This year our class had the opportunity to attend the #BCTECHSummit, Youth Innovation Day! #BCTECH is the largest tech conference in Western Canada and this year it was located at the conversion center in Vancouver. Youth Innovation day happens every year to educate youths about new technologies and to get students to think about future careers. The conference is filled with inspiring speakers talking about their experiences in the tech industry and careers to motive students. Before we left non of us had a great understanding what #BCTECH Summit was until we watch this video.

Our time at the Youth Innovation day was a full on day, 7am-5pm. All of the schools had a schedule for the day. We had a day set of listening to speakers and exploring the convention center,

• Arrive at the school at 7am – Bring snacks, water, iPad, any other video/photo devices

• 8:30 – 10:45 First Big Session (John Horgan) – The speaker you’ve chosen may be in this

session! Take pictures!

•  10:45 – 12:15 Explore the Summit

•  Interview a Mentor in the Tech Industry – get your interview!

•  Explore programs offered at schools – explore the programs!

•  Check out the Robotics contest put on by BCIT! – get lots of pictures of everything!

•  12:45 – 3:30 Second Big Session – The speakers you’ve chosen may be in this session! • Bus ride home – Arrive at school by 5pm

There were multiple speakers. And like always we always have something we have to do. Throughout the day we had three tasks. Our first task for the day was to chose two speakers to research. Before we left for the day, we each needed to choose the speakers we were go into further depth with.

• Two Bit Circus (Brent Bushnell) AM 

• Plastic Bank (David Katz) AM •Futurpreneur (Paulina Cameron) PM

• Ava Technologies (Valerie Song) PM 

• Science World (Scott Sampson) PM 

• ECCW Championships (Andy Bird) PM 

• Hootsuite (Ryan Holmes) PM

The two I chose were, Brent Bushnell and Scott Sampson. The reason I chose Brent was because I was interested how a circus was related to technology. For Scott Sampson I have been to Science World in the past and I thought it would be interesting to hear about his company.

The first speaker I chose to go into further detail was Scott Sampson. Scott Sampson is a  paleontologist and the CEO and president of Science World. A paleontologist is the study of the history of life. In this case Scott studies dinosaurs.

Something he said in his speech was that our generation is the “most critical”. His reasoning for this, is because we are the generation that can change the direction of humanity in the next generation. Right now, the biosphere is threatened. The two major disruptions Scott mentioned was ecological and digital, “At the intersection between digital and ecological disruption. The intersection is innovation”. His idea of doing this is to build learning resources such as Science World to connect the public with nature in a fun way. 

Something multiple speakers mention was STEM learning. STEM stands for, science, technology, engineering and math. This September, Scott is going to launch the first STEM education system, BC wide. This new will give children STEM qualities. His three main goals are to, dramatically increase number of mentors, scientists etc, network them within communities share knowledge, and to form digital hub for help from the public on how they might want to use it, how you will choose our career. Also at the end of his speech, he shared three tips, be curious, chase pathways and choose multiple and look for new opportunities and finally, find mentors, seek out mentors they are everywhere and seek to be mentors to other kids, don’t be afraid to ask people. Overall Scott’s role in the tech industry is to build resources for our generation to educate us about the importance of nature.

The second speaker was Brent Bushnell, he is an entrepreneur, engineer and CEO/co-founder of Two Bit Circus. Previously they created STEAM Carnival, a traveling event to inspire kids about science, technology, engineering, art and math. Unlike the term STEM, Brent Bushnell used STEAM, the same components however, the “A” stands for art. Brent used art and created interactive art. He created Two Bit Circus to bring people together. It is a physical and digital playground to create a new world of social amusement.

His ideology is all about getting the experience of something. For example, “have you ever wanted to know what it’s like to fall off a cliff”, technology makes it so you can have those experiences. He mention a lot about Visual Reality. VR is changing education, jobs and even disabilities. Something that stood out to me was “tools have never been better”. Meaning in this age we have multiple tools to work with to design and make new innovations.

I found all of the speakers very inspirational. Almost all of them gave the advice to be curious. I thought this was a very important piece of information, because when looking for a career you need to be prepared to try new things out. Something that surprised me was Scott Sampson said that 2/3 of jobs today will not exist in the future!

Throughout the large building there were many stands from universities or new businesses set up. We had around an hour to wonder around and look for anything that sparked our interest. Our second task was to find a stand that we were interested in and find out more about the program that university offers. 

Something that sparked my interest the most was the 3D printer neural tissue that could fight brain diseases.

This study was done at UVIC and they offer a program in sciences. Using 3D printing technology, they can create models of neural tissue. They are just able to made models, they don’t replace living tissue. The main goal for these models is to understand how the brain and spinal cord work and how spinal injuries can be healed and how neural disease can be treated.

This isn’t exactly what I want to do as a career however I did find it very interesting and I think it would be very interesting to study.

Lastly out final task was to create a podcast! Throughout the building there were mentor tables where we could interview them and ask questions about the tech industry. Out of the information we received, we created 1-2 min podcasts.

Hope you enjoy!

Overall my day at #BCTECH Summit was pretty incredible. This is definitely an event where it is important to get the most out of it because it’s not like I will get this opportunity again. I think I did make the most out of my day. I learned so much from all of the speakers. Almost all of them gave the advise the “be curious”. That is something I will take away from my experience and use it to find my future career. I also learned a lot more