This article was first published in the Institute Of Directors (IOD) magazine in Scotland.

How can we enthuse young people with the desire to become the next generation of business leaders? Tailoring their education around the technology that drives their lives would be a start, says Douglas Shand.

Young people are now leading technologically advanced lives, with MP3s, streaming movies, on-demand television, mobile phones, SMS, instant messaging, Facebook and Twitter all a regular part of their normal day.

Our education process needs to harness a young person’s knowledge and enthusiasm for technology and to give them the opportunity to express themselves and build that into a formal education process.

Education is the most vital tool to help arm our young people with the skills needed for them to feel confident about approaching a particular career, but that education must also be in context, engaging, inspiring and relevant. These are often difficult attributes to align with a formal curriculum and this leaves our young people wondering what relevance education has to them and how it can affect work and play.
Technology education is particularly difficult to keep relevant and in context, and because of this some of our young people struggle to engage with formal technology education and often don’t see how it relates to the technology they use every day.

Education needs to be in context with the environment within which the young people are expected to emerge after their formal education. This can be achieved much more easily in industries where the environment stays constant and predictable, but technology tends towards change and with its increasing impact on all aspects of ‘work’, it is vital we recognise this fact and build change into the education process.
I don’t think our formalised curriculum is practical for subjects which tend towards change and therefore we need to look at how we provide and support education in these areas. It is possible – and I believe probable – that we need to approach technology education as an exception to the standard curriculum and as such we need to build a learning process which can adapt quickly and engage with and excite our young people.

Freedom gives you choice and knowledge is the fuel of this freedom. If we empower our young people through knowledge we can give them the freedom of choice during their working lives and careers. We need to convince our young people that an investment in education can result in broader freedoms in the future. By introducing young people to this way of thinking we can show them the benefit and relevance of education in a context that shows how it will directly benefit their future.

Careers must provide personal satisfaction and benefit, both financial and non-financial, to the individual and the wider community and without this they will lack the relevance to make them fulfilling and enjoyable. Knowledge and understanding of the options and opportunities available will lead to better choices which result in people selecting careers with greater levels of enjoyment, purpose, growth and satisfaction.

Empowering young people can also remove the shackles and constraints which can limit their view of options for their future. Empowerment means giving young people the the skills, tools and attributes needed to pursue the career and lifestyle choices they have selected now or will select in the future. Empowerment drives freedom and increases choice. It is vital that young people understand that there are more options than those presented by formal education. We need to engage with our young people at different ages and introduce them to as many kinds of work as practical. The tools and skills needed to become an entrepreneur are very different to those of becoming a nurse and we need to encourage our young people to build relationships with people who operate in the sphere within which they have an interest.
Empowerment leads to confidence and this results in a talent pool of young people who are bold and fearless. These young people will challenge the normal routes to employment and bring a new and vigorous spirit to employment and leadership which will in turn lead to new opportunities and business ideas to enhance the economy in general and their lives in particular.

Confidence breeds controlled risk taking and when combined with the appropriate skills and knowledge can lead to exciting projects which bring higher levels of reward, fulfilment and benefit. These are the aspects of work that our education system and business leaders need to focus on to provide a framework within which our next generation of workers can achieve, over achieve and excel.

• Douglas Shand has recently launched a new education initiative aimed at young people, with the aim of trying to educate and empower our young people and give them the tools with which to produce technology rather than being consumers of technology. For more information see www.re-wire.net.

We often get blinkered in our view of the internet and only take into account those bits that affect us or that we use. In September 2009 there were 1.73 Billion internet users. Not surprising, but what may be surprising is that more than 42% of those users are in Asia.

I have to thank Jess3 for this fantastic piece of research/art/data visualisation mash-up that is compelling, informative and raises more questions than answers.

You can follow Jess3 on twitter – @jess3

We are delighted to be working with Heriot Watt University and Adventi on the Computing Best Practice Award. Schools are asked to enter a short video to demonstrate a successful project.

We are looking for transformational projects where the teacher and learners have built a strong learning community. Learners will have worked on an exciting open ended project which they have helped to plan. The teacher will show the ability to:

* Inspire enthusiasm for learning
* Communicate their own enjoyment of computing or information systems
* Encourage collaboration in learners
* Work in partnership with colleagues (possibly in other school departments)

The winning school will receive training from re-wire and and Apple hardware from Adventi to support future projects in the classroom.

This flyer outlines the competition and further details can be found here.

Best of luck.

Great article and image at Gigaom which beautifully illustrates the size and reach of the Apple App Store economy.

App Store Economy

An excellent piece in the Scotland On Sunday today looking at how individuals have embraced the entrepreneurial spirit after the current recession forced a change in circumstances.

This piece highlights the need to ensure we introduce our young people to the concepts of innovation and entrepreneurship as soon as possible during their formal education. Empowering young people by giving them the skills and tools needed to create, build and run a business of their own opens up many more career options and allows them to take control of their working life in a challenging and ever changing economy.

Best wishes to Kate Smith and Steven Currie, fellow entrepreneurs featured in the article and thanks to Kenny and Erikka at the Scotland On Sunday for covering an interesting and very relevant topic.

• 30 million iPhone users
• 20 million iPod Touch owners
• 2 billion Apps Downloaded
• Apple Appstore sells $2.4 Billion dollars of software in twelve months

Got your attention.

And that’s just the Apple only “Apps” marketplace.

• Android Marketplace – over 15,000 apps
• Blackberry – 3,500 apps
• Nokia Ovi Store – 7,500 apps
• Palm Pre Store – 300 apps

We are almost 18 months into the short life of the Apple Appstore marketplace and it has helped push Apple’s revenue numbers to record levels.

January 26, 2010: Apple’s revenues in its fiscal first quarter were $15.7 billion, a record high, and up from $11.9 billion in the same period a year ago. Apple’s net quarterly profit in Q1 was $3.4 billion ($3.67 per share), compared to $2.3 billion ($2.50) per share. Apple sold 3.7 million Macintosh computers in the quarter, up 33 percent from a year ago.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs said, “If you annualize our quarterly revenue, it’s surprising that Apple is now a $50 billion-plus company.

What makes these numbers even more interesting is the profiles of the people who make Apps. In latest issue of Wired Magazine there are some interesting profiles of successful Apple Apps developers:

• Ethan Nichols – built iPhone App called iShoot. When the app reached number one at the app store he quit his job. The app earned him $37,000 in one day and $600,000 in one month.
• Joel Comm – iFart earned him $10,000 dollars per day
• Steve Demeter – Trism game earned him $250,000 in two months
• Kostas Eleftheriou – iSteam app earned him just under £100,000

Three other apps (Ocarina, Flick Fishing and Enigmo) earned in excess of $1M for their development teams. Obviously not everyone on the App Store becomes a millionaire overnight but good ideas and quality products can deliver a viable revenue stream for an individual, small team or collective of programmers.

None of these are sophisticated applications but they are all great ideas. The great ideas combined with the excellent set of tools (XCode, app testing tools and the Appstore and iTunes) provided by Apple are what make these successes. It’s not the technology that makes the Apple App Store the most successful platform for new apps in the world but it’s the fact Apple make it easy for developers to build, test and submit apps and easy for purchasers (register your credit card for one click purchase) to find and purchase those apps. Developers don’t have to worry about accepting payments, credit card clearance, fraud, marketing or stock control (hosting and app delivery). Apple provides it all.

With this framework in place and lots of success stories to prove the viability of the platform we need to educate our young people to take advantage of this opportunity.

Welcome to the re-wire blog.

re-wire is a new education initiative with exciting, innovative technology and business courses. re-wire gives young people the opportunity to harness their enthusiasm for technology and develop the skills to become creators of technology and not just consumers.

A tough task, I am not so sure.

Our young people have technology embedded in every part of their day but tend to see technology solutions (software and hardware) as something someone else does. re-wire will show that with todays tools exciting technology projects are within the grasp of all of our young people.

Our education system is struggling to deliver the type of education that is in sync with the rapidly changing technology environment of the 21st Century. Teachers, administrators and governing bodies cannot react quickly enough to the rapidly changing environment and as such our education system struggles to be relevant and compelling to our technology literate young people.

re-wire wants to support teachers by offering courses and classroom support to provide them with skills, tools and resources to empower teachers to help our young people produce innovative technology projects. Bringing experience from the private sector in both technology companies and the venture capital investment community re-wire wants to use its skills and experience to help inspire a new generation of entrepreneurs.

If you are part of the teaching profession and keen to learn more please contact re-wire at info@re-wire.net.

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