Digigirlz day

WOW! what a day.... 200 teenage (13 - 15 yr old) girls descended upon Microsoft HQ today.

We had a great line up of speakers. We didn't have much time. Everyone spoke for about 5 mins and the girls themselves asked lots of questions about careers and the technology itself. Lots of whooping and hollering just before that when I asked them all to stand up and stay standing if they had, a pc, a mobile, an mp3 player, they were on Facebook, my Space, Bebo or Spaces, they had bought or sold on ebay, had visited second life, had a blog ( yes a few still standing) and had used a wiki. Luckily I didn't have to do the "who knows what RSS stands for?" - but there were 3 girls still standing and that was good enough for me.

The afternoon challenge was for them to create a 2 min ad for either the XBox 360 or the Creative Zen ( Zune not arrived on these shores yet). They were asked to shoot moving pictures and stills, source music and additional visuals and do a final edit on Movie Maker. ( will link to the winning 2 vids in the next few days)

These are the lucky generation of digital natives ( don't like that phrase but seems in common use now). They have never known a world without perpetual connectivity. The photo above is Geek in Disguise Steve Clayton showing the girls just how simple making a movie really is:) Many thanks to all the organisers and especially to Eileen Brown who got me involved.

A high energy - thought provoking (for both teenagers and adults) day. I ended it by asking them to email just one thing they are going to do as a result of the day - again will feedback.

Ahhh - we have so much to learn from the young.