Your Digital Footprints at MakerWeekend
When I was organizing Maker Weekend, we were looking for people to who can speak at the event an inspire kids to do better with the technology they have in their hands is when my friend asked me if I’d want to be one of the two speakers. I would take this up in a heartbeat, and I almost did but I didn’t have a non-technical talk at my disposal. With kids who are like sponges at an age so tender, it’s important to come down at their level. I couldn’t be talking all about technology and how to code or about Open Source and contribution. That’s when it irked me! I had attended Mayur Patil’s talk “Your Digital Footprints” at Mozilla Festival, London. An interesting talk which can be modified to make kids understand the internet they participate in. I had asked Mayur for his presentation slides but I didn’t get them until 6 hours after the talk so I didn’t present it. It’s not a dig at him, honestly, I asked for the slides only a day earlier so it’s only my fault knowing that Mayur is always busy. #Entrepreneur
I was completely ready, with my blazer and the whole official look, and I removed my blazer, rolled up my sleeves when I got in that class in front of 62 school kids, and sat on the table while they sat on the chairs in front of me. I started with the very question, “Who here uses Instagram?” and the crowd resonates with me like none other has. Maybe it was because it was the platform they love, where all their friends are, and I get it which is why I thought of it in the first place. Since that question, it was an hour of fun conversation about how a 12–16 year old uses a platform and how much do they trust it. We ironically rounded-it-off with a story for Instagram, declaring our Footprint that we are at Best High School.
All in all, I felt that it was a fun conversation and it went well. After I got the slides, I realized that none of the kids would’ve understood half of it.It went well without any presentation but it was an amazing moment when the news arrived that over 50 new kids have asked if the talk is going to happen the next day, and, the kids who attended wanted to come again and talk more about it!
It felt good to have struck a chord with them, and I hope that even though staying safe online may not be the first thought they have when they log into any app/website but somewhere down the road they think before they do something that they can’t take back!
P.S. Thank you for slides, Mayur Bro!
