Student hackers open up parliament data and excel at a 'hack day'. Tony Parkin is impressed
“We love coming to these dos” said 18-year-old David Kendal at the Parliament Hack Day, “especially as we usually manage to be among the winners for at least one of the sections.” And this was right at the start, before he scooped the prize for helping MPs do their job better, with his Blogs for MPs project.
Student hackers usually attract bad press, but not the members of Young Rewired State, a group of 14 to 18-year-old students who took part in the Parliament Hack Day early in November.
The #RSParly Hack event, which was funded jointly by the Houses of Parliament's Online Services and Rewired State, included 15 of the Young Rewired State crew, keen to take part alongside the older members of the Rewired State network. They were attending an event at hired premises at the Guardian newspaper (see "The Young Rewired State opening of Parliament"), and some of them had also attended the Coding For Kids event at the same venue a week or so earlier, but here they showed that they could compete on level terms with their older counterparts.
Politicians like prime minister David Cameron and minister for universities and science David Willetts are keen to demonstrate their understanding of the need for education to help develop the next generation of programmers and digital creatives. But Rewired State actually leads the way in showing how this can be done.
It was unanimous – school had been of absolutely no help with programming
Emma Mulqueeny, director of Rewired State and Young Rewired State, believes that it is important to include the younger members of the Rewired State family at all these events. “Everyone who comes to a hack day applies," she says, "and we assess whether they should be invited, based on getting the right balance of age, ability and talent. We do need more designers at hack days.
"For Rewired State: Parliament, I was thrilled to see such a high applicant rate from Young Rewired State (kids who have taught themselves how to code and are aged 18 or under). It is just so great to see that we are managing to engage the next generation on what could, understandably, be a very dry subject. We allowed everyone in who applied just to see whether they would cope. Not only did they cope, they excelled themselves, stayed up all night coding and bagged a high percentage of the prizes.”
During the event I took opportunity of various breaks to ask the various members of the YRS group how they went about getting involved in programming. Their answers showed just how much work is needed to make coding more accessible to school students.
Initially, a couple did say that they had met via their school, but they were unanimous in saying school had been of absolutely no help in getting them into programming. Kevin and Alex, both still studying, said that it was really quite hard tracking down ways to get involved with others in coding. Word of mouth was the most significant channel, and both had been fortunate that, as London residents, they had managed to get to a hack day event to meet others.
“I started learning by modding [modifying] video games,” said Alex, “which of course isn't encouraged at school, particularly as there is some rather dodgy stuff going on among modders. At our age people decide either to do some really good, serious stuff, as I did, or they decide to go over to the dark side to try and get at Microsoft and others. Though even the bad guys [among student coders] are changing their attitude and approach now that Microsoft are doing more to support gaming and getting involved in the family gaming side of the business.”
Microsoft Student Partners getting recognition from learners
This was not the only positive mention for the US software giant – most of the YRS group at #RSParly have also become Microsoft Student Partners (MSP). “Microsoft really push and help to get into good technologies and tools, and really try and encourage you through the MSP programme,” said Alex. “You have to apply, and there are limited numbers accepted, but it is a really good worldwide programme that's really helped us, particularly in providing really cool tools to help you learn programming for free.”
Word of mouth had also been the route by which they all got involved in Young Rewired State, and most pointed out group member Dylan as the key information source. Dylan was keen to downplay the significance of his role: “I'm just a bit further down the track than most of the others, mainly because I got involved last year. Then I mentioned it to the others who have now joined in.”
He did, however, also seem to spend more time exploring for news of events and meetings, and passing on information via Twitter and email to the others in the group. “You can bet that if we can get together at the same events then we are all going to try and work together too, as that is part of the fun,” added Kevin.
None of them seemed surprised at the absence of a vibrant online community supporting student coders, and their reliance on the traditional grapevine and word of mouth routes to get involved. However they were rather challenged for suggestions when I asked about how students outside London could get engaged and in touch with other like-minded souls.
“I know that there are a lot of students out there doing this stuff either alone or in small groups,” said Kevin “and my advice to them would be 'Don't be shy, just go for it. Start building lots of projects and put them up online. Don't expect lots of hits or comments, but just keep on going, and acquire the tools that you need.” It was clear that all the YRS members had to be outgoing and seek out ways of getting engaged for themselves.
Kevin was keen to describe the ideas of one of the teams for their MP Watch project for the weekend's hack. “Our original idea was to do a Kindle app for MPs, as Kindles are allowed in the Chamber, to give them a dedicated Twitter feed, capturing things that were directly relevant to them. Using things like Twitter handles, hashtags, mentions and their constituency names we could give them in effect an optimised web page, a feed that told them what was being said about them and their work out on Twitter. And thanks to the API [application programming interface] we could also let them know how many of the tweets were positive and how many negative. We've split the team into two, with Alex and I working on public tweets, while Gideon, Kush and Dylan are working on bringing in Hansard and other parliamentary data.”
“We stayed up most of the night hacking the project, and crashed at about 5am,” said Gideon “though actually by the end we had stopped coding and were just having fun. Then we resumed work about 9.30am and were tidying up and checking the code. MP Watch isn't pretty yet, but it works. We were surprised at the lack of a proper search on They Work for You around the written answers and statements, so we were able to grab this data and at least make it searchable. It would be useful, and really just needs a bit more time hacking jQuery stuff to improve it.”
Ex-teacher: 'These kids are fantastic; we are dealing with some seriously able people'
As we waited for the judging, almost at the end of the event, we were approached by a member of one of the other teams at the event, Allan Callaghan, formerly a teacher at Chaucer and Sandwich Technology Colleges, who was keen to praise the Young Rewired State crew. “These kids are fantastic; we are dealing with some seriously able people here," he said. "They get so much from bouncing ideas off one another and doing some really serious coding. I know that there are lots of other students who could benefit, and would probably love to get involved, but you just don't have the time or ability to do it in school. To be honest I got a little dispirited with what I could achieve in terms of pupils and programming, given the current curriculum, and in the end I gave up teaching to programme full-time, and love it.”
When asked if he could see a way for other students to engage in coding, Allan felt it would be challenging, but doable. “For many students, transport beyond a shortish distance presents a problem. What it would take would be some local hubs, meeting somewhere accessible and affordable, maybe even a school. They could start using simple technologies, like LEGO, then the organisers could identify the able pupils and find ways of bringing them together into regional groups. Providing free pizza, fun and an opportunity to work with and learn from other coders is a key part of what this is all about, and it opens up a different world to these youngsters. It cannot be done just through online communities, though these may help. What they really need are opportunities to make safe personal connections and experience more events like this hack day.”
When the results came in, MP Watch, sadly, was not one of those selected, but David's original observation about YRS winners still held true, with his own 'Blogs for MPs' being chosen by the MP on the panel, Kerry McCarthy, for the prize for the 'Best to help MPs do their Job'. “It is a simple idea,” she said “but really useful, and I could actually see many of the members actually being able to use it.”
They may be too young to vote, but the Young Rewired State teams showed that they were not too young to help develop useful applications to reveal the workings of Parliament. And their contributions included three winning prototypes – one Best in Show and the awards for Better Understanding the Work of Parliament and Better Understanding the Work of Members.
More information
Young Rewired State
Earlier article on YRS on MJO
#RSParly Hack Parliament
Parliament Week
Rewired State
Emma Mulqueeny on Hack Days
ePetition ‘Teaching our kids to code’
All photo credits to Sharon O'Dea, Houses of Parliament
Tony Parkin, former head of ICT development at the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (The Schools Network) and now an independent consultant, describes himself as a 'disruptive nostalgist'. He can be contacted at
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or on Twitter via @tonyparkin
