Tony Parkin finds the fare rich and filling at Apps For Good's pilot Facebook show-and-tell
A joyful show-and-tell event, with just one small hint of innuendo among otherwise serious presentations, marked the successful end of the first-ever pilot Facebook Apps for Good course.
The graduating Apps for Good students presented their Facebook app ideas, heard feedback from a panel of assessors, and the successful teams graduated on the night. And for the record, the FancyaQuickie in question is a rapid recipe-sharing app prototype for the hard-pressed students on Facebook.
FancyaQuickie was the brainchild of two of the participating students, Jade Lau and Josephine Kibuka, who realised that sharing quick and easy recipes is an important aspect of student living; so they set about creating an app.
I asked Jade how she became involved in the pilot project. “The subject line 'FREE Facebook Apps Course – ENROLLING NOW!': leaped out at me from a Futureversity email I received. Though originally I had been on the look-out for jobs after college, I was interested and applied instantly.
"After successfully going through the rigorous three-part selection process, I wasn't quite sure what I had signed myself up for... but I knew it was going to be pretty exciting. The course started on Halloween and from then on my non-existent ball of programming knowledge rolled itself into being.
“From hardly knowing anything, I learned about the basics of HTML, PHP and SQL, as well as other useful career skills such as problem definition, market research and business modelling. I'd been a bit of a business phobe, so pitching and networking really helped me improve myself in that respect.” Jade could not speak highly enough of the course tutors and the A4E training generally, and was especially enthusiastic about the coaching and mentoring support that was an integral part of the course. “The support from professionals at companies such as CDI Europe, Techlightenment, Facebook, and Inensu was absolutely amazing, and I could not have learned as much as I did without continuously bothering our awesome mentor, Sat (occasionally at ridiculous o'clock).
“For the duration of the six weeks of the course, my partner, Josephine, and I attempted to solve the problem of students not readily knowing any recipe secrets or tips for super fast meals. We spotted a social aspect to this problem, i.e. cooking is more enjoyable when shared between friends and therefore integrated the idea within the world's biggest social network, Facebook. There are still a few bumps and annoying little glitches to solve, but we are proud of our prototype app Quickie, which is now available for all to test (http://apps.facebook.com/fancyaquickie/) and we hope to develop it further, if only just to hone our developer and design skills."
The students on the six-week pilot course, organised by Apps for Good/CDI, and delivered by the excellent A4E at the A4E Brixton Vox Centre in south London, were indeed fortunate enough to be advised by some of the UK’s leading technology names including Facebook, Techlightenment, Dell and Thomson Reuters. And a number of representatives of the companies were there at the show-and-tell as a panel to appraise and comment on the apps on display.
The invited panel included:
Richard Allan - director of policy EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa), Facebook
Jonathan Akwue - partner and client MD, Engine
Gi Fernando - CEO, Techlightenment, an Experian company
David T. Kramaley - CEO, Sharkius Games
Richard Smartt - education manager, CDI Europe/Apps for Good
'The potential to help young people improve their entrepreneurial skills'
Richard Allan, director of policy of Facebook for EMEA , as well as suprising us with the news that the Facebook workforce is only around 3,000 direct employees (so they really need partners!), said: “Facebook is proud to work with Apps for Good to create a course which has the potential to help young people from all corners of the world improve their entrepreneurial skills, employability and technological understanding while building tools, apps and services that could transform the society we live in.”
Gi Fernando, CEO and co-founder of Techlightenment said: “The framework that Apps for Good creates will provide young people with the skills to build social media applications and develop their overall business acumen, giving them a head start in whatever their career aspirations may be.”
The apps on offer ranged from a social study aid aimed at schoolchildren, BeWiseRevise, to a business app for those involved in planning and alerting those shift workers in retail, Shift Manager by Josh Oldham and Imran Ali that certainly elicited a lot of attention from the crowd. It had a superb design, slick prototype and oozed serious business potential. All the apps had the hallmark of being developed by Facebook users that were addressing real needs that they themselves had experienced, and the panel were able to compliment them on their ideas, designs and real business potential.
The audience included industry people from London's 'Silicon Roundabout', as well as friends and colleagues of the participants and some proud parents. During the celebratory food and drink that followed it was noticeable how the entrepreneurs moved in on a number of the 'graduates', and at least one confided that he was on the hunt for interns and was highly impressed with what he had seen. The Shift Manager and FancyaQuickie students were almost trampled in the rush of interest! A great end to an inspiring evening.
This was a pilot course, and a highly successful one at that. Apps for Good is planning to refine and roll it out more widely in 2012. It had been a good week for Apps for Good/CDI – its work with Learning Without Frontiers at St Matthew's Academy in Blackheath also attracted significant media attention with acting CEO Debbie Forster making the BBC News. A small organisation achieving great things... and an exciting one to watch for 2012.
More information
FancyaQuickie app on Facebook
Apps for Good/CDI
Apps For Good on Facebook
BBC coverage of Apps for Good smartphone app creation course at St Matthews Academy, Blackheath
FancyaQuickie developers Jade and Josephine can be contacted via:
Email:
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Twitter: @PanaceaApps
