#MondayMotivation — Meet Niamh Scanlon: 13-year-old award-winning coder, advocate for girls in STEM and European Digital Girl of the Year 2015
Need some #MondayMotivation? Well, here it is! We take a look at the youngest Inspirefest 2016 speaker, Niamh Scanlon.
At the age of just 13, Niamh has already developed award-winning websites and apps, winning two Eir Junior Spider awards and a Coolest Projects Award. Niamh mentors at kids’ coding workshops, is an advocate for girls in STEM and has stressed the importance of basic computer programming in schools within the media.
Last summer, she was selected to take part in Outbox Incubator, the world’s first-ever incubator for girls in STEM aged under-22. So it is not surprising that, in December 2015, she was named EU Digital Girl of the Year.
Niamh is from Dublin and learned to code at her local CoderDojo when she was just nine; she moved on to website design and app development soon after. When she was 11, she won an award for her website Learntocode.eu, which enables young coders from around Europe to share code and learn from each other. She then developed an award-winning app, Recharge my eCar, to help the drivers of electric cars, for which she has won awards from Coolest Projects and Eir Junior Spider.
Niamh began mentoring at CoderDojo in DCU three years ago, helping kids, often older than her, learn how to code. She is a member of the Digital Youth Council, an organisation set up to give a voice to young people involved in STEM in Ireland and provide them with a platform to influence the National Digital Strategy, and the future of STEM in education and everyday life.
Inspirefest 2015 — interview with 12-year-old coder Niamh Scanlon
Speaking at the EU Digital Girl of the Year Awards, Niamh said: “Coding is a skill that I think all young people should get a chance to learn, because it means you can not only use technology, you can create things with it too.”
Just last week, Niamh was in Davos at the World Economic Forum, where she thought some local Davos kids how to code at CoderDojo’s showcase.
CoderDojo set up shop in the heart of Davos, with the help of Salesforce. It was hugely successful, teaching more than 60 kids a day, with some celebs dropping in to see the amazing work being done. The Davos Dojo is staying put, so even more kids can lean to code; there are already more than 900 Dojos dotted around 63 countries across the globe. Niamh also addressed the crowd at the World Economic Forum and spoke about her love of coding.
Some lucky celebrities and influencers also got to meet Niamh and were very impressed.
Niamh Scanlon will be speaking at the Next Generation session along with Outbox Incubator’s co-founder Mary Carty — with several other inspiring young people who took part in Outbox Incubator 2015 still to be announced. You can check out speaker profiles to date here.
Inspirefest returns to Dublin from 30 June to 2 July 2016, with a new and exciting Next Generation panel planned. Keep an eye on this page for some behind-the-scenes insights into Inspirefest and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Google.
Early Bird tickets are now available, visit our website to buy tickets.
