with Leanne Page
Working on our ideas aided by intelligent looking pink post it notes. I am wearing my new and very cool Teens In AI t-shirt designed especially for the Accelerator
After lunch we were able to hear from John Havens, not in person but via link to New York on the subject on the increasingly important topic of AI Ethics, followed by a talk and workshop on the same topic run by Alejandro Saucedo.
John C Havens talk on AI Ethics direct from New York
Alejandro Saucedo talks about practical AI Ethics
The day rounded off with a talk from Berttia Hermant, sharing her journey as a Data Scientist with us.
There are many different ways in which Data Science is and will impact our lives
Another day finished of this two week Accelerator programme, which is packed with talks and hard work.
A great quote from one of the teens
Day 3 – BBC, New Broadcasting House
Day 3 and we are at a new location, at New Broadcasting House, Portland Place. A very impressive building where the BBC lives.
An extremely nice building
First off, we had another talk from Ali Shah on Ethics. This is very much the big theme with this year’s Accelerator. Then on to more Design Thinking work and refining the big ideas.
Then on to more building of ideas, this time we moved on from post it notes to actual sheets of paper. This is really the hardest part of the challenge, trying to come up with workable ideas that you can progress.
An attractive picture of the back of my head. Clearly working hard though!
After lunch, some of the group got one-to-one mentoring with Aparna Ashok all the way from India.
Then a great talk from Magda Piatkowska, who is Head of Data Science Solutions at the BBC, who was talking all about her ‘Journey to Doing AI’.
LJ Rich from BBC Click also dropped in to talk to us about Machine Learning and AI. Another fun packed day with Teens In AI.
Quote of the Day
Day 4, Wayra
Day four and we are on the move again, this time at WAYRA (Telefonica), kicking off with a talk by Alessandro Recino from and a Data Science Workshop by Galiya Warrier from Microsoft Azure. They were talking about ethical AI and the importance of considering who is using the technology.
I unfortunately turned up a bit late, due to the fact that it was GCSE results day (and I did really well much to my surprise) but managed to catch some of the talk.
We also heard from Mohamed Ahmed from Benevolent AI, who spoke about using machine learning in the area of medicine.
In between the talks. we had to get on with our work, as there was not much time to get our ideas firmed up before getting on with the task of actually creating a product and a presentation for demo day.
Charlie Price from Traffic and Copy joined us to talk about digital marketing and the building a business and then Hannah Mackaness from Unruly rounded off the day talking about what she does and the key to success. All in all a very thought provoking day!
Day 5, Wayra
Back at Wayra for Day 5, I almost feel like this place is home! Although it all started out quietly, this turned out to be a ‘pivotal’ day for our team…
We had a workshop on digital marketing with Laurie Wang, where we had to look carefully at the problems we were trying to solve and think about why we were doing things the way we were.
Trying to work on a new idea after ‘pivoting’
As a team, we decided that our original idea was not going to work well, so after meeting with Emem Rita Usanga, we decided to ‘pivot’. This not so technical terms meant that we decided to drop the idea we had been working with so far and change direction completely, This was not an easy thing to do, as we had very little time left to develop a new product but we all thought it was the best solution. After throwing around a few ideas for a while, we managed to settle on a way to go.
At the end of the day, we had another digital marketing speaker, Harvider Bhogal from BallinDigital, talk to us about keeping a work-life balance.
Day 6, Wayra
A quiet day today, as it was a Saturday. Because of the bank holiday Monday, we would have missed a day in the second week, so we had to turn up on the weekend. We worked with mentors on our ideas to try and get them into a workable format with a short pitch to prepare…bit stressful! We we joined by Nick Hatter from Gift Gaming later on to round off the day.
Day 7, BBC New Broadcasting House
I was really looking forward to today, as we had been promised a tour of the BBC. We couldn’t take any photos on the tour for security reasons, which was a shame. We did get to see some famous rapper dude shouting out to us from an upstairs balcony which was interesting.
After the bank holiday Monday, we had a lot of work to do as we had changed our original idea, so a good deal of the day was spent working on that.
We had a talk on Voice Technology from Catherine Buk from Amazon Alexa and then Akli Adjaoute (Briterion) spoke to us over Skype from Silicon Valley with some inspirational words about being able to achieve anything you want in life, no matter who you are and where you come from.
Day 8, Microsoft Reactor Space
Day 8 was at Microsoft Reactor, a place I had come to know well and love from the AI Hackathon back in May this year.
First off was a talk by Simon Ong, who is a life coach and then we were joined by Rodolfo Lissia, one of our mentors, who has made a film looking at life, which we got to see and he advised us to follow our passions.
Towards the end of the day, Silja Litvin spoke to us about emotional intelligence and self-awareness.
Day 9, Roborace Oxford
Day 9, was ‘Day Out’ day. We travelled to Oxford to visit Roborace to look at self-driving cars. Again, due to them working on top secret stuff, we were unable to take any photos around the workspace, which was a shame but here are a few taken on the way there and outside.
Day 10, Demo Day
Well demo day rolled around quickly and it is always pretty scary but exciting, to know that you are going to be standing there in front of judges who know their stuff and explain how your idea works. The questions section is usually pretty tough too and you know that they are going to really drill you to see how you deal with it. We managed to get our product into a state for presentation but we definitely had a few holes that we were trying to fill!
Elena opening the demo day presentations
Team SKai
We won!
Teens in AI Accelerator 2018 was full on for two weeks. We got to meet some amazing people, worked in some iconic locations and learned so much about designing, running and presenting a project. Winning was the icing on the cake!!
Licence To Code 